Tuesday, March 8, 2022, is International Women's Day. im4u.world supports the equality of all genders throughout the world. This month's blog story pays tribute to the women that have given so much to all of us and made us stronger as a result. For more information on International Women's Day, please visit: https://www.internationalwomensday.com/
There were few career choices for women born in early 20th century America. You could be a teacher or a nurse. There were 2-year programs for training each profession, making it faster and less expensive than college degree programs.
For my mother, who was born in 1911 in a small town in Colorado, those programs provided the best options for women determined to be independent. The programs were a lifeline for me, the 4th oldest in a family of 13 children.
My mother decided to become a nurse. With no experience, either traveling or living in a city, she went off across the state to Denver for two years of nurses training. When she finished her training, she ventured six hundred miles further afield to Idaho Falls, Idaho. This farming community was entirely new for her. It was the Great Depression of the 1930s, so she went where she could get a job. She would often talk of her time there, sharing the stories of her experiences. Many stories involved her as a newly-minted nurse (a woman) trying to convince local doctors (men) to use the newer procedures she had learned in school.
One day a young man with a severe arm injury that became severely infected was brought to the hospital by his brother. Doctors believed they could not save his life because he had lost so much blood. My mother suggested doing a direct blood transfusion from his brother to the patient, a procedure the doctors had never seen before, but she had. She believed the patient would die without the transfusion. Finally, the doctors gave the go-ahead, and Mother performed the transfusion. The young man lived.
She later moved to a tiny town high in Colorado's San Juan mountains to work in the miners' hospital owned by the local doctor. There she met my father, and they raised my siblings and me. She was one of a small number of nurses in town, so she continued to work at the hospital when needed.
My younger sister, Dee, had a brain injury at birth and was developmentally disabled. There were no programs or resources during her early years, so it fell to my mother to find activities for her.
My father died in the spring when my brother and I were both seniors in high school. My mother had many hard decisions, including caring for her children.
My mother came from a large family, nine girls and four boys. A large family can be a robust support system for each other. Remarkably, five of the nine girls received post-secondary education. Each of those five girls went further, and three became teachers and the other two nurses.
The teachers got jobs teaching all grades in small towns. Salaries were very far below what was necessary to sustain a family. Women were able to keep their jobs only if no men applied. So my aunts taught in tiny, tiny towns and lived independent lives. They also became an integral part of my life, spending summers and holidays at our house.
Aunt Virginia taught in the tiny town of Colbran, Colorado, for years. With the post-war baby boom, it became clear that the public education system would collapse without women teachers, so barriers began to come down. That meant Aunt Virginia had an opportunity to move to Grand Junction (a much larger town). She taught high school English and then moved up to the local community college, where she did the same for many years.
Aunt Barbara also taught in the small towns, but she chose to join the Army in World War II, rising to the rank of Captain. This experience took her all over the United States, from Fort Oglethorpe in Georgia to Fort Lewis in Washington State. Like many men, she used the GI Bill to finance a return to college to acquire both a bachelor's and a master's degree in education. She married another veteran whom she met at college, and they taught in several schools in California.
Aunt Betty, the other nurse, followed my mother's path of independence, but even bolder. She applied and was admitted to the University of Cincinnati School of Nursing when nobody in her family had been "east." After getting her degree, Aunt Betty too joined the Army in World War II and rose to the rank of Lieutenant. After the war, she worked in several places. Eventually, Aunt Betty settled in Chicago, becoming the Economic Security Director for the Illinois Nurses Association. In the 1950s, she led nurses in Cook County in the first nurses' strike against Cook County Hospital.
These strong and determined women were part of my mother's support system. She called on it at various times in her life yet maintained her independence.
My brother and I were college-bound; he to Colorado School of Mines in Golden and me to Colorado College of Education in Greeley. My brother and I went off to college. We each had a Colorado Resident scholarship which paid some costs, but aunts and uncles chipped in so that we were able to go.
Faced with financial uncertainty, my mother made a hard decision to relocate to Chicago with my sister, Dee. They lived with Aunt Betty, found a day program for Dee, and Mother got a nursing position at a local hospital. At the end of my first year of college, I joined them. When my mother moved out of state, I lost my school scholarship in Colorado because she was no longer a resident.
Life was changing for all of us. What would I do? What did my mother teach me?
Written by Dixie Swenson.
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Join us next week for Part 2 of I Am Because of the Women Who Came Before Me.
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