UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

Interview #219
BLAKE, FLORENCE G.

BLAKE, Florence G. (1907-1983)
Professor of Nursing; Director of School of Nursing Graduate Program
At UW: 1963-1970

Interviewed: 1975	
Interviewer: Signe Cooper
Length: 1 hour

[See Index for Key Words]

SC:	This is an oral history of Florence Blake, well-known pediatric nurse and first director of the graduate program of the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Nursing.  The interview was done on August 14, 1975 by Signe Cooper.  
00:00:30
Let's begin, Florence, with some information about you.  Would you tell me about date and place of your birth?
FB:	I was born in Stevens Point Wisconsin November 30, 1907.  
SC:	And will you give me your parents' name?
FB:	James and Thema Dunlat Blake.
SC:	Okay, tell me a little bit about your education, including the School of Nursing in which you were enrolled.
FB:	I enrolled at Michael Reese Hospital School of Nursing in 1925 at age 17 and graduated in 1928.  As a part of that I had a semester summer School at University of Chicago which started me out in graduate education.  Then I worked for a year and then I went to Teacher's College and went there that year, you get the date, and then again in 1933 and 34 to finish work for the B.S. degree in teaching of nursing.  Then I went to Merrill Palmer School at University of Michigan and got my master's degree there and had an extra semester of public health nursing at the University of Michigan.  Then that was combined with Merrill Palmer School in Detroit.  Did I say that?  Then I took some special experiences at Belleview Hospital in New York in pediatric nursing and in Boston Children's Hospital and then I went to Institute of Psychoanalysis in Chicago for three years as I worked at the University of Chicago and got a diploma in psychoanalytic child care.  You'll have to look all those dates. 
SC:	Very good.  
00:02:47
	Okay, let's go back to your first employment.  What was your first job in nursing?
FB:	My first job in nursing was a head nurse in a private pavilion for five or six months and then I was assistant instructor in nursing arts - all of this at Michael Reese's Hospital and had a semester of teaching nursing arts and then I went to school.
SC:	I see, okay.  
00:03:15
	Tell me a little bit about why you went into nursing.
FB:	Well because I had always thought about nursing and played at it and was in a family that was interested in nursing.  My father was a minister.  He used to visit in the hospital and I used to often go with him and I was terribly interested.  Then my uncle was one of the founders of the Marshfield Clinic - a surgeon and I heard medicine and nursing and both my father and my uncle thought nursing was the best preparation a woman could possibly have and I was terribly interested in it.  I can remember when my father had an operation and was ill and my fantasy is is that I helped to take care of him and I don't know whether this is true or not, but I always thought of nursing and played at it all through high school. 
00:04:20
	And really the University of Wisconsin was the place I longed most to go.  But my uncle being a surgeon and trained in Toronto, no Montreal thought I should go someplace where I'd get that clinical experience and he thought Cook County or Michael Reese or St. Luke’s Presbyterian was the place to go.
SC:	And the University program was brand new?
FB:	The University program was brand new.  He just didn't think there'd be enough clinical work comparison to University- or any of the hospitals in Chicago.  He just thought clinical experience was the most important think on earth and, of course, I grew up thinking that too working.  And I wanted to work with patients.  I wanted to do nursing, bedside nursing really.  
00:05:22
SC:	Okay, let's talk a little bit about some of your other kinds of nursing employment.  Were there any really outstanding experiences that you've had in nursing or are you going to tell me they were all outstanding?
FB:	Oh, just exactly what I'm going to tell you because they were. They really were. I looked back on them as all marvelous experience with the exception of one. And yet I expect that contributed vastly at looking at nursing more carefully, but University of Michigan was just separating education and supervision and I was the first person to have education without supervision and always had it combined before. And being just a teacher was very problematic for the head nurses as well as for me and I didn't understand what the problem was.  I did now as I look back. It was a real conflict.  We both were terribly deprived of the pleasures that we've had in different jobs.  You see the head nurses had been very important in education.  I took it all out of their hands instead of using them to the fullest capacity.  But I didn't understand the role nor what was going on in relationships and it was miserable and I left there within a half hour after I finished the job.  I stayed only a year. 
00:07:04
Then went to Yale and was supervisor of the pediatric unit plus the instructor and then an assistant professor and the combination restored or something, and this is what Yale wanted and Yale was a perfectly marvelous experience.
