Willetta Whomes Oral History 1 of 2

Willetta Whomes Oral History 1 of 2

Willetta Whomes Oral History 1 of 2

Churchill County Museum Association

Churchill County Museum Association

June 2, 1999

Analog Cassette Tape, .Docx File, MP3 Audio

English

Audio Cassette

1:01:43, 01:01:58

Churchill County Oral History Project

an interview with WILLETTA R. WHOMES

Fallon, Nevada

conducted by JANET SWAN

June 2, 1999

This interview was transcribed by Glenda Price; edited by Norma Morgan; final by Patricia Boden; index by Gracie Viera; supervised by Myrl Nygren, Director of the Oral History Project, Churchill County Museum

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this interview are those of the interviewer and interviewee and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Churchill County Museum or any of its employees.

Notes: Tape 1 was corrupted and discarded. Information was rerecorded in interview 2.

Preface

Willetta R. Whomes was born Willetta Rinehart March 15, 1919 in Condon, Oregon. She was destined to be a nursing pioneer in Nevada. During her forty-four-year career in the nursing field her accomplishments were many. She first came to Hawthorne, Nevada in January, 1941 as a recent graduate of St. Joseph's School of Nursing in Vancouver, Washington to work seventy-hour weeks on the night shift at the small hospital in Hawthorne. By the time she left Hawthorne almost two years later she was in charge of the hospital and had set up its first bookkeeping and billing system. She moved to Santa Monica to work at the new St. John's Hospital there. Wanting to contribute more directly to the war effort in World War II she became a hospital staff nurse in the Panama Canal Zone. At the end of the war she returned to Hawthorne and was employed as an office nurse and receptionist for three doctors. Then she was recruited to be the first hospital administrator at the brand-new yet-to-open Churchill County Hospital in Fallon. She helped to establish and open the hospital in just nineteen days in June, 1949. She continued as hospital administrator for twenty-two years, the first twelve years of which she worked as a full-time registered nurse, also, at the hospital. As hospital administrator she designed and added a new wing nearly doubling the bed capacity, lobbied the legislature and dealt effectively with the hospital board members, doctors and the staff she supervised. Willetta modestly describes her many accomplishments as, "Just doing my job. I had a lot of guts and good common sense." She was instrumental in starting the first organization of hospital administrators in Nevada, organized District Five of the Nevada Nurses Association and wrote the curriculum for one of the first licensed practical nurse programs in rural Nevada that she instituted as part of the hospital in Fallon. Upon moving with her family to Reno in 1971 she was in charge of the operating room at St. Mary's Hospital for eight years and then worked as assistant director of nursing at the Reno Convalescent Center until she retired in 1984. Along the way she married Donald E. Whomes in August 1949 and gave birth to Roger in 1955 and Lisa in 1958. She continues to live in active retirement in Reno with her husband, Donald.

Willetta has had a full life of service to others. She is a vital, capable, independent person with an adventurous spirit. She is a humorous, sociable, cheerful, down-to-earth person and hard worker who cared deeply about her profession and the welfare of the patients she served. Interviewing Willetta Whomes for the Churchill County Museum Oral History Program was a privilege as well as a very interesting experience.

 

Interview with Willetta Whomes

 

SWAN: Tape 2 Side 1 This is Janet Swan interviewing Willetta Whomes in Reno, Nevada, on June 2, 1999.

SWAN:  Good morning, Willetta.

WHOMES: Good morning.

SWAN:  Today is Wednesday, June 2, and I'm at 1925 Royal Drive in Willetta Whomes' lovely home in Reno, and we're starting a second tape on behalf of Churchill County Museum Oral History Program. Good morning. Unfortunately [with] our first tapes the machine had internal problems so we're going to take up pretty much where we left off. Willetta, could you start with Santa Monica [California] after you had left working at the Hawthorne hospital in the early 1940s?

WHOMES: We moved down to Santa Monica in December of 1942 about two weeks before Christmas. There was such a shortage of nurses in that area that we were asked to come to work as soon as we got there at St. John's Hospital. In the OB department I worked nursery, and my roommate worked delivery room. It was a brand new hospital. It was about three weeks old when we got there, so it was really starting from scratch. None of the cupboards had any supplies. It was kind of a start-up program. During that year we had a lot of interesting experiences with famous people. Bing Crosby. Linda Darnell worked with us. Many of them volunteered at the hospital during that period of time. When you opened the curtains for visiting hours, you would always see somebody out there special. One time--oh, I'm trying to think of the comedian's name--knocked on the window and asked me to come to the door, and I did. He [Jack Oakley] was looking at this baby, and he said it was the first one he'd seen all year that didn't look like Errol Flynn. Do you remember him?

SWAN:  [laughing] Yes. Errol Flynn had quite a reputation with the ladies.

WHOMES: Anyway, both of us enjoyed working at St. John's. It was new and bright and pretty. We had about fifty babies in the nursery, so we never had a quiet moment. There was somebody crying all the time. If you had been out late the night before, everybody on the staff kind of took pity on you and let you rock the bottle babies so that you didn't have to move around too much. We had a lot of fun that way. Surprisingly we had very few acutely ill babies like they do now. We had very few preemies as I look back on it. It was just different. With fifty babies at a time in that nursery, you'd think you have more ill children, but we didn't.

SWAN:  How many deliveries did they do a year? It must have been a lot.

WHOMES: Because it was wartime there were a lot of babies being born during this period as the daddies came and went. I don't know. It was just a different population, I guess. I have no idea why it was different because I'm sure prenatal care was no better then than it is now. Well anyway we had uh…That was a very interesting experience. Just bathing those babies in the morning became a kind of a production line. One person would undress, and one would hand them to the other one, and somebody else would do something else, and then we'd carry them upstairs. We got so busy that they had to take over another floor for new babies, so we'd carry them kind of like a woodpile up the stairs [laughing] and then lay them down up there so the mothers wouldn't see us carrying them like little stacks of wood. Oh, my goodness. About this time I felt I ought to be doing something more for the war effort and try to go to Alaska to work for Standard Oil, and then the Japanese landed on the Aleutian Islands, and they wouldn't allow anymore women to go there. Then somebody in nursery who was working there had friends that worked in Panama, and I heard about it through them and heard through her who you contacted in Washington, D.C., so I did that about August of that year of 1943. I put in my application then, and they asked me to leave then December 16, 1943. Took that long, and, of course, again just before Christmas. So I got to Panama probably… Well I left Santa Monica on a train to Corpus Christie, Texas, and I had never slept in a berth before. My roommate took me to the train and said, "Now, Willie, you're supposed to sleep here, not in this little hammock." The hammock was for your shoes and your clothes. [laughing] Because I was so unsophisticated she wanted to be sure I slept in the right place. The train trip was pretty routine except for the fact that I saw this good looking officer in line for breakfast one morning, and I thought, "Gosh, I hope I can maneuver to sit at the table with him." I managed it somehow, and then I looked up and saw that he had a cross on his lapel or whatever on his uniform, and I thought, 'Oh, my God. What have I done?" I said, "Are you a chaplain?" He said, "Yes." He was a Catholic priest. [laughing] And so I told him what I had tried to do. We had lots of…It was really kind of funny. From Corpus Christie then I flew my first flight to Mexico City, and we stayed overnight there. This is a prop plane, you know. We didn't have jets then, and it was cold on the plane. We stayed all night in Mexico City, got up and flew to, if you can believe this, flew to Costa Rica and landed. I can't remember if we stayed all night there, but I can remember having breakfast there. There's something about breakfast in the Latin American countries that isn't the same as home. The eggs were different. Tortillas and things weren't what I expected. And the coffee was very, very strong. We had breakfast there anyway, and I can't remember if we stayed overnight and then flew on and got into Panama around noon. Somebody from the hospital picked me up in a van type…an open aired van-type vehicle, and this man drove me to the hospital. He went down an avenue of trees. He told me it was named after one of our presidents, President Roosevelt. But I think it was named after Teddy, not Franklin. Then I went to the hospital. But, I need to back track. When they opened the door to the plane, and I stepped out, I actually thought, "What have I done?" It is so hot that you just can't believe it.

SWAN: Oh…And after being cold.

WHOMES: Yes, it is so hot there. It rarely gets over ninety degrees, but it's so humid that you just think you're going to die, and I thought I would, but we finally got to the hospital. There's a breeze. We finally, over the period of time I was there, we got very used to this humid climate, and you don't mind it that much. When I got to the hospital we lived in a nursing home, a two-story building with a veranda outside that ran the length of the building. It was all screened, and you keep everything open to take advantage of this because it's surprising how little air conditioning there was in the Canal Zone. Very little. The theater, some of the restaurants, but not the living quarters. But it was designed so most of the buildings were up on um… Well the living quarters were up on stilts so that a breeze would come through. To keep out the rain they had kind of roller blinds that you lowered so the rain wouldn't swish in on you, but otherwise it was not too bad, and night times were pretty comfortable.

