Newspaper Article 1999 – They nursed us 50 years ago

They nursed us 50 years ago

By Valerie Smith, nee Doig

Fifty years ago, 11 nervous young women stood quaking at the entrance of one of Hastings best-known and best-loved institutions.

They were green school-leavers, about to become the lowest order of a traditional, benign hierarchy.

Thirty-one years later at the peak of their profession, nine emerged with the world at their feet.

Along the way, they learnt to scrub, obey and race against time.

They also learnt the microscopic structure and function of the heart, to comfort the sick and frightened, and help save lives.

They formed such enduring friendships in those years of hard work that this month the surviving seven are celebrating some of the richest, most rewarding years of their lives at the place where it all started: Hastings Fallen Soldiers Memorial Hospital – at least, what little remains of the well-remembered sprawling hospital buildings and nurses’ homes.

But though most of the bricks and plaster have long gone, the memories of tears and laughter, hard work and pleasure, tragedy and triumph remain.

‘Memories of tears and triumph remain’

And ghosts remain also. Of the never-forgotten people who passed through those almost-sacred doors, and touched the lives of almost everybody in Hastings – the entire staff, and the patients.

In those golden days of hospital-based student nurse training, Memorial was very much a peoples’ hospital. It was built by the community, who took great pride and interest in ‘their’ hospital – in honour of those who fell in war – in spite of very restricted visiting rules.

Much of its magic was due to long-time matron Miss Ida Russell, whose firm but kindly influence spread well beyond the hospital.

Patients loved her, doctors and the board respected her, and fear of letting her down, as much as our goal of graduating as staff nurses, kept us hard at work with swot, exams, ward cleaning and nursing skills.

And hard work it was.

There was no 40-hour week or time off for study. There were lectures and exams and somebody senior closely inspecting our every move.

Long hours and strict nurses’ home rules meant little time for social life beyond the hospital, but we did not need it.

We made our own fun, with picnics, swimming, tennis, sports, drama festivals, the public-donated beach cottage and pool, our own choir and magazine and our friendships.

At such a happy hospital, with tremendous teamwork and loyalty between every member from the hospital board to the junior nurse