SC:	Now when you were at Yale this was the time at which they were taking - was it the time when they were taking college graduates and so that you really had a very well prepared, basically well-prepared student who came into that program which led to the Master's in Nursing, right?
FB:	Right.
SC:	And how long were you at Yale?
FB:	Four years.
SC:	Four years.
FB:	And simply loved it. We had some of our students had PhD’s and, of course, they came in with very different kinds of backgrounds but the students were simply phenomenal and, of course, that was during the war period.  And the cooperation between medicine and nursing was absolutely magnificent and social work so that the teaching, the students were so vitally interested in nursing and loved the clinical practice and the learning that went with it, so that I'd almost say that and Peking was where I got the greatest satisfaction.  I'm not sure I didn't contribute more in those places.
SC:	Because of your satisfaction--
FB:	Because of my satisfaction and also because I was had administrative authority and I was working with the staff nurses as well as the students and the staff nurses were the model. 
SC:	That's an interesting observation.  I've been doing some reading about the Yale program and those experiments - that experiment, the Yale Program and the Western Reserve Program and as one looks at those programs it's obvious that they were able to do certain things because really, because they were endowed programs.  And one looks at the whole picture of nursing and thinks that could have set a pattern for nursing education but because of the economics, perhaps among other things, they really did the idea although it's been modified in other places, it wasn't really, well it didn't catch on and I often think and I could speculate with you a little bit.  Do you think it might still be the model for nursing education in the future or somewhat similar to that.  In other words, the people who come into nursing programs really come with a good solid educational background before they begin the nursing.
FB:	That's what I was predicting - that they're my hunch is that before too long a bachelor's degree will be required for admission and I predict and I hope really that service in education will move closer together because I think they both got so much to contribute to the other.  Now at Yale the students carried great service loads.  We had to during the war.  We just didn't have the people.  And they loved this - the practice.  They were responsible and were learning so much as a consequence of doing and all of us who were in supervisory and education jobs worked very closely in the units.
SC:	I think that's an interesting point and an interesting observation.  
00:11:04
Anything else about your experience at Yale?
FB:	Well the cooperation was phenomenal and, of course, we had the Gesell Clinic across the street and I instituted there a program for children that it provided activities that were more conducive to normal growth and development.  I had taken nursery School teaching before I went to Yale.  I had taken nursery School teaching at Merrill Palmer School and at TC and so I instituted programs where the children had play periods and they ate together at the table.  The students participated as teachers - ate with them and, of course, we had this Gazelle Clinic across the street where the students observed and had conferences.  Then they came on to the ward and they provided the activity programs under supervision which not only meant wonderful learning for students but it provided a different kind of nursing care for children and nursing carried this load and when I left they got two nursery School teachers to run it.  And I think probably that was the start - nursery School child development people coming into hospitals and doing these kinds of things but it was a marvelous two-week experience for the students where they were really helping children to play and helping them to learn to feed themselves and to move about and listen to stories and play at games and that sort of thing and it made for a different atmosphere on the wards and the head nurses complained bitterly when we began because I don't think they understood what the purpose of it was. But before long they were participating and having staff nurses participate and complaining during the months of vacation when we didn't have students due to be play teachers so that... 
00:13:30
And the cooperation I got at Yale at doing things - well it was very similar to here.  The cooperation here was magnificent really and the cooperation here couldn't have wished for any better and that was from not only in nursing and medicine but really in social service and child development people were just and the people in the community agencies and service, the service people were absolutely phenomenal, which was in striking contrast to some of my experiences in Chicago.  
00:14:13
SC:	Okay, now did you go to Peking from Yale?
FB:	I went to Peking before Yale.
SC:	Before Yale?
FB:	And had been instructor and supervisor of pediatric nursing there.
SC:	Now that was an arrangement with Yale, was it not?
FB:	No.  You're thinking of Yale and China.  I was not at Yale in China
SC:	Oh, you were not.
FB:	No. I was in the Peking Medical Union College under the China Medical Board of the Rockefeller Foundation.  That was very different and that was a phenomenal School of nursing.
SC:	Tell me a little bit about that.
FB:	Those students were college students.  That was in 1936 to 39 and those girls that had two years of college and graduated with an RN and BS and they were brilliant students.  Marvelous.  The Chinese loved to learn and again the cooperation between medicine and nursing was just great, really and I think again it was because I was in a supervisory role you see and they were dependent upon me and the staff was dependent upon me for recognition and teaching, you see.  And when we were meticulous in carrying out orders, medical orders, and the children were acutely ill, many of them were, and so the nursing, the physical nursing care was very meticulous and you know detailed.  And we were very careful in carrying out doctor's order. Well this made them look at us in a different way, you see and then they began to see that nursing contributed something over and beyond the doctor's order and they worked to cooperate with us.