SWAN:  What was the hospital like? I mean how did the uh…

WHOMES: Well uh…the um…the hospital… the original Gorgas hospital was built by the French, and it was built in sections. That’s what you worked in various sections, and I worked in the section called E which was built maybe two miles from the hospital….the main hospital.

SWAN:  Oh, for heaven's sakes! That's far away. I mean two miles.

WHOMES: We went back and forth for lunch and that sort of thing in one of these van-type things. It's an open-air thing with benches on both side, and we crowded ourselves in there and we went back and forth. The main hospital was stucco on the outside. I'm not sure how it was built, but it had an administration building, an entry way and then sections that went off from A to D up there. I was away from the hospital. All open wards. A few private rooms just for the very ill. When you think back on it, it was pretty barbaric, but good nursing care. There they took care of mostly the civilian population that worked there. The military were taken care of on the bases, and then I suppose flown out for very serious things. We had a big dermatology department because there's a lot of skin diseases and that sort of thing. Internal medicine was big down there because of all the tropical diseases and during the War they were really studying these because of our men being in the jungles. They were doing studies on malaria and all of these things. In fact, a residency in internal medicine down there was a coveted residency. Lots of people wanted to go there. We had a lot of interns down there who had been in a two or three-year program in medicine. They accelerated programs for the doctors in order to get more doctors out in the field, so some of our resi…interns were, I think, two or three years- probably three years I don’t remember but less than four- in medical school.

SWAN:  You mean, instead of a four-year medical school, they did their three and then they did their internship and residence.

WHOMES: These boys that were down there, most of them were in the service, and this was part of their service. I mean I think they… Anyway they wore uniforms.

SWAN:  They'd already entered the military.

WHOMES: Yes, many of them were in the military and then were down there as part of their training.

SWAN: What kind of…So you were in what section?

WHOMES: The section I worked in was away from the hospital which is always an advantage. [laughing] You were away from all of the administration. Then I remember our supervisor down there liked me. Well, she picked out her favorites, and I happened to, fortunately, be one of them so she would ask us back every time... We rotated a lot, and I thought this was interesting that down there everybody but the night shift got up at seven and went to work. The evening shift then left duty at ten A.M. You worked from seven to ten if you were on the evening shift. But you got up in the morning and worked from 7-10. Then you were off until three. The day shift worked seven to three, but the P.M. shift got up early also at seven o'clock.

SWAN:  So you had a split shift.

WHOMES: So, you got up at seven and worked till ten and then came back at three and worked till nine.

SWAN:  So, seven to ten and three to nine.

WHOMES: But the night shift always worked ten hours. They came at nine and worked till seven in the morning.

SWAN:  What shift did you work?

WHOMES: We had to rotate, so every three months you worked a night shift.

SWAN:  Goodness. Was that split shift unpopular?

WHOMES: You had no… Oh… That was the way Panama had been set up, I think, in 1918. [laughing]

SWAN: I was going to say split shifts…

WHOMES: But it worked out beautifully. We all lived there. It wasn't as if we all had families, so it worked out really well because when you're on that shift you could go to the beach from ten o'clock. We rather liked that. Then at nine o'clock one of the interns and I used to get in the show free because we would walk up to the movie theater and the cashier was always gone by nine o'clock, and the movie had started. Then you could get in free and with the air conditioning.

SWAN:  That must have felt good. [laughing]

WHOMES: Yes it did. But actually, it was a great experience. A ward of probably fifty patients. You laid out the medications on a big board with fifty numbers on the board, and we used just lids off of pill cups. Little lids, and we put out the medications here like for their eight o'clock medications, and then you'd yell as loud as you could, "Medicines." Anybody that can walk, ambulatory, would come up and pick up their medications. You had to kind of monitor them a bit to be sure they get their own, and then you took the ones that didn't come up on a tray and took them to them.

SWAN:  And that was just the traditional way.

WHOMES: Uh-huh. But we had very ill patients. Malaria cases where their temps go up to a hundred and six.

SWAN:  Gee. Was there a lot of malaria still?

WHOMES: Oh, yes, there's a lot of malaria, but only in the Canal Zone it was so well monitored for mosquitoes and that sort of thing that nobody there got it, but if you went out in the interior unprotected.

SWAN:  And these were workers. Did some of them live further away, or they'd had malaria for many years?

WHOMES: All the patients we had were Panamanians and the Black people from Jamaica and from the Virgin Islands and the West Indies who came there to work as orderlies and that type of thing. I think some of them worked on the docks.

SWAN:  So, some of them would have had malaria for years?

WHOMES: Some of them. There were about three types of malaria, and attrition malaria is the type that re-appears. You get over it once, and it'll come back. Then there was one type of malaria if you got this and you lived through it, you didn't get it again. That is how we staffed it so we didn't do much hands-on care but most of my patients were Black or Hispanic or Indian. I learned to do IVs--well, I had known how to start IVs and that sort of thing before I went there, but I got very good at it because you don't really see the veins on somebody who is colored. You have to feel for the vein, and you become more proficient. We had pediatrics on this section, too. I saw these nurses kissing these babies, and I thought, "I don't know if I'm ever going to be able to do that," but after they had about two baths then you were cuddling them because those babies had worms and oh-h-h. Many of them lived in Panama, and they seldom wear diapers. They wear little shirts and that's about all and they sit on the sidewalks. That's how they get all these.

SWAN:  Did they have to pay to be patients there?

WHOMES: I think not. All we had to pay was a dollar a day if we were a patient. So no. It was part of the Canal Zone. All of these people who were our patients were Canal Zone employees, but the families sometimes lived in Panama. There's only a street that divides the Canal Zone from Panama City, and it's called Fourth of July Avenue. There's just that much division, so it's easy to get across.

SWAN:  Yeah. How many years did you stay?

WHOMES: I was down there from December till 1946 in June.

SWAN: Three?

WHOMES: Two and a half years.

SWAN:  What prompted you to leave Panama?

WHOMES: The War was over, and I had planned to stay. And then my boyfriend left in January because he had to go back with the troop ship as the officer aboard the troop ship, and he didn't have any choice. Besides that he had to go within a day. He only had that much notice. So, he left, and I was pretty devastated by then. "What am I doing here?" and so I said, "I think I'll leave, too." But you needed to give them at least six months' notice down there because it was hard to get other people to come in. The nurses there were a different bunch of nurses. They were an adventurous bunch.

SWAN:  Like you.

WHOMES: They were kind of an interesting bunch of nurses because they were there of their own free will, and they signed up for it, but many were there before the War ever started, and they just liked the adventure of it. Wonderful people.

SWAN:  Did you have to be single to be a nurse there?

WHOMES: No, because some of them got married down there. No, you didn't.

SWAN:  And you worked for the Public Health Service?

WHOMES: Worked for the federal government. It wasn't called Public Health. We didn't have to pay income tax, so you could make money very fast. We made $250 a month which is what officers were making about that time, and we had board and room and our laundry done and maid service. Can you believe we got up in the morning and didn't have to make our beds?

SWAN:  [laughing] That's pretty nice.

WHOMES: Well, it couldn't have been better. So you could save money very quickly. If you decided… I came home once during that time that I was there. In fact, the War ended in Japan…no…

SWAN: In Europe.

WHOMES: In Europe first. Was that in August?

SWAN: Gosh.

WHOMES: Oh I can’t remember. Anyway, I was on a train between Portland and San Francisco when it ended. But I went back anyway. It was 1945. That's when it ended for good. The Japanese signed.

SWAN:  Did you work seven days a week, or did you get two days off?

WHOMES: No, we worked six days a week, but we got time and a half for the sixth day, and we got time and a half for those two extra hours at night. We really did make good money with no expenses at all. In fact, on your one day off, and I always asked for Monday because somehow you could go out on the weekend and rest up on Monday, but you could put in for your lunch, and they'd make you some  gorgeous sandwiches and stuff and have it over there, or you could order breakfast, and it would be over there.

SWAN:  On your day off?

WHOMES: It was brought to you on your day off.

SWAN:  Wow!

WHOMES: Can you believe it? Then if you wanted to go to the interior--we went on little trips like for a weekend trip. We called it the interior but actually it was along the coastline north in Panama up toward Costa Rica. We would go up there and they would furnish us steaks and anything we wanted to take with us.

SWAN:  Well, that was nice.

WHOMES: There were a lot of nice things. We went deep sea fishing, and, of course, there were a lot more men down there than women.

