Where did you grow up?
Down the road in San Antonio. An early aspiration was to be the tooth fairy. Surely that was better than being influenced by TV at my Grandparents house about roller derby, freestyle wrestling or Lawrence Welk! Maybe it was my tooth fairy ambition that I turned out to be a good nurse!!? Our parents were blue collar workers that valued education for my brother, sister and me, so we all completed master’s or better to make the family proud.
Actually, a family friend encouraged me to go to nursing school outside of town. And because my Mother felt that the University of Texas at Galveston was “too wild”, I went off to Baylor as the only other baccalaureate program in Texas. I joined the Army student nurse program in order to receive tuition assistance—little to know that the world was waiting for me.
You were a US Army Nurse serving in Vietnam. Tell us about how that happened and talk about this experience and how it impacted your life. When did you serve? Where?
I was a brand new nurse at 23, assigned to the 95th Evacuation Hospital in DaNang, close to the DMZ and closest to Cambodia when we bombed it out in 1970. Our 200 bed MASH hospital was 2nd largest in the country and had all the specialties as the fancy brick and mortar hospital in Saigon. But the 95th was located on a gorgeous cove on the South China Sea, distanced by 10-foot barbed wire barriers and the sand. And before you ask, yes—our hospital was located a few miles north from the famous “China Beach”. We even watched the 1970 movie MASH on the side of our mess hall, and it was the best comic relief ever!! We could all relate!!
Despite the beauty of the country, it was high alert and stressful. Our location was strategic, and we were threatened both by shelling and disaster monsoons. Even though we lived in denial of the risk, I was probably more afraid of two monsoon-typhoons that caused us to evacuate and pack up anticipating abandoning our location. The wind and rain were so hard, the best we could do was crawl on the ground to get to our hootch from the hospital. It was never a dull moment.
Most importantly, as medical staff, our mission was clear, so the efforts of GIs and Vietnamese was all about working together. We worked six days a week, usually 14 to 16 hour shifts, always ready to come back in when we heard hordes of helicopters hovering. My take home lesson about Vietnam was to value collaboration, as we all were more than the sum of the parts, and regardless of our roles, we knew we were interdependent. That life lesson at 24 was more important than eating less sugar, wearing my retainer, or watching less TV ever was.
In a 1974 Academy Award winning documentary, “Hearts and Minds”, director Peter Davis is quoted “The betrayal of the times will never really grasp why we went to Vietnam, what we did there and what doing did to us.” I have high resonance with Davis, because there is no reconciliation between what we experienced on the ground and the socio-political understanding of the times. But that year for me was a time of phenomenal personal and professional growth and sacrifice, for all of us, that I would never trade. I was awarded a Bronze Star medal, which is the 3rd highest combat award, and will always believe that nursing is noble work. My greatest privilege as a nurse has been coming alongside of people in vulnerable times, to witness both fear and courage. All our stories are about resilience and struggle and finding ways to savor life’s moments of grace.
You need to know that all nurses in Vietnam volunteered to go, so that’s where I learned how to spell ADVENTURE. Some of us would go out into the villages on our day off to treat and screen for diseases and anomalies that the surgeons might be able to correct when time allowed. This was always endearing for me, and I frequently traveled to schools to give immunizations. One day on our return, our interpreter brought us to a bistro under a big green GI-issue tent out in the middle of a field. The food was classic pho soup and the laugh was that chopsticks were served in a mason jar of water with a roll of toilet paper—the etiquette was to wipe off your chopsticks, and when finished—just deposit them back in the jar for the next customer! Really? I suspect we were all healthier for the experience? Maybe this was my introduction to becoming an RFSA foodie!
And you might never imagine that going for an outing to China Beach usually meant greeting catcalls and whistles from GIs asking to speak to or touch a “round-eyed woman”. Come on…it was 1970. Not really “enduring”… yet it was the gestalt of connecting with each other as community that was significant.
Tell us about your career
Let me start backwards for a moment, because one of my retired volunteer jobs was being a Promodora at Webb Middle School, working with family-defined goals as a coach. As it sounds, promodora is Spanish for promoter or coach. I believe that coaching role came out of Vietnam. We are only as great as our struggles and revealing in the face of them. I am grateful for more things than I can count.