SC:	Were you the only American in that setting?
FB:	In pediatrics.
SC:	In pediatrics.  But there were others in the--
FB:	There were many others.
SC:	I see.
FB:	Yeah there was an American in practically every other, not all, but at heads and we were over there to train Chinese to take over these supervising teaching role.
SC:	Do you know what has happened in the intervening years there?  Is the program still in existence?
FB:	No, but there's part of it in Taiwan.  There's an awful lot of graduates come from Peking Medical School of Nursing and so those girls had degrees and many of them Master's and the person I trained got a Ph.D. here but she is in Communist China.  I don't know the details of it but she was a phenomenal person and she came over here twice and got her Ph.D. at Yale and then she married and became a Communist and went to Communist China and I heard a couple from her via England.  She wanted me to send her books. She'd left money.  I had no idea what she'd left the money for but then I ordered books for her in England when I shipped to her in China and I really don't know - the Chinese nurses have you know kind of looked on, the Taiwan nurses looked down at the fact that she had become a Communist and so forth.  But I would think that they have patterned the Schools in Taiwan after this School.  It was a great School.  There's no doubt about it.  It became Gertrude Hodgeman was the Dean and she really pushed to get a baccalaureate program and she also worked very hard to get as many of her Chinese faculty to America for Master's degrees.
SC:	Very interesting.  
00:18:33
Now, after you left Yale, what was your next experience?
FB:	University of Chicago for thirteen years.
SC:	Thirteen years.  Were you at the University of Chicago when that program closed?
FB:	Yes, yes.
SC:	And what year was that?
FB:	That was, oh gosh, I'd have to look it up.  Do you need it because I could get it - curriculum vite.  What was I going to say now?
SC:	We were talking about the University of Chicago.
FB:	Oh, if I went from Yale and I was there when it closed and I stayed on for another year with Rockefeller money and studied children with open heart surgery.
SC:	Oh I see.
FB:	And I had finished that when Dean Bunge called me to come to Wisconsin.  I was had finished writing - I wrote for a year and a half and did infant welfare in there to keep me from going crazy while I was writing so much.  
SC:	Yes.
FB:	That's what I was doing. I was looking at a million jobs at that point in time.
00:19:46
SC:	Well what influenced your decision then to come to Madison?
FB:	Well I jotted those down too.  I would say one of the biggest ones, of course, was Dean Bunge and I had always admired her.  And I had always been interested in the University of Wisconsin.  You know I just thought Madison.  I came down here for a journalism convention from high School and was simply thrilled with it and I was thrilled when she asked me to look at it.  Probably my long time interest in Wisconsin being my native habitat you see but also besides Dean Bunge was the fact that al the pediatricians were congregated to talk to me when I came down for interviews and no place else did that happen. 
SC:	Isn't that interesting.
FB:	I'd never, that happened and I'd gone devout.  I don't know how many universities at that point being interviewed for jobs.  I saw pediatricians but one at a time and that was arranged by the Deans of the School of Nursing, but I think the pediatricians here wanted a graduate program in pediatrics very badly and they were assembled.  They took time to tell me what their research was, what their interests were and gave me full ideas they would participate and support me in every way possible.  And I've never had such beautiful participation.
SC:	So you really saw this as an opportunity really to put some of your ideas into action.
FB:	Yeah, yeah. I did and I thought I met Margaret DeRose and I had an idea that she was doing an awfully good job because I used to meet the students at hospital from here you see.  And I was always impressed with them.  And they'd told me about Margaret DeRose and so boy, and I thought that there was lots of clinical material.  I didn't realize how many students there were and how the big the teams were which was one problem but I felt there were facilities and I felt the need for graduate education and pediatric nursing in the Midwest was great.  There was no program in Illinois. There was no program in Western Reserve Iowa.  You see none of these places.
SC:	So there was obviously a need.  Did you see it as a real challenge because it would be the first graduate program at the University?  Did you see this you know as a kind of a challenge that you liked?
FB:	Yes at the beginning but it got so difficult you know.  It was the administration of it plus more and more students and a two-year program was in coming in first year and second year got terribly heavy and I wasn't having all the clinical experience. I just couldn't keep up you see.  I couldn't keep up.  And I felt very pressured at the end. You know the School was getting bigger and bigger and the pediatrics, but I had no idea that I'd be directing the, a program when I came.