SWAN:  [laughing]

WHOMES: So, it was lots of fun. If you had two heads, you could get a date. [laughing]

SWAN:  [laughing] So you…Willetta, you left in June of 1946 or 45?

WHOMES: 46.

SWAN: June of 46 and then what happened?

WHOMES: The doctor that I had worked with in Hawthorne previous to going to Santa Monica was back in Hawthorne starting a practice there.

SWAN:  That was Dr. Miller?

WHOMES: Dr. Miller, and I have been a good friend of him and Rae. All during the War we had kept in contact, so when they moved back there, I thought that would be a nice comfortable place to return to, so that's what I did, and I worked then for him in his offices. His office nurse and bill collector.

SWAN:  How many people worked in the office?

WHOMES: Just me.

SWAN:  So you did the nursing and the...

WHOMES: Send out the bills, and that is not what you ought to do because the nurse really should not even know who owes money, but I unfortunately did, so that if I saw somebody that owed us money playing the slot machine it was hard for me not to go up and say, "Don't do that. Send it to us." About a year after I was there, Dr. Dingacci joined us. He had been in Lovelock just prior to that.

SWAN:  Had Dr. Miller and Dr. Dingacci been friends?

WHOMES: They had a partnership.

SWAN:  How did Dr. Miller happen to recruit Dr. Dingacci?

WHOMES: Nevada's a small state, and I think Dr. Dingacci felt that there was . . . Hawthorne and Babbitt were pretty much a going concern. They were closing up the depot, but there was a lot of work to be done down there. There were a lot of civilian employees. It was a bigger practice, and I think they just became acquainted through word-of-mouth. So, I can remember Dr. Dingacci coming down, and he came up to the desk, and if you know Ding he is a glad hander, and he said he wanted to speak to Dr. Miller. I asked him, "What about?" I didn't know he was a doctor, and he didn't take that too well, but, anyway, he joined us, I'd like to say. That turned out to be a great experience because Betty… Mike was born while we were there. In fact I think Betty was pregnant when they came there, and I babysat Michael a lot. One weekend I babysat Michael and decided to wash some diapers in the washing machine. The drain wasn't hooked up, and I flooded the kitchen [laughing] and I couldn't turn it off. Oh-h-h.

SWAN: Tape 2 Side 2. Janet Swan interviewing Willetta Whomes  on June 2, 1999.

SWAN: So you babysat Mike.

WHOMES: Anyway, Mike and I survived that. Dr. Dingacci was a very good surgeon, so they did more surgery. It just expanded the things that we could do in Hawthorne. Then Dr. Hanson… Dr. Elmer Hansen joined the group a year after that, so we had three doctors, but they didn't increase the nursing staff.

SWAN:  You were still the only nurse and the receptionist and the biller and the whole thing?

WHOMES: Yes. We finally did get somebody in the office. I think about the last year we were there. It was an interesting time because we had a lot of social things we did together. We were a tight-knit group, actually.

SWAN:  So where did, excuse me, where did Dr. Hansen come from?

WHOMES: Dr. Hansen had been in medical school with Dr. Dingacci.

SWAN: Oh!

WHOMES: That's how they knew each other. It was in the Bay area and perhaps in Santa Clara. I'm not sure. I know that's where Dr. Dingacci was from, but I'm not sure about Elmer Hansen, but they knew each other from the Bay area. That's why the three of them were there in Babbitt which really was probably the best medical coverage that area's had over the years.

SWAN:  Were they the only three doctors?

WHOMES: At that time.

SWAN:  Who was at the hospital still? I mean I mean they went to the hospital and there were…

WHOMES: Oh, yes. They put their patients in the hospital.

SWAN:  And there were nurses at the hospital where you had worked before?

WHOMES: Oh, yes. Laura Del Morleno was the administrator of the hospital at that time, and she was a Godsend to me when I moved to Fallon. Then they became interested in starting their practice in Fallon, of leaving Hawthorne and going to Fallon. Dr. Dingacci and Dr. Miller built the clinic on the corner of Taylor and Williams Avenue. We have pictures some place of that vacant lot. It's vacant again, of course, or almost vacant. Or has something else there…but anyway

SWAN:  It's a food chain now. [Jack in the Box, 55 South Taylor]

WHOMES: My husband…he wasn’t my husband then but Don and I came over and took pictures of it. We were going to take pictures of various stages, but somehow we never got back to do that. Dr. Miller drew the plans for the clinic.

SWAN:  That was his design.

WHOMES: Yeah. That was his design.

SWAN: And…?

WHOMES: Then they had it built, and at the same time they had a residence built for Dr. Dingacci and his wife on the same lot where the accountants now are. [Kafoury Armstrong & Company, 375 West Williams Avenue]

SWAN:  When did they open that?

WHOMES: Let me think about that. They moved over there or at least came back and forth probably the first of the year in 1949, but the hospital [Churchill County Hospital, 155 North Taylor] wasn't finished yet. I think the clinic was finished before the hospital.

SWAN:  Did you come to the office in Fallon?

WHOMES: No, I stayed in Fallon, and I felt kind of abandoned

SWAN: Oh in Hawthorne.

WHOMES: Yes. But it was much easier with one doctor.

SWAN:  Oh. Which doctor stayed, Dr. Hansen?

WHOMES: Hansen,

SWAN: Oh I see.

WHOMES: And I felt kind of abandoned that they didn't ask me to come to their office, and they left me down there. But then the hospital was nearing completion, and there was that old hospital, Dr. Wray's hospital over west. It was um…

SWAN:  Was it on Auction Road?

WHOMES: Yes.

SWAN:  And it had been the Handley Hospital before that?

WHOMES: I think so. You know about that more then I do.

SWAN:  Dr. Wray had taken it over.

WHOMES: I know there were patients there that eventually transferred. Evidently they were having a hard time finding an administrator for the new hospital, and the board members had a limited area to draw from. But Dr. Dingacci came up with the idea of hiring me, so he told me about it, and I said, "I don't want a job like that unless I'm married," and I was engaged to Don, but I needed to spur Don on a little.

SWAN:  [laughing]

WHOMES: So, I told him I wouldn't take it because as a single person I really didn't want that much responsibility, and I knew it was going to be pretty tremendous. So anyhow, Dr. Dingacci drove me over to see Leland Cooper who was, I think, secretary of the board. He and Ernie Maupin were on the board, and they were a vital part of the board. They both worked for Dodge Construction. I can remember that we went to Lee Cooper's house on Stillwater [630 East Stillwater Avenue], and we talked. I guess at that moment he hired me. I can't remember just how it happened, but I think it was then that I was hired. I can remember writing a letter of application…asking for the job because Ding asked me to, and then I went over for an interview. So I quit my job in Hawthorne, and I think it was I know that I had nineteen days to open the hospital. Now It was either June 19 or July 19 that we opened the hospital.

SWAN:  I think looking at the articles it was June.

WHOMES: I think that's right because I think I was over there for Memorial Day, and the McCuskeys took us to dinner at the Christmas Tree.

SWAN:  From Fallon?

WHOMES: From Fallon we went to the Christmas Tree for dinner.

SWAN:  Dr. McCuskey and his wife?

WHOMES: And Ruth and Dingaccis

SWAN: The Dingaccis went

WHOMES: And me.

SWAN:  When did you get married?

WHOMES: Not till August. So this is June. So I had nineteen days, and the first time I went into the hospital, Bob Luce was painting, Mr. Graham was the contractor for the paint job, but Bob Luce was still painting the nurses' station. There was paint on windows, and you had to scrape that off. You had to..

SWAN:  Did you do that?

WHOMES: Yes. The board had bought linens, but, for instance, a Mayo table cover was about that wide and the tables were that wide. [A Mayo table is a small adjustable height table used to hold surgical instruments and other medical supplies.] Somehow I found a seamstress and we set up a sewing machine in the waiting room. She sewed like mad. There were no glove covers. We used to use glove covers to sterilize gloves. You had to use draw sheets. [A draw sheet is a sheet that is put across the middle of the bottom sheet of a hospital bed that can easily be changed without changing the bottom sheet.] There were thousands of draw sheets, so we used draw sheets to make glove covers. We had to widen all the Mayo table covers. I was not an expert in the operating room, but I knew a few fundamentals, so we were able to put up a few packs. But I didn't know really what went on a spinal tray, for instance, so I was calling frantically to Laura Del Moreno in Hawthorne because she ran the hospital there, and said, "For God's sakes, what do you put on a spinal tray, and what do you put in a lab pack, and what do you do for this and that?" If it hadn't been for her, I'd never have got the place together. But then we opened up the doors in the kitchen--by the way we have no staff--but, anyway, open up the doors to the kitchen. Nice metal cupboards and no shelves.