Retiring after 45 years as a nurse and educator really gave me 3 careers: I retired after 24 years as a Lt. Colonel in the Army Nurse Corps, teaching nursing at the University of Maryland and then University of Washington. I happened into a position at Seattle Children’s Regional Medical Center, working with such a diversity of families who lived with chronic sorrow. That concept describes natural grief reactions to losses that are not final and continue in their lives. There is where my life was enlarged by learning love and compassion. Cultivating compassion helps to develop the strength to be with suffering, the courage to take compassionate action, and resilience in the face of life’s challenges. It is astounding how humans have a natural capacity for compassion, yet everyday stress, social pressures, and life experiences can suppress it. The good news is that we can pay attention to fostering self-compassion.
As an Army Nurse, I lived in Vietnam for a year, then Seattle for my master’s study, then Washington DC (where I was Asst. Professor teaching at the University of Maryland), then El Paso (where I also became Adjunct Clinical Faculty with UTEP and earned a second MSN), a year in Seoul Korea, and my last mission was a hardship assignment in San Francisco. It was an era of changing health care, so I had opportunities to develop autonomous acute care educator-consultant roles, and to pioneer new positions.
Can you share some stories? Because stories reveal who you are and what is valued.
Location location location. In 1985, I was competitively funded by the Army Nurse Corps to get a doctorate from University of California San Francisco. There I was lucky enough to rent a 1930 art deco row house located 10 blocks from the ocean up from the Cliff House, and 2 blocks over from Golden Gate Park. It was the best exercise of mind and body to bike down to the ocean midday, when all the piles of readings closed in. That was the one place I had a housemate, who turned out to become a best friend. On campus, I was active with Intervarsity Christian Fellowship. I was asked to house an area director from the Northwest, on sabbatical, and was surprised when I mis-heard “four months stay” as “for a month”, but after the first month, we were already fast friends! My biggest amazement in life has been to take in opportunities that came along.
Here’s a story about Seoul Korea. In 1980, Seoul had a population of 11 million people. I lived downtown in a contract hotel because there was no housing available for my rank as a single woman officer, and I drove around in a Korean sedan. Now Seoul is one of those cities that had 4 traffic lanes in each direction with 7 or 8 rows of scooters, buses, cars, taxis and tuktuks competing for those 4 lanes, so that was an adventure on its own. So why I accepted an invite from a medic from my previous assignment to go visit his firebase—an underground bunker near the DMZ—was curiosity and craziness. But flattery that he located me, invited me, and hitchhiked down to escort our single road drive north got me. Touring the firebase like a VIP was amazing—not only because the complex mimicked the Nazi Berchtesgaden underground, plus I was a rare woman visitor, creating a bit of fanfare! Yet at the end of such a full day, I was fatally lost when I turned into the Seoul metropolis. Tearful and tired, wearing those flattering Army camouflage fatigues’ uniform, I realized it was hopeless to describe my location to any search and rescue crew. I finally flagged down a craggy toothed cabbie, pantomimed my predicament, and trusted I was following him back to base. Then I learned how good people can be—because he first declined my attempt to empty my wallet in gratitude, only gesturing with his hand over his heart, shaking his head. My hero. How memorable was that!
So my second career was moving back to Seattle and the Northwest. And I was lucky to complete a renovation of a 1909 arts and craft house near downtown, that had charm, personality and a view overlooking Lake Washington, the Cascades, and if you crooked your neck, you could see Mt. Ranier from the deck. Having too many long work hours, it was easy to embrace the Japanese mental health practice of Shojin yoku…or “forest bathing” as a place of refuge, care of my own heart and genuine friends. My sanity was to buy a 17-foot fully contained RV because I loved hiking those green trees, water and mountains of the NW. So anytime I had more than 3 days off, a search of 11 sites for the best weather—ocean, mountains, Canada, Idaho or Oregon, found a destination. I can tell you another memorable story about getting lost on Mt. St. Helen’s, hiking on a gorgeous weekend in late May… Once getting above the tree line, there was a surprising amount of snow which was disorienting. Deciding to swallow my pride, I began screaming—to collect 8 other yelling people who were also lost. Imagine! We were all joyously redeemed by a cross country skier that showed us the way! So much for the 10 essentials!!
I know this is all tmi, having the best life to go RVing in Alaska, to locate a stream where salmon were so thick we simply reached in, grabbing one for dinner. Or back in Seattle, at the working fisherman’s pier, if you timed it right, one could buy a whole salmon for $5 right off the boat. And those were the days when wiggly live Dungeness crab could go on sale for $2.50 a pound. Yes, camping gave my life balance….and maybe I still have some loose tent pegs.