SC:	Oh I see.
FB:	I really didn't know what that entailed.  You know I had thought of it when I said yes.  My idea was that it would be like in Chicago and really in Chicago I was director of the clinical courses in pediatric nursing.  I wasn't really the director of the program.  They're different.  
SC:	I hear what you're saying.  The really serious problems or challenges or whatever were more of an administrative nature.
FB:	Yes, it was so the administrative job in and of itself would have been a full-time job.  Yes.  Really and you see I am so clinical and needed so much to teach and to make teaching alive and to keep learning and doing my kind of research and really it's out of the clinical experiences with students that I got my motivation for learning - my motivation for teaching and as this got less and less it was less satisfying.
00:24:54
SC:	Well let's go back a little bit to the establishment of the program.  In addition to these administrative elements that you've talked about, were there other problems or obstacles or particular, what is the word, challenges that you had?
FB:	Well I would say that there was much more satisfaction than problems.  Actually there were fewer problems here than at University of Chicago.  You see I was the first one at University of Chicago with graduate students for the University of Chicago they didn't have any baccalaureate students and ours was the first students going in there.  The cooperation and the wish of people - I didn't feel we got bought in any kind of way.  In Chicago we were had so many problems and the service people accepting us and I think 99% of it was me because I was unsure in establishing a graduate program. I didn't know what graduate education was. I didn't know what the content was.  So that and I just barged in as I was learning.
SC:	Well I think the fact that there were not undergraduate students made a great difference.
FB:	Oh, you see the head nurse and staff nurses had had no experience with students and I thought they should be thrilled to death that those graduate students come in and work with families and they weren't.  This was a disruption.  Saw them as a nuisance and, of course, that broke my heart whereas at Yale and Peking they loved the students.  Of course they were participating. But anyway, I've talked over a lot of this with Mrs. Cicere at in California who's doing a book on this same and had spent much more time in that kind of thing with her you know in terms of career. So-- 
SC:	Very good.  Okay, let's continue, yea, was there other kinds of obstacles or problems or 
FB:	Challenge.  
SC:	They were all a challenge.
FB:	Terrific challenge although it created some problems in that the patients were so different here than in Chicago or Yale.  These were handicapped children long term and so many of the families had complex problems where at Chicago and Yale so many of the patients were short-term acutely ill.  And when you have students working with long-term illness, with a long time in the hospital and the students you see followed these patients all the time they were in their graduate program that they met more problems in nursing and this required much more supervisory help and more and a different kind - that this was a terrific challenge - marvelous challenge, but it also was very draining and very hard and the students we had here were younger, less experience than I had had in Chicago.  So I'd say in caring all these many responsibilities that's - there was just so darn much to learn when I got here in terms of developing the program.  First, should there be a program
SC:	Right.  As I recall this was a period of maybe a year, just one year--
FB:	Nine months.
SC:	--Nine months to come up with this decision about should there be a program and if there is a program how do we go about establishing it and if we establish it how do we select students so you did all this in this nine- month period of time.  
FB:	Yea, had all the programs set up and the course outline for nursing and all the planning with the people to teach in the fall.  You see this was getting the students in and getting it planned with learning how you operate this and the Graduate School was something.
SC:	Right, because this was the first program right.  Okay, what persons were most helpful to you in this complex process?
FB:	Well I would say Dean Bunge.  No doubt about it.  And the Chief of Pediatrics. I forgotten what his name was.  
SC:	That was Dr. Smith?
FB:	That's it.  Dr. Nathan Smith was very helpful and then Lobik and Mark Hanson - couldn't have gotten more wonderful people to work with but Dean Bunge was a tremendous help.  He always felt as though she would support you and so forth.  Then I think people in nursing service were tremendous and the personnel in the community agencies like in public health over here and Ms. Doll over in the University Lab School.  Of course that work was healthy children - child development was so important and they were simply superb in planning.  
00:31:11	End of Tape 1, Side 1
Tape 1, Side 2
00:31:15
SC:	Bunge, you've mentioned what a supportive person she was.  Are there some other kinds of things, other kinds of impressions?
FB:	Well I think she was so intent on building up this School.  Didn't you feel...
SC:	Yes.
FB:	Oh I think she had total commitment--
SC:	Yes.