SWAN:  Oh, gosh. [laughing]

WHOMES: The staff at that time was Willie Capucci…Willie Capucci…Willie Trigueiro [who] was the maintenance man and me. Then shortly after that Alma Nygren was hired for the office. I didn't know Alma. She was hired by the board. But, all the rest of the staff I had to hire, and I didn't know a soul.

SWAN:  How did you find them? Did you advertise in the paper or just word of mouth?

WHOMES: The cooks came over from the old hospital. They kind of followed the patients. I brought one nurse with me from Hawthorne. Somebody came in and applied for the night shift, and I think I did day shift. Twenty-four patients…it was a twenty-four bed hospital

SWAN:  [laughing] And did you have an aide or anything to help you with the twenty-four patients.

WHOMES: Yes, Lena Williams came from the other hospital.

SWAN:  The one in Fallon?

WHOMES: From the old hospital… Dr. Wray's hospital. She came.

SWAN: Lelia?

WHOMES: Lena.

SWAN: Oh Lena.

WHOMES: Lena Williams. These details are a little vagure to me right now.

SWAN: That’s okay.

WHOMES: But I know the cooks came. The person that came with me from Hawthorne did operating room and central supply and that sort of thing. I remember the lady who worked nights, but she was a local lady. I can’t really…Housekeeping… Mrs. Manha was the housekeeper. I just can’t remember all of these.

SWAN: Oh well that’s okay. I think we might be able to find some of those but…

WHOME: It was pretty difficult getting all of this, but we managed it.

SWAN:  And all of this in just . .

WHOMES: Nineteen days. And we moved the patients over. We had an open house probably before the patients moved over. We had the open house on the nineteenth day, and I can remember Chris Palludan was then twelve years old, and he signed the guest book. Cute little tow-headed boy, and, look, he ended up being one of my bosses. Many people came through.

SWAN:  In one article I saw six hundred people attended your open house.

WHOMES: I wouldn't be surprised.

SWAN:  It was really a big occasion.

WHOMES: It was. It was a big thing for our community to have this hospital, and there were twenty-four beds at that time. All of them semi-private except for the two at the end. Thirty-one and thirty-two were private rooms.

SWAN:  They were the only two. All of the rest were two beds.

WHOMES: Yes, but with a half bath in between each two rooms. Then we had an emergency room, a central supply room with an autoclave and that sort of thing. A utility room to clean things up. Delivery room on one side and an operating room on the other side. And the nurses' station was right up front. And this new addition, I don't suppose you can remember, that office out front was not there. I did not have an office. I don’t think they ever considered that…

SWAN:  Oh. That was an addition that little front office.

WHOMES: Well, I always worked as a nurse and did the other stuff on the side, so I didn't even have a desk.

SWAN:  Did you work the nurses' station?

WHOMES: I floated around so much that I didn't ever light I don't think.

SWAN:  [laughing] Was there still a basement there? Where was the one office?

WHOMES: I built it.

SWAN:  Oh, you built the basement.

WHOMES: I had two building projects while I was there.

SWAN:  During your twenty-two years.

WHOMES: Um-hum. We became very, very overcrowded within a short time, so by 1954 we had patients lined up down the hall.

SWAN:  Oh, my goodness.

WHOMES: Real sick patients. Like as many as four beds along the corridor. There was a door at the north end. I can remember the patient that was out there in that hall. Oh. Anyway, we had a bond issue that year so that we could add on.

SWAN: In 1954?

WHOMES: Mm-hm, see it was just five years old. It was very popular because of Austin, Gabbs. Many patients from Hawthorne followed Ding and Miller 'cause they were pretty popular doctors. So anyway, we built the new wing using the same architects that had built the original hospital which was Delongchamps and O'Brien from Reno, but I had some input into this.

SWAN:  So the new wing had an OB department and emergency room, or what went into the . .  Oh, it was just a rectangular building.

WHOMES: Originally it was just a rectangular building with the kitchen area jutting out toward the west, but the new wing is from, if you know the hospital at all, where the two private rooms are on the side toward the north end that was where the hospital ended so what was built was the pediatric unit. I don't know what's there now.

SWAN:  Oh, I see.

WHOMES: Then the nursing station was all new.

SWAN:  Oh, that wasn't there.

WHOMES: So there was a linen closet built, a nursing station, and then you turned a corner, and the patient rooms

started. Then at the very end was a solarium.

SWAN:  So that was a new wing.

WHOMES: That all was the new part

SWAN:  Oh, my goodness. Was the nursery next to the kitchen?

WHOMES: Yes, and it was always there when I was there.

SWAN:  And then where was pediatrics?

WHOMES: Pediatrics was down across from the nurses' station.

SWAN:  Which it was until they closed it.

WHOMES: Is that right?

SWAN:  Uh-huh.

WHOMES: I put it there because the children needed frequent observation. The new-born nursery was not in a good place, but there was never a good place to put it.

SWAN:  Yeah, that was a hard one, wasn't it?

WHOMES: Uh-huh.

SWAN:  Where was your nursing station?

WHOMES: Originally?

SWAN:  Uh-huh.

WHOMES: Right across from the nursery, you know the hall going into the kitchen? Nursery's over here, over here's x-ray, then come forward a little was the nursing station. I made a store room out of it as soon as we got the new nursing station.

SWAN:  And where were the operating room and OE?

WHOMES: They stayed in the same place in that wing south.

SWAN:  And then across from the operating room and obstetrical department was the little emergency room.

WHOMES: Yes, an emergency room and then as you came in the entry of the emergency room was the x-ray. I had a door cut there so that when you came in, you could come right into the x-ray room. I'd forgotten that I had done that. Had to have a door cut there in order to have freer access to the radiology. I did most of the x-rays. Well, I did them all in the beginning.

SWAN:  Gee! Where did you learn that?

WHOMES: A doctor taught me.

SWAN:  Oh, on-the-job training. [laughing]

WHOMES: Then the man who put the x-ray equipment in, he also helped me.

SWAN:  Gosh, you were a jack-of-all-trades.

WHOMES: I didn't know anything about bookkeeping either when I went there, but lots of people were there to help if you yell loud enough.

SWAN:  So, you probably put in long hours.

WHOMES: I suppose I did in the beginning. Yes, I did. I was on call. I can remember being at a party at the Navy base and having to come in to do an x-ray on some drunk one night, and I was so mad at Dr. Dingacci I could have killed him.

SWAN:  For calling you away from this party? [laughing]

WHOMES: Well, for some reason, I ended up doing this when I thought it was something he could do. That was it.

SWAN: Oh. [laughing]

WHOMES: It was a simple thing that he could have done but he called me in because he was lonesome, I guess. Oh, yes, and I'd be called in for surgery, but I didn't have much else to do. I didn't have any children, and Don was still working in Hawthorne. I lived in Gerry and Joe Wallace's house. I had a room upstairs.

SWAN:  Where was that located?

WHOMES: On Williams Avenue [525 West Williams Avenue] about a block from the hospital.

SWAN:  So, you had gotten married in August?

WHOMES: I didn’t get married till August.

SWAN: And then your husband continued working in Hawthorne for a while.

WHOMES: Mm-hm. My husband…when was it…Oh on the eighth of July--because my niece was born that day is how I know that--my husband went back to visit his family in Michigan in July so I'd been over there not even a month. While he was gone I planned our wedding. He was gone for three weeks, and he came back [laughing], and I had all the announcements printed. It was going to be a very small wedding, so we didn't invite anybody to the wedding. Also, I had my dress picked out and a location where we were going to be married, this whole thing. He came back, and he didn't have a thing to do with it.

SWAN:  Until then you hadn't picked a date? Or had you picked a date? 

WHOMES: Absolutely not I did it all. [laughing]

SWAN:  [laughing]

WHOMES: Isn't that awful? This really has nothing to do with the history of Churchill, but one time we were riding-we were going to Yerington or something, and I saw a sign of Justice of the Peace in Gardnerville, and I said, "Slow up. I want to take this telephone number down." Subtle.

SWAN:  [laughing]

WHOMES: Anyway, do you know? Just for the heck of it because I'm a Catholic, and he wasn't, I chose to be married by a Justice of the Peace because I thought then nobody would be offended. Anyhow, that's what we did. We got married in Gardnerville because a year before that. I had taken down that phone number. So, we were married there, and Dr. Miller and his wife came with us.

SWAN:  Oh, that's nice.

WHOMES: So what else happened at the hospital? We're building the wing then in 1954, but do you know that that got overcrowded, too. It really did because I can remember the solarium was built as a place for the patients to go to read and rest and eventually we ended up putting beds out there.

SWAN:  How many did you get out there?

WHOMES: Four. In fact, I had anticipated this, so I had it set up for bells and outlets.

SWAN:  That was good.

WHOMES: Well, we kind of anticipated it might grow, and we didn't want to put them in the hall again.