I retired in 2006 and moved back to Texas because my Sister lived in Houston, and Austin was the best of all places. I immediately became a UT Life Member. My first project was a total renovation of a 1940 home in Rosedale. This time it was a 5-Star Green Energy undertaking, which required about a year and had the usual number of crazy contracter stories, but is a lovely space. In 2011 it brought a house swap to Paris as a Rosedale neighbor had family coming for a month. Did I ever attract friends coming to Paris, and still had quiet times to go for walks and leisurely picnics. Truly that was a privileged life. I was not gluten-dairy free yet, so a favorite was to make gelato stops and bakery runs en route from free evening classical music concerts. Plus there were many museums back then that were free before late evening closures, which included more gelato runs, of course. Was this also training for becoming an RFSA foodie?
It’s way more exciting to try a new food on the other side of the world – and discover absolute delight– than it is to go to a swanky restaurant back home. During a RFSA Dublin trip, we had an evening free. At a nearby restaurant, I was seated at a table next to an older couple celebrating his birthday. As I bought his second round of Irish Headless Dog Stout beer, I was invited to join their duo table in such a charming thick Irish brogue conversation, that about all I could do was smile and nod my head. Likewise, playing with a child in another language is more warming than all the designer sweaters in the world. Before 9/11, in Seattle, with Taiwainese friends, we could breeze across the Canadian border to just do lunch in Vancouver’s Chinatown. And more practice for becoming an RFSA foodie?
I have also loved volunteering as an educational administrator for Be the Bridge, a national faith-based program for racial reconciliation. And volunteering for Community First in Austin near the rodeo grounds. This is a transformative residential program, providing affordable, permanent housing and a supportive community for men and women coming out of chronic homelessness. It is amazing that many residents need a transition time to feel safe, feeling more safe on the streets, than inside their own private tiny house. Their motto is “Goodness has a building code: everyone sleeps inside”. I love it.
In 2011 a MD/RN couple that I knew in Seattle, moved to Tanzania to set up a medical missionary hospital and they asked me to come establish a staff development program for a new hospital. I was wooed by two meaningful Swahili words: “mzuri” meaning a good work ethos, and “sawabona”, a greeting that conveys human value like “I see you and respect who you are”, so the project seemed perfect.
It is apparently “quite African” that deals fall through, which I learned on arrival. So the best alternative happened, as I was packed off with a car and driver to travel down dirt roads flanked by people carrying stacked coal on top of their heads—to reach a village hospital about an hour away to see what teaching I could do. Being a consultant, you know that opportunity is based on perceived need, so I only had to wait for the second day until an accident patient arrived after being stabbed in the bush 3 days prior. Every district hospital had a local School of Nursing, so around 15 nursing students flocked around this man to stabilize him for surgery. My golden moment was afterwards asking if I could lead a debriefing. My skill at correlating facts, observations and interventions met sheer student joy for inductive and deductive discovery learning. Suddenly I was the celebrity that opened doors so students could build their own cascade-correlation learning architecture. My reputation escorted me to two other hospital schools of nursing to teach for 3 months. What a humbling joyous period. I name these kinds of experiences as “abbondanza”, which is Italian for richness and wealth, and my imagery is like a pizza with everything on it!!
Favorite countries? Probably just like you, the ones that stand out, are the ones where I felt most at home, or connected, where their energy and my energy matched. The RFSA trips to Cuba and Ireland were some of those. And Carol Kay Johnson will always remain the #1 gracious organizer Emeritus for all time!! She is supreme, unequaled, inimitable!! Thank you, Carol Kay! The Cuban people are so resourceful even in scarcity. Our tour bus leader reported if you didn’t graduate from high school—you did not get a job, as everything came from the state. Also that her father traded the same pay as a physics college professor for the perks for his grandkids by milking cows for the take home benefits. Despite its stark reality, it seemed that all of Cuba celebrated the creative arts as redemption.
What’s the best thing about being a member of RFSA?
Thank you to Peggy Mueller, as RFSA President, who brokered my admission.
RFSA fosters belonging—such a sacred critical societal need. Perhaps the value of belonging can be overshadowed in our busyness and our careers, so RFSA offers a range of opportunities from unobtrusive to investments for belonging. I anticipate all the people and events of Foodies, travel, luncheons, celebrations and UT Remembers. My anchor belief that we are rich when we have options, and so it is! RFSA is a sacred possession —to be part of something meaningful. RFSA celebrates the sum as more than the parts, acknowledging our legacies with UT. Awesome.