FB:	--to building up not only the baccalaureate program but graduate programs as well.  I think she was a very supportive person, exceeding.  I think she was a very fine wonderful woman.  I had great admiration for her.  I there were two things that irked me terribly and that was she was slow at making decisions and also her pressure on research - that constant, constant pressure.  That was the most difficult thing for me to handle of all.  
SC:	She had a real commitment to research.
FB:	Yeah.
SC:	And I suppose because of this and as you read through her history of having been involved in research I suppose it was really her point of view that unless we really got more involved in research we wouldn't have a graduate program worthy of the name.
FB:	Yes.
SC:	And I have a feeling that was part of the--
FB:	She's right
SC:	From your point of view there was so many other things to do that you felt this was an undue pressure.
FB:	I felt there was so much - it wasn't just me. 
SC:	Right.
FB:	Come to me personally.  It was in the faculty and it irked so many people and I felt that the energy it took for the faculty to handle their feelings about this - maybe I was projecting my own onto theirs - that this really deterred writing rather than fostered it and I couldn't have any more carried research from the first place I didn't have the tools for it, although I think I was doing an empirical kind of research all the time.  I was learning from the patients, and reading and testing this kind of stuff constantly.  I never accepted a thing out of a book without seeing it and seeing that it worked in nursing.  But that I just thought I couldn't stand.  We heard it so much.  Did you never react to that?
SC:	Yes I know what you're saying because I did react in the same way.  And I guess this raises, you're raising some interesting kinds of questions in regard to how do you really encourage, we know what her motivation was.  But it raises some questions in how do you really encourage people to do this and I guess my feeling is that one does need to have the time and financial support and these kinds of things that until we're talking about some kind of support that you cannot, you can only push people so far.
FB:	Right.
SC:	And I do know what you're saying and I do think that that is true.  I think it didn't make in me the wish to do research.
FB:	Yes, it did the opposite.
SC:	The opposite. 
FB:	If I had had that at Yale or at Chicago I'd just really wonder whether I'd have done any writing because it stirred me up and the resistance of it.  And also the interesting thing was the people that had the tools to do research weren't really doing it.  And the pressure on us who hadn't the tools.  If I had my life to do over again I'd take research.  No doubt about it and I think research is terribly important but there have to be the time and I think there has to be people who want to do this and they're skilled in this.  I don't honestly wonder, think everybody should have to do this.
SC:	No, I think that's true.  I also wonder if we don't need to take a look at what constitutes research in nursing, particularly as it relates to patient care.
FB:	Right
SC:	We attempt to look at other people's research and have said, well nursing ought to model after that kind of research, but maybe we ought to take another view, a broader view of what kind of research do we really need that will make an impact on patient care.
FB:	Absolutely.
SC:	We try so hard to be respectable perhaps.
FB:	But we need help in knowing how to do this.  What I think we need is clinical research.
SC:	Right, there's no doubt about it.
FB:	And this is what I do.  In my life I take research methodologies all I could get, but also worked with a person like Leventhal.  You see that really is doing clinical stuff because most of these research, professors of research wouldn't know how to do clinical research.  You really got to get in and work with somebody who's doing that kind of thing like taking pictures but I think clinical research is desperately needed.  There's no doubt.  We've got to upgrade nursing and we don't know whether what we're doing is improving or not.
SC:	Right, right.  This is a little aside, but I saw fairly recently some films of mothers and newborn babies and somebody has come up with the idea that you can almost predict which children will be abused by whether or not the mother looks at the baby and this was a real interesting idea to me and I thought gee there's a lot more research of that nature that it could be carried on.  Somebody's got this idea and we really need to build on that because it seems to me you know one of the serious problems in our high-pressure age is this whole matter of child abuse and if this could be predicted and presented, you know wouldn't that be a great contribution.
FB:	Start right from the newborn nursery.  There must be something in the prenatal period that would tell us that this is going to be an abusing mother.
SC:	Right and if a trust relationship or something could be, it would be, to me it's a very exciting idea and you know as I say it doesn't fall into some of our traditional points of view of research.  Well let's go on.  
00:38:21
You've given a few impressions of Dean Bunge.  What about the kind of support you felt from the rest of the faculty of the School of Nursing.
FB:	Oh, I thought it was very good.  And they were very helpful in developing the curriculum.  I didn't find anybody who was bucking it.  At least I never, if they were I didn't know it.
SC:	Okay. 
00:38:46
Now into some of the information about the students.  Five students were admitted to the program the fall of ‘64.