SWAN:  At the same time you had the wing built, you had the basement done?

WHOMES: That came in the late fifties, and I can't remember just when. What is kind of interesting about this, and maybe I shouldn't even .

SWAN:  It's up to you.

WHOMES: I'm going to tell you. What happened is we went out for a bond issue again. We had these plans drawn. This time by people who really knew hospitals. They had built the hospital in Yerington, a very effective facility, and so I kind of wanted to get them in, and the board said okay.

SWAN:  This was in 1966?

WHOMES: Yes, something like that. We had these plans drawn because what we needed was a better laboratory. I put a lab down. Oh, God, the laboratory originally was a room maybe six by six. I mean, it was a small place, so I had put a lab down in the new wing which was probably nine by twelve. It soon was inadequate, too. Eventually we outgrew it as more equipment became available and that sort of thing, and then we had a pathologist coming to us every month. We were kind of upgrading the place. Anyhow we decided we needed a new laboratory, office space, storage space for records, better medical record department, waiting room space, all of that was incorporated into this plan.

SWAN:  In 1966 that's when they went a little bit east and put the basement in and added more administrative space.

WHOMES: That's right. We went out for a bond issue, and it failed, but I was able to build it anyway.

SWAN:  [laughing] How did you do that?

WHOMES: Got a Fleischman grant.

SWAN:  Oh!

WHOMES: My recollection is two hundred thousand for the whole building, I think. Now, I'm a little shaky about this. I don't remember. I know that I got a Fleischman grant. I went to the legislature and got fifty thousand. I know that for sure, and Carl Dodge helped me do that. Got fifty thousand from the state and the Fleischman and that way the federal government matched it somehow. I was able to gather that money and I'm not just sure how, but we got enough, and so we built it.

SWAN:  Well, good for you!

WHOMES: And so in this we made a pretty big business office and then another little room for the business machines, and the basement then became a meeting room as well as storage for medical records. We did not have a meeting room prior to that. We'd have to go to the solarium or someplace. But medical staff meetings, board meetings we had down there we always used the dining room prior to that. So you were interrupted and took up space when people wanted to have a break or something, so that room downstairs served a lot of purposes.

SWAN:  And continued to, really, for many years.

WHOMES: I suppose. We had more consultants coming from Reno all the time. We had several doctors on our consulting staff, and we would entertain them maybe two or three times a year and pathologists every month. Radiology.

SWAN:  Gosh. When you started, there were just two doctors. Do you want to go into that?

WHOMES: Yes. We started out with Dr. Dingacci and Dr. Miller. Osteopaths then were not allowed to come to the hospital. We also had Dr. [Harry] Sawyer. Grant Sawyer's dad was a doctor in Fallon a long time before we came there, come to think about it.

SWAN:  Oh, for heaven's sake!

WHOMES: He had been an osteopath, but got a medical license in the state of Nevada and was then an MD. He was a very loyal friend to me which was helpful. After that, about 1953, which was four years after we opened the hospital, Dr. Miller left to go back to school, so he and his family left.

SWAN: This is Janet Swan interviewing Willetta Whomes on June 2, 1999. Tape 3 side 1.

SWAN:  And Willetta we were talking about the hospital and the fact that you added a second edition for which you got grants and money from the state after the bond issue um…didn’t pay off. Getting back to the hospital, we were talking earlier you were at first called a Matron.  All the hospital administrators were often called matrons. Why do you think that was?

WHOMES: I don't know, but I didn't like it. I was…I don’t know why we were called matrons. It's an old, old fashioned name of people in charge of institutions that were females, I guess.

SWAN:  But you said you changed that.

WHOMES: Well, we all did about the same time. There were five women in charge of hospitals up in this area. Laura Del Morleno in Hawthorne, Clara Barnett in Yerington, Mildred Seabus in Lovelock, Sister Seraphin in St. Mary's, and me in Fallon, so then the guys down in Las Vegas used to call us the Northern Broads, so that shows you how much . . . we even liked matron better than that. But that's a little premature because the state of Nevada had no organization as far as hospitals were concerned. Mr. Clyde Fox at Washoe Medical Center at that time was another mentor of mine. He helped me out a great deal and so did Sister Seraphin. I called them many times on the phone, too, but there's a lot to an organization of hospitals and certain criteria that you have to live up to that I wasn't familiar with, and they helped me with that. The right kind of china to buy, the right kind of materials and equipment, so used them a lot. Along the way someplace we decided that we ought to be organized, and so I've forgotten exactly what we called our organization in the beginning, but eventually we became the Nevada Hospital Association affiliated with the national association. I was the first president of the original hospital

SWAN: And you were really one of the…well you were a factor I guess.

WHOMES: I was one of the ones that got it started in the very beginning.

SWAN:  Was that for the whole state?

WHOMES: Um-hum. That's my recollection. I'm hoping that I'm saying this right. Anyway, yes it was for the whole state. We were a very close knit group. Elko was involved, Las Vegas, Tonopah, Carson City, Reno, and then all these little towns, so we were a neat group, but it's the administrators in Las Vegas that called us the Northern Broads. We just heard that by accident, and Sister was so tickled that she was one of us. When Medicare came in and all that sort of stuff, we had some input. We sent delegates back to the national association's meeting in Chicago, and I was a delegate at one point.

SWAN:  You were the first president.

WHOMES: Well, yes, but after that. I was the first president of that small association we had in the very beginning. That may have been only the northern group, and I can't remember if that's true, but when we joined the national association everybody in the state was involved.

SWAN:  Did you lobby the legislature or anything?

WHOMES: Oh, you bet we did. We also lobbied back in Chicago. I also was active in the nurses' association, and I did get District Five started in Fallon. Whether or not it's still going, I don't know.

SWAN:  I don't think very strongly if at all, but it certainly was in the seventies.

WHOMES: I had a lot to do with getting District Five started. I was on the legislative committee so lobbied in Carson, but also was sent back to Washington, D.C., and that was my first trip to Washington, D.C. in 1965, and I went on my birthday [March 15]. I flew back there on my birthday. The family took me in to Reno, and I stayed all night in one of those little rooms at the Nugget and then flew. I had never flown on a jet before.

SWAN:  Was there other flying time? You said the first time you flew was to Panama.

WHOMES: Yes, but this was the first one on one of those great big jets. There were only about forty people on a plane that carried three hundred. Hardly anybody on the plane, but it was big, and it flew non-stop from San Francisco to Dulles. I didn't know Dulles was that far from Washington, D.C. until I took a taxi. I think it was thirteen miles or more, and it cost a fortune. I was busy in both associations.

SWAN:  I should say you were.

WHOMES: Actually, I shouldn't have been so active in the nurses' association because it's kind of a union sort of a thing, but I was trying to get better salaries for my nurses anyway.

SWAN:  You mentioned that you had a wonderful staff.

WHOMES: I did. Of course, I mentioned my office staff that lasted the longest but within this staff working in the office also was Doreen Getchell, Allie Mahoney, my dear, dear friend.

SWAN:  We don't have it on tape, but Lola Lott.

WHOMES: Oh, I didn't say that. Oh, yeah, Lola was the first one. I found out about Lola. For some reason Alma Nygren had to quit, and then in the interim we had a man who tried very hard to cover the place, but didn't have the same skills as Alma and, eventually, Lola had. We were out at the Farmhouse having dinner, and Molly Allison told me about Lola, so we hired her. I think it was about 1952, and she stayed for about ten years. She was a wonderful friend plus a tremendous bookkeeper. During building projects it's awfully important to keep all the money straight, and she was so good at that sort of thing. I couldn't have done it without her. There's just no doubt about it. And then the same thing. I was lucky enough to find Helen McGinnis. She wasn't so hard to find. She was right there in Fallon, but, fortunately, at that time wasn't employed, and so she came to work at the hospital. What a Godsend she was! And in the interim I had a spell in there where I didn't have anybody in the office. Well, we had the regular people but nobody to do the profit and loss statement, well, I'd just look back. Oh, well, anyway it's a long story, but I managed to get one just before just because I copied the one from the month before and figured the numbers were different, but they all came out. I got something to the board without them knowing how I got it. [laughing] Oh, God. But I got something to them. Then Helen came, and, bless her heart, she stayed through it all. She was there when I left. I had Ida Armas, I had Virginia Hurihan. I know I've left out people, but we did so much because we really stressed patient care. I'd like to think that that was our main focus the whole time we were at the hospital. There were sometimes when we had problem doctors where you really had to stand up and challenge them, and that's a difficult thing to do. We did have that problem off and on. What a staff I had. Oh, Marshall Rigsby was our lab man and x-ray man, and Bonnie Rigsby was in medical records, but first she was a practical nurse down on the ward. We always called it the new wing as long as I was there. That partition in 1954 was the new wing. It always was. So, down on the new wing, she and Helen Robinson, a girl who eventually moved to Reno, those two girls took all those patients down on that wing which was a twenty patients, ten on each side. They had some help. One would take one side and one the other. I don't see how they did it. Marvelous, marvelous nurses. Bonnie eventually then took over medical records for me which became again a big deal. When I first started we kept a chart and all that, but we didn't really understand how you stored them, how you coded them, that sort of thing, and we all learned together. What a Godsend those people were. Bonnie was with me for a long, long time up until I left, also. And Bonnie still lives in Fallon.