FB:	Right.  One dropped out at the end of the year.
SC:	I see.  
FB:	She got married.
SC:	So four completed the program in June of 66. Okay, how were those first students elected and how did they find out about the program because that was one of your problems too?
FB:	Right, yea we had to get those all admitted before I left. Um, Caroline Erodine knew about the program from Martha Batelle.  You know Martha Batelle visited us that year and I really set up that program thinking she was going to come on the faculty, or that was Dean Bunge's and my dream you see because oh she could have been such a marvelous and gotten the nursing of embryology and genetics and that kind of thing, but she taught Caroline Erodine and so she told Caroline that a program was starting.  Katherine Slemar and Karen Cridden were Madisonians, graduates of the School and of course they heard about it here.  Marie Bramer had worked with a person who had been a student of mine at University of Chicago and she was really waiting for me to get established for another graduate program.
SC:	You didn't have more candidates than you wanted?
FB:	No we took all of - Miss Slicky grew up in Milwaukee, went to Vanderbilt, but she'd knew about it from book writing.
SC:	Okay and I'm sure you keep close tabs of this, of the graduates.  Can you tell me what they're doing?
FB:	Oh boy, I can tell you- you really want all that?  That's the finale of it.
SC:	Isn't that great?
FB:	Well, I'm not sure it's completely accurate but now I don't know how to do this.  How detailed do you want.
SC:	If you are willing to share this chart with me I would like that.
FB:	Sure and I'll give you this too but I'm not sure how accurate I am.
SC:	Oh well that's alright.  That will give me something to go on.  Why don't we, could you just make some general comments about the kind, the areas that they've gone into.
FB:	Everything imaginable.  There various.
SC:	I see, just everything.  Okay.
FB:	There are some that are clinical specialists plus doing consultation.  There are three studying for the PhD. at the moment.  Straight study.  There are another three that are teaching plus studying for the PhD.  There are two that are married doing nothing else but family raising that I know of.  They may be doing more.  There are three that are doing education and consultation services.  Nells, Kirby and Hopkins you know.  There are two teaching graduate education.  There are three teaching plus study.  There are five teaching baccalaureate level.  There are two in state consultation service, Mary Beckman and Janet Rudy is just going to be....There is Joan Faven is, I didn't know what to call her, community nursing.  She's registration or something like that.  There are three that are married and part-time public health nursing.  There is one that is a consultant in national organization in Health, Education and Welfare.  Two straight clinical specialists, as far as I know.  There's one that's assistant supervisor at service at Madison General.  There are two that are married and part-time teaching at the undergraduate level and there's one that's clinical specialist in teaching at the baccalaureate level.  Now these are just the people I knew, you see, I didn't go on with that.  But you’re welcome to that.
SC:	Fine, that will be useful.  Fine.  They certainly have gone into a wide range of things haven't they?
00:44:03
FB:	Oh, another, to go back to satisfaction.  A great, I didn't get to that yet.
SC:	Let's talk about that.  Surely what these students are doing must give you a great deal of 	satisfaction.
FB:	Oh I love to hear about that and I see an awful lot of them, one way or another.  Another great satisfaction at the University of Wisconsin was seeing the program grow, you see, because this is a two-year program and I felt this was a need after the short one at Chicago.  And developing the practicums was very satisfying.  You see every year we developed more and we developed those in terms of what the students wanted to be and I rather felt that the practicum where they could get their feet wet with an experienced person who was practicing a specific kind of role that she wanted to fulfill was a terribly important thing and this was one of the several ways that I felt the program here was superior to the ones we had in Chicago.  We didn't have practicums.  I think this program is much stronger, and because it had the Biologic Sciences in it.  When I was at Chicago I felt absolutely we needed more of the physiology/biological Sciences.
SC:	That was a one-year program?
FB:	That was nine months clinical.  It was five months altogether with the other courses we took.  Five quarters I mean.  So this was longer.  Oh, other satisfactions.  Well the clinical supervision of students was always a great satisfaction and especially with these long term chronically ill patients.  It's terrifically challenging.  Of course living in a University town, I love Madison.
00:46:21
SC:	OK.  Now, when did you retire?
FB:	When did I retire?  I wrote that down.  I have to look that up on this thing.  June 70.
SC:	OK and what are some of the things that you've done since then?
FB:	Well, Signe I'm awful busy.
SC:	Busier now than you were before?