SWAN:  Oh, does she?

WHOMES: Marshall has died. He was the first one who came to work for me. To backtrack a little, as far as the doctors are concerned, Dr. Miller left in 1953, then Dr. Dingacci was alone for a little bit. Probably much longer than he wanted to be, and Dr. Frydenlund came in.

SWAN:  Oh Dr. Frydenlund. Who was he?

WHOMES: I know that he was from Wisconsin or Minnesota. Frydenlund is a Scandinavian name. His name was Connie [Conrad] Frydenlund.

SWAN:  Did he work with Dr. Dingacci?

WHOMES: Uh-huh.

SWAN:  How long was he there?

WHOMES: He came in 1953. I know he was there when my son was born. He was there, I would imagine, six or seven years or maybe a little more. A great man. He got married while he was in Fallon to Helen, his wife, and they had a couple of babies while they were there. They built a house right behind ours on Bailey Street. He was a nice addition to the staff. Very good doctor. After that then Caffaratti came. I think it was when Frydenlund left that Caffaratti came.

SWAN:  And he was quite a friend of Dingacci's.

WHOMES: That's right. Now Frydenlund was not and I don't know where Dr. Dingacci found him. I had nothing to do with that. Then Dr. Caffaratti came, and that was a challenge, too. I loved the little poop, but he was something else. It was through Dr. Caffaratti and Dr. Dingacci that we heard about Marshall. Oh, no, it wasn't. It was through our pathologist. Yes, Dr. Salvadorini the pathologist in Reno was classmate or acquaintance. I think classmates with Dr. Dingacci and Dr. Caffaratti in the Santa Clara area down in the Bay Area. So that's how they knew Marshall because Marshall came from down there, and that's how I was able to get Marshall on our staff.

SWAN:  Oh as your lab person.

WHOMES: The loyal Dr. Dingacci would steal any of my staff that he possibly could and did it frequently. The first operating nurse that I hired that I brought with me from Hawthorne, he took her in his office. Then he eventually got Marshall in his office. Can't really think of anybody else.

SWAN:  [laughing] But you kept his wife, Bonnie, right?

WHOMES: I managed to keep Bonnie, but he didn't know her potential or he would have taken her. Ding and I were always challenging each other because he coaxed me to come to Fallon, I thought, "Oh, this is going to be so sweet and such a nice team." And he did nothing but ride me. He knows that's what I know, and I couldn't do anything right. [laughing] Of course, he was very anxious that his patients have good care, and he let me know that in no uncertain terms.

SWAN:  [laughing] He was challenging you.

WHOMES: Very so much so, but we remained dear, dear friends. I really love him. Then we got Caffaratti, and he was there when I finally left. Dr. Caffaratti and Dr. Dingacci were alone in the clinic, I believe, at that time.

SWAN:  At that time because Miller returned later. Were there other doctors in town?

WHOMES: Dr. Cecil. Is he still there?

SWAN:  No, he left in, I think, the seventies. I believe he's in Pahrump [Nevada].

WHOMES: Still practicing?

SWAN:  I think so because I've heard that he's in Pahrump.

WHOMES: We also had a Dr. Strance who was an M.D. He was not in the clinic. He took Dr. Wray's office down on [406 South] Maine Street.

SWAN:  Oh, had Dr. Wray left town then?

WHOMES: I think Dr. Wray had left town by that time. He [Dr. Strance] was a surgeon, and he did a lot of it.

SWAN:  At your hospital.

WHOMES: Anesthesia was always a problem at our hospital

SWAN:  Oh, yeah. Who did you have for that?

WHOMES: I generally had nurse anesthetists. But it was always a problem. I had to borrow them from Lovelock. I borrowed them from Hawthorne. I had Ginny [Virginia] Coffee for years.

SWAN:  Was she a permanent staff member?

WHOMES: She was an independent contractor so that she was not on my staff, but supposedly on call all the time. It was a problem keeping coverage.

SWAN:  I bet. Well, for surgery then if you had to bring in a nurse anesthetist from Hawthorne or wherever then you could only schedule surgeries certain days a week?

WHOMES: Yes, And emergencies, we even had anesthesiologists come down from Reno. Dr. O'Brien I can remember coming down from Reno. This is before 1954 before the new wing because I can remember being at this nursing station, and he threw this expensive sport coat over the counter, and the sleeve went in the ink well.

SWAN:  [laughing]

WHOMES: And he was so mad. Eventually I worked with Dr. O'Brien in Reno after I left Fallon, and I reminded him of that.

SWAN:  [laughing] He's still throwing jackets. Maybe that cured him.

WHOMES: It was just touch and go. It really was. Then, of course, once in a while, I would watch over the patient. Well, we did this a lot. I shouldn't say once in a while. The patient would have a spinal, and Dr. Dingacci would do it or Dr. Miller, and I would watch the patient then.

SWAN:  During the surgery and keep track of their vital signs.

WHOMES: Well, we all did their vital signs [blood pressure, pulse and respirations, temperature], I think. Oh, I did that a lot before we really had a nursing emphasis. I did that a lot, come to think of it. I'd almost forgotten that.

SWAN:  Well, I can see where you would need to.

WHOMES: But, you know again, we did very well with this. And blood transfusions we had a walking blood bank where we typed individuals from the community and then kept a card on it. Then we would call them when we needed this type of blood. I remember calling Munsey Kolhoss. Then, my goodness, Dr. Miller and I were both 0 negative. We had our blood taken more than anybody. I remember, oh my gosh, we did that a lot. Gave our own blood because we were both O-negative. We would just call on the phone until we could get somebody to come in.

SWAN:  Gosh, you really just had to do it all.

WHOMES: I don't want to make it sound like we were martyrs or anything. We were just doing our job, and it was interesting. It's very scary. I don't think anybody realizes what a wonderful thing the fire department did as far as the emergency services they provided. The ambulance service. We got them at the emergency room door, and that's scary enough, but think what it's like out there in the field when you're picking these bodies out of cars and that sort of thing. At least, they're straightened out when they came to us.

SWAN:  [laughing] So that was all the volunteer ambulance service.

WHOMES: When you heard that bell ring at night or any time. Those men just did that day after day after day.

SWAN:  And they were volunteers?

WHOMES: All volunteers. Never got paid. George Lott was on that, Jimmy Allison, Childers, oh, just so many people.

SWAN:  A community effort.

WHOMES: Oh yeah. It really was.

SWAN:  What about their OB? What about your obstetrical department? You did a lot of deliveries?

WHOMES: I think we averaged about thirty a month.

SWAN:  That's a lot! 30 x 12

WHOMES: I would say between twenty and thirty a month. It varied, of course.

SWAN:  Did all the doctors do deliveries?

WHOMES: Yes.

SWAN:  And then how long was the women's stay?

WHOMES: Much longer than now.

SWAN:  Yes, I know. [laughing]

WHOMES: Before the [World] War [II] you know they stayed about ten days. Well, because of the war effort, they had to move them faster. They started getting them out in about five to six days, so most of our patients left in five or six days, but we didn't ambulate them as quickly as we do now certainly. You can stay maybe twenty-four hours now.

SWAN:  If you're lucky.

WHOMES: But, no we kept them a little longer than that. Nell Coleman is somebody else who was our nursery nurse. She took care of those babies in there for years and years and years. She took care of mine and our nephew was born there. I don't know what we would have done without her. She came from the original old hospital. The one out there on Auction Road. Dr. Wray's hospital. She took such good care of those babies. And, again, there we did not have any baby problems except for that one instance when we had that premature that we had the lawsuit over.

SWAN:  Did you want to go into that or not?

WHOMES: I don't think so because I can't remember the details as well as I should, but I think it's in the newspaper items. It was in the paper a lot. I lost my train of thought.

SWAN:  Well maybe you could go into a typical day in the early days

WHOMES: In the very early days?

SWAN: And then maybe later on as your staff increased.

WHOMES: In the very early days across from the nurses' station was the medicine room. We got our medications through the pharmacy down town. We ordered from the pharmacy down town.

SWAN:  Which one was that? Morris and Loring?

WHOMES: Morris and Loring [105 South Maine]. Percy Bailey.

SWAN:  On Maine Street?

WHOMES: Eventually we shared it with the pharmacy that was on Maine Street also. [Hillyard's, 250 South Maine] He [Ted Hillyard] was such a delight. I’m sure they will excuse us since I’m so old. We shared it once a month, but we bought our drugs through the pharmacy. They were in big bottles, and you counted out your pills.

SWAN:  Drew up your solutions, right?

WHOMES: Exactly. And we kept our IV solutions in there and that sort of thing. This tiny little room, and then I'd make the assignments in the morning for the patients that needed to be done. Then I made rounds with the doctors and carried out the orders. I worked everyday as a nurse. I mean, I was one of the staff. Do you know I don't think we had licensed practical nurses then. That came along a little later.

SWAN:  I wonder when that did start?

WHOMES: Because I started a school for licensed practical nurses.

SWAN:  Did you?

WHOMES: One of the first in the state.

SWAN:  At the hospital?

WHOMES: At our hospital.

SWAN:  When did you start that?

WHOMES: Maybe early sixties. I had a class first--you know the Lions' Club building across the street on Taylor? And maybe it isn't anymore.

SWAN:  No, I'm not . .

WHOMES: It's across the street on the north of the hospital.

SWAN:  Right. That would be B [380 West B] Street.

WHOMES: Well Williams Avenue then is it A?

SWAN: Uh-huh.

WHOMES: Then the next one would be B then.

SWAN: Oh!

WHOMES: And it’s right…

SWAN: This is Janet Swan interviewing Willetta Whomes on June 2, 1999. Tape 3 side 2

SWAN: Okay Willetta. We were talking about that you started the licensed vocational nurse program at the hospital about you said about 1962?

WHOMES: When I think about it, I think it was before that, but I really can't remember but I know that there was somebody on the state level who was at the head of vocational education, and he helped me a great deal. Wonderful man whose name escapes me also, and he came down and helped me with setting up the curriculum and getting the books and this sort of thing.

SWAN:  And you just happened to find out about it. I mean, you were interested in this . . .

WHOMES: Yes, and besides that we needed the people. We needed the help, so we decided if we did this we would have a bigger pool of employees, so I talked one of my nurses into taking over the class, and she was very reluctant to do it, but she did. I helped her as much as I could. I remember setting up the schedule on this big legal form that you get for keeping books, and we set it up and we got materials we needed and had the classes over in the Lions' building.

SWAN:  How long was it? A year?

WHOMES: It was more than six months, and I can't remember that either. Too bad. It was pretty long. Maybe a year. I don't really remember. Maggie really got exhausted before the program was over, so I ended up that first year finishing it up, and out of that class, I think, came Bonnie Rigsby or maybe she got grandfathered in because she had had so much previous experience. I know that she ended being a licensed practical nurse and so did Helen Robinson and several others, so maybe she was not in that first class. I think that they were grandfathered in--Nell Coleman was another--from having had so much experience that when they first started the practical nurse program in the state of Nevada I think then they were grandfathered in. So, I don't really remember who was in the first class, but I'm sure I have pictures of it. Then, of course, we continued. Marge Tsuda, do you remember Marge Tsuda?

SWAN:  I certainly know the name.

WHOMES: It isn't the Tsudas that are at the laundry but another Marge Tsuda who lived in Fallon a while and then moved to Reno also. She did a class for me and maybe two and then I got somebody out of Reno. We kind of kept it going for a while.

SWAN:  How many years did you have that school?

WHOMES: Oh, dear. Oh, I imagine we had it at least five.

Maybe not every year. I think as need came up. I don't remember that either. First we had them in the Lions' building and then we ended up in the basement of Oats Park [School]. Somebody else who helped me a lot with that program was Jack Davis.

SWAN:  Oh now who was he?

WHOMES: He was the Superintendent of [Churchill County] Schools.

SWAN:  Oh.

WHOMES: Yes, in the first program Jack Davis helped me a lot.

SWAN:  In just setting it set up?

WHOMES: Yes, in just setting it up.

SWAN:  And he was the Superintendent of Schools in Churchill County.

WHOMES: Um-hum. Before Mr. [Elmo] Dericco. Jack Davis, I think, is in Carson City now.

SWAN:  Oh gosh! Did you ever consider having a nursing school at the hospital?

WHOMES: You mean for registered nurses?

SWAN:  Yes.

WHOMES: Oh, good God! we weren't that sophisticated.

SWAN:  Oh, well, I was going to say you did so much. [laughing]

WHOMES: Oh, my goodness, no. But they had all their practical experience at our place.

SWAN:  The licensed vocational training.

WHOMES: Yes. Then eventually the state really got a nurse (again whose name I’ve forgotten) who was in charge of curriculum and that sort of thing and did it on a state-wide basis and traveled from school to school.

SWAN:  You set up and did your own curriculum and everything.

WHOMES: With the help of the man in Carson City. Eventually it became an organization all of its own.

SWAN: Eventually it made it to the Junior- I mean Community College level.

WHOMES: Uh-huh. They still have that program, but it's on the community college level, but ours was just local.

SWAN: So you were a pioneer. In many ways.

WHOMES: We set up so much class time and so much study time, and then they had experience in the operating room and they had experience post op and OB nursery. The whole thing. Some dietetics.

SWAN:  That really did a service, to have trained people in the community.

WHOMES: Eventually, we had to have a consultant dietician, and we got one out of Yerington who came to us maybe once a week. We had to have a radiologist who came down much more often than that, but they also had an x-ray machine at the clinic. It was hard for us to compete with them because the doctors read their own x-rays over there. At our hospital we had to pay a radiologist. The lab over there could do things that we had to have a pathologist.

SWAN:  Because of state regulations. That's interesting.

WHOMES: So we had a lot of consultants. It's good. In the beginning we were just kind of floating by the seat of our pants, but eventually we became much more organized as far as medical staff was concerned.

SWAN:  How did you recruit your consulting staff?

WHOMES: They were very kind. We would call, and they seemed anxious to help us. We had Dr. Herz for orthopedics

SWAN:  Would they come down to Fallon?

WHOMES: They came down to Fallon twice a year, and then if we had a problem or something like that. Radiology and pathology came frequently. The others were kind of courtesy type that came down to go over our problems with us. In order to get accreditation you had to have them, and I think we were accredited the first time in the early sixties. We were accredited by the Joint Commission.

SWAN:  That was a big undertaking.

WHOMES: Yes, it was, but this is when you have to have all this stuff in writing--procedure manuals and stuff. That's another thing. I had a nurse spend quite a bit of her time writing, the two of us writing manuals. It's interesting that I went back when Ida Armas was still there--I was in the hospital once--and they were still using the same procedure manuals which was kind of nice to know.

SWAN:  Oh, you mean after you had left in 1971. Well, goody That's a huge job to write those manuals.

WHOMES: Yes, it is, and then getting them typed up and all of this sort of thing. But those are all requirements of the Joint Commission [on Hospital Accreditation]. There have to be standards for every department.

SWAN:  And you were there at the ground floor developing all that.

WHOMES: Yes, we all were here in Nevada. We were just such a naive bunch of people that worked well together.

SWAN:  And got it done.

WHOMES: It's very sad that four of that original group died since the new year.

SWAN:  The hospital administrators?

WHOMES: Um-hum. Four of them. Well, I guess they were all old enough. Merlin° who helped me out a lot from Hawthorne now lives in Texas, and we have called each other on the phone a lot this past year because of all of our friends dying.

SWAN:  You'd kept in touch with those people.

WHOMES: Yes, we'd kept in touch. We'd been friends all this time. We were all nurses, so that we were in the nurses' association plus.

SWAN:  Plus hospital administrators plus everything else.

WHOMES: Yes.

SWAN: Where did she come from? I know that you were the hospital administrator so to speak before you went to Santa Monica and then to Panama.

WHOMES: Yes, true. Laura Del Merlino came from Texas, but her first job was in Tonopah, and that's how she became a Mer1ino.

SWAN:  So, she was another adventurous one.

WHOMES: Yes. Then that dear Mildred Seebus in Lovelock, she came with a girlfriend from Massachusetts or upstate New York, anyway from back east, and they just came west just to explore and decided to stop in Lovelock. They worked for a while, and Mildred married Mr. Seebus and stayed. Clara grew up in Reno and worked at Washoe Medical Center in the operating room, and then this job came up in Yerington. She was probably the most efficient, on-top-of-it type of person in the group. They were all good, but in such different ways. Clara was really on top of it. Sister Seraphine left St. Mary's [Hospital] and Sister Dominque took over. Sister Dominque is the one who hired me then at St. Mary's.

SWAN:  After you left [Fallon] in January, 1971, right?