FB:	Yeah.  I travelled you know.  Went to Spain and I felt getting away from that was very important in terms of the people who were carrying on not have the old person around.  I think this is very hard.  I've done quite a lot since graduation with former students and writing help them in editing things.  And so forth, either face to face or by mail and so forth I've done quite a lot of that.  Some consultation with Iowa prominently and St. Louis University and University of Wisconsin graduates and so forth.  I do quite a lot of volunteer activities.  Such as working at Bethel Shop.  I've worked in a daycare, summer daycare at camp one summer.  I've helped in the Bethel summer bible School with kids.  That was great.  I do a lot in the Madison Art Center shop in other kinds of ways and I work with the Homecrafters doing some of that, selling in the WISCONSIN Center and that kind of stuff.  I do some friendly visiting with the Department of Independent Living.  I'm having a wonderful experience with a 91 year old lady who lives all alone.  In her own home.  I got her to a doctor’s visit yesterday and I, you know, she could fall so easily.  But she's a wonderful person, School teacher and she taught me one day I was there how to use a computer.
SC:	Oh for heaven’s sake.
FB:	Then I visited quite a lot in nursing homes and convalescent stuff with people in Christ Presbyterian Church.  I think I'm doing this to get myself ready for aging.  I rather be working in nursery Schools really but I'm so afraid of getting respiratory infections from little kids.  I do a lot of hand work.  Working with drift wood, I took sewing and stitchery over at the place.  Then I go in the summer and the fall to the seashore.  I do a lot of entertaining.  I enjoy it very much.  Love to cook. I go to the Bethel Bible series trying to learn of my Good Woman’s College Week.  I volunteered with Nursing Christian Fellowship, went to one of their summers workshops which I learned a great deal from and Dr. Monsure I think is absolutely terrific.  I took his week’s course in the Intertestimental Period and went to his book and spaed all of that. I've gotten terribly interested in that kind of stuff.  And I'd say that's sort of it.
SC:	That's wonderful.  I think that you can make a lot of contributions to people on how to retire gracefully.
FB:	That's really one of my goals.  What's interesting is I really hope that I can help people to want to retire.  You know and not dread it.  Because it really is great.
SC:	I think that this is what you've identified that you're having a good time in your retirement and it's partly because of your involvement in so many things and you still keep on learning.  
00:50:44
Because you've made some special contributions to the American literature I've wondered if you did have any suggestions particularly for budding nurse authors.
FB:	Well, you want me to be real honest?
SC:	Sure.
FB:	I wouldn't again do a textbook.  Can I get you some more tea?
SC:	No.
FB:	I wouldn't do textbooks because it's an awful drain and the redoing and hanging over your head constantly is an awful drain really.  I would do monographs that never had to be revised.  And in that way you could do more, you know.
SC:	They would be more current.
FB:	Yeah, I think at the time I did the textbooks I think there was great need for this probably.  But, I think I would do again, get involved in clinical research and spend time writing.  I really love to write using case material and studying that and doing that cause I think it would keep you alive more and probably learn a lot revising too.
SC:	I know what you mean about the revision and the time.
FB:	I'll bet you do.
SC:	But I guess there's some things that is sort of implied in what you’re saying because it seems to me that in nursing, for awhile anyway, we're going to need the textbooks in the traditional sense.  Now maybe as teachers get more skilled and as we develop other kinds of materials, maybe that won't be so urgent.  But I guess what your comment gets me to thinking about, maybe we need to think of different ways of supporting those people who are interested in writing textbooks.  And I guess this is one of the problems we have in nursing is that too often this is something that people do on their own time and with their own efforts.  Seeing what you're saying is this is such a drain, that you would not do it over again, and yet you know this creates a certain amount of anxiety because if everybody felt that way we'd never have any textbooks and, so that also raises some kinds of questions.
FB:	I don't know whether I.  That book I wrote on my own I think was untimely, you know.  I think if it had been written ten years later probably, it would have...
SC:	This is the Nurses/Parent and the Childhood.
FB:	Yeah, that was ahead of time.  But you see I never did that over.  Actually, doing that over probably, in terms of, well, I don't know, I don't know.  But I just couldn't keep doing over too and carrying the load I was carrying.  Teaching was more important, really.
SC:	Right, and keep you current and so on.  OK we talked a little bit earlier about some predictions about...
FB:	I wanted to go back on that.  Ideas to budding people.  Get help in editing early.  Very early.  When I did that open heart surgery I had the help of an editor at the Children’s Bureau and I learned so much from her in those few days.  It was marvelous.  It was just a wonderful experience in learning.  Early you know could have saved you so much.