WHOMES: Yes, and I didn't get re-employed until June. I had a lot of time to look for another job.

SWAN:  You were maybe taking a little rest after all you'd been through.

WHOMES: That, too, but the opportunities in Fallon weren't all that great.

SWAN:  When you stopped at the hospital, you thought of staying on in Fallon?

WHOMES: See I hadn't planned leaving, and I did it so abruptly that it took a while to figure out what I'd done.

SWAN:  Do you want to go into your relations with the board over the years?

WHOMES: Oh, I think, generally speaking, that when I look back on it, I think I had a marvelous relationship with the board. The first board a couple of those board members were friends of Dr. Wray's. Pete Cushman was a friend of Dr. Wray's and [Art] Challstrom, I think was his name. I got along just fine with him. They guided me along, especially Ernie Maupin and Lee Cooper as far as finances are concerned and keeping track of stuff. Then, at that time, how did we do this? I don’t know…we eventually became financially self-supporting, and the county paid us for the county patients, and then we managed all the money. We became more self-sufficient and relied on the county less and less as time went by where they really paid for the services we gave the county and otherwise. They didn't allocate a certain amount to us each year. I don't remember when that happened, but the board was just great with me. What happened when I quit was that two new board members had just come on the board. One of them was Maurice Hanifan and one was [Jim] Smitten and Dick Lattin had just gone off. He was a marvelous board member and so was Howard Winder.

SWAN:  Was it Harold Weyant that had just come on?

WHOMES: No.

SWAN:  No, he'd been on a long time.

WHOMES: But, anyway, these two members just came on, and I believe Chris [Palludan] was still on, and I don't remember who the other two were. I had terminated this gal who worked in medical records that morning, and I went to an auxiliary meeting and I came back, and she'd been re-instated by the board in the meantime without ever talking to me.

SWAN:  That must have been a shock.

WHOMES: Yeah, so I just decided to quit.

SWAN:  You were really fed up.

WHOMES: Well, I think maybe I was ready to quit anyway. After twenty-two years of hiring, and I bet I maybe fired two people prior to that, I don't think you should do that without talking to me. You just can't work under those circumstances.

SWAN:  So, you resigned.

WHOMES: Yes, but my philosophy is that things that you think are bad at the time, when you look back on them, were probably a blessing in disguise. It's hard to think that in some situations.

SWAN:  Right.

WHOMES: Maybe it's a Pollyanna view, but I believe it's true that it was very good for my family.

SWAN:  You moved to Reno.

WHOMES: I had gone to a hospital meeting in Las Vegas because all the members insisted it would be so good for my morale. Well, it wasn't because I got down there . .

SWAN:  Oh, you mean after you had resigned?

WHOMES: Yes. I resigned in January, and this was April, and they all insisted, "Come on down. It'll be good for you. Nee, nee, nee." Well, I got down there, and all I did was cry. Oh, it was awful. Anyway, I wouldn't come out of my room. I was a mess! So on the way back on the plane, Sister Dominque said would I consider working as the operating room supervisor at St. Mary's, and I said,"Yes" [laughing] Guess she felt sorry for me. That's how I went there.

SWAN:  [laughing] Oh!

WHOMES: I went there in June. The operating room supervisor was retiring, and so I took her place. Again, I didn't know much about operating room. Well, you know, Fallon, but, my goodness, you ought to see what they were doing up there. And a whole group of new doctors.

SWAN:  That was quite a challenge.

WHOMES: Seventy people on the staff, and I sat there and said, “I’ll never learn their names," when I saw that list of the employees.

SWAN:  You mean seventy people just in the operating area?

WHOMES: Counting housekeepers, the laundry people. You know, down there folding laundry for us. Aides, RNs, techs, orderlies.

SWAN:  My gosh.

WHOMES: Recovery room I had, too.

SWAN:  My heavens.

WHOMES: That's what I thought.

SWAN:  You jumped right in. [laughing]

WHOMES: I got challenged by staff…

SWAN: Oh because you were not a…

WHOMES: Oh yeah, because I was not an operating room nurse so I had to let them know that my skills were elsewhere. I wasn't quite sure where in the hell that was.

SWAN:  [laughing] Well, in administration, you were used to, but still.

WHOMES: I know, but, anyway, I convinced them that I knew what I was doing and I didn't, but it worked out fine.

SWAN:  How long did you stay?

WHOMES: Eight years. At first I was under nursing, then they put me under administration. There were three administrators of the hospital. One main guy and two guys under him, so I was under one of these. That was a delightful situation. It really was. I was under that for quite a long period of time. Then they had a building program going on, and this Tuohy that was my boss was in charge of the building program so he could no longer do any of the day-to-day hospital stuff so they put me under nursing. I remember that he took me out to lunch to tell me this.

SWAN:  [laughing] He took you out to lunch. That's traditional.

WHOMES: And I said I won't be there very long. I know that we're not going to get along because she resented me because I wasn't under nursing.

SWAN:  Oh, dear. You had been under administration all that time.

WHOMES: And I knew it wasn't going to go well, and it didn't, so after eight years I quit. But that turned out well too. Interesting, she had been a nun.

SWAN:  This nursing supervisor?

WHOMES: Yes. Director of nursing. She had been a nun and then married a Jewish fellow.

SWAN:  Oh, my goodness.

WHOMES: And we had to go to her house for parties and stuff at Christmas. She had Hanukkah and Christmas on her fireplace and stuff. Elite, isn't it, for a nun? That had nothing to do with it. She could be a very charming person, was a very good leader. At meetings she could pull all the facts together and restate them so you could understand what was going on. She had a lot of skills. She really did. But… See, I'm pretty stubborn, and I'd been a boss too long. I guess I just don't take direction too well.

SWAN:  [laughing] That's why you . .

WHOMES: We locked horns a lot. Oh, dear. The chemistry just wasn't right.

SWAN:  You felt that that was going to happen, and it did.

WHOMES: I knew it was going to happen.

SWAN:  That's too bad they decided to do that.

WHOMES: But, isn't it funny, Lisa and I were both unemployed at the same time. Lisa had just quit college.

SWAN:  Your daughter?

WHOMES: My daughter, so we were unemployed so we took a trip. I didn't worry too much about getting a job, but then I decided I'd try. Then, by golly, if somebody didn't ask me if I'd like to be assistant director of nursing at Reno Convalescent Center, and so that's what I did. That's right across the street from Washoe, kind of in that area. So, I went there, and I must say that that was the most rewarding nursing experience of my career.

SWAN:  Really! That's wonderful!

WHOMES: You really have a hands-on nursing experience.

SWAN:  I bet you were wonderful.

WHOMES: Well, I enjoyed it. I really enjoyed it.

SWAN:  Yeah.

WHOMES: There's a lot of people worked there, too.

SWAN:  How big a facility was it?

WHOMES: One hundred nineteen patients.

SWAN:  Oh, that's a lot.

WHOMES: I don't think they get as much care as they need because it's controlled so by some outfit in Seattle.

SWAN:  They're always worrying about . .

WHOMES: [Each patient was allowed] two point three hours of nursing care for twenty-four hours.

SWAN:  Really. It should be more than that. How did they figure that? Oh, they just divide the number of patients by the number of staff?

WHOMES: Assigning ten patients to a nurse, that kind of a thing. You can't do that with any efficiency. One time we were short an aide, and one of the other gals in in-service or something and I came in to do her work. The two of us couldn't do it. We just were exhausted. We absolutely couldn't do it, and we were giggling and everything. Trying to get these . . .

SWAN:  People are only humanly capable of doing so much.

WHOMES: There were some aides there that were so good. One of them's name was Dolly. I never saw anything like it. She could do more work, and she loved her patients and her patients loved her. There were some that were so skilled at it. But I wasn't one of them. Oh, dear. Most of the RNs weren't. Some of the aides could just do rings around us, but it was a very rewarding time, but that's where I retired from. The administrator is retired now, too, and she called me two months ago and came over here and had lunch. I hadn't seen her since 1984. When I retired.

SWAN:  You retired in 1984, so your nursing went…you graduated in?

WHOMES: 1940.

SWAN:  So, forty-four years.

WHOMES: That's right.

SWAN:  They had a good investment when they trained you. [laughing]

WHOMES: [laughing] I parlayed a very meager education into a lot, actually.

SWAN:  Think how medicine has changed in all that time. You went along with it.

WHOMES: When I went into nursing's training we didn't have any antibiotics at all. I just wonder how--patients stayed in the hospital forever and ever.

SWAN:  They certainly did, didn't they?

 

SWAN: On behalf of Churchill County Museum Oral History Program I thank you Willetta Whomes for giving your oral history. You have had a fascinating life and career in Nevada and I thank you for sharing it. 

Janet Swan

Willetta Whomes

Reno, Nevada,