SC:	I remember some conversation I had with Miss Buline who at one time was talking she said that about writing a book.  And from my observations and some people I was talking to and some of the kinds of mistakes they've made, I think there's a need for something like that.  It's, as more nurses become interested, and hopefully they will become more interested in writing, it does seem that there are some shortcuts and that there are some things that anybody shouldn't have to learn by trial and error.
FB:	Right, right.
00:55:26
SC:	OK, well, what about the future, predictions for the future.
FB:	Well, I was thinking about that in the bathtub this morning.  I think nurses are going to work much more independently.  And they're going to determine their own roles and how to get prepared for those.  I think they're going to do much more in primary care.  I think they're going to do, my hunch would be that they're going to do an awful lot of geriatric nursing and I think this will be a real help to society.
SC:	Particularly the kind of thing that you were talking about earlier and that is how do you keep the older person in his own home for instance.  With just a little support this is possible and yet, our communities are not set up, and I see this as a real role for nurses.
FB:	Oh, it would be just terrific.  And also helping them with their chronic problem.  Because the doctors really don't have time and they're not interested to help them know and to teach them how to do for themselves.  And they would feel so much more worthwhile if they knew about their illness and they knew how to take care of themselves.  So, I think nurses could do a tremendous amount and I think we've got to work much more with young families, prenatally and I just think what I wrote in 1954 the need for nurses working in preventive mental health, especially with the expectant parents and the young families and anticipatory guidance my gosh primary care we're talking about that 20 years ago.
SC:	Right.
FB:	But it just didn't catch on.  Probably didn't have time.  We were so occupied with so many things.  I think there'll be much more care of people in their homes because I don't think they can afford the hospital and I don't think they should get in the hospital if they can keep out.  You know I think what Methodist is going to do over here is just great - absolutely great to be able to get some minimal nursing care while you're in your apartment and not have to be admitted because I don't like being in hospitals.  Nobody likes being in a retirement home or nursing.  I don't either.  I hope I die en route.  
00:58:15
One about establishing, how to establish a program - I thought quite a lot about that.
SC:	Oh, yes, alright.  Let's talk about that.
FB:	Now wait...   
SC:	That was a particular problem because it was the first program.
FB:	Right.  Well in the first place, now maybe I've talked about it in the first place there was so much to study when I came.  In the first place we had to answer is there a need for a graduate program here and what does the society, family in particular, need from pediatric nurse?  That was terribly important to think about. And then we had to see whether there were the facilities we needed to develop the program, so I was running around an awful lot looking.  And then I had to find out what the undergraduate program was like in pediatric nursing, particularly so I worked you know with students for awhile to see what a graduate program should build on and then we'd find out what the objectives, philosophy, what kind of a curriculum would meet them, and can we produce the requirements to meet the objectives.  So we had a graduate education committee.  Weren't you on that?  We did a lot of writing of objectives, didn't we and planning curriculum.  Then I had to find out if there was sufficient interest in the School of Nursing and the School of Medicine, Home Economics, and the Graduate School per se, in nursing service.  Really were they interested in this.  Then I had to develop relationships with faculty in the School of Nursing  - was pretty superficial because                Medicine, Home Economics, Social Service, Nursing Service and other service areas of the Medical Center in the community -  and around.  And to them I needed to interpret our goals, our philosophy and our need for help from them in implementing it.  And I had to find out what they thought society needed from nurses and how they saw pediatric nurses prepared. Right?
SC:	Right.
FB:	Then I had to establish relationships with the personnel and the administrative offices, the Graduate School - they were very helpful.  And we had to develop curriculums.  I don't know how many we did and then we took them to the faculty, remember? And got their suggestions and they were very helpful.  Then it had to be revised again.  Then remember when we got that consultant from the NLAN who came down there and made a suggestion and I was so mad I kicked cans all the way home.  You were with me.
SC:	Yes I was.  I remember that.
FB:	I was so mad.  Oh, I was so mad to have to and I knew they were waiting for the outlines you see and I came home just fuming but I couldn't stop.  I had to play with that thing and by 3:00 I had a new curriculum revised and the next morning Helen Bunge came up.  I think she knew how upset I was and she said: "Now listen here.  You don't have to do any of that.  You can do it just the way you want to."   And I said it's all done.  And it was the best suggestion..
01:02:25	End of Tape 1, Side 2. End of Interview	
[End of oral history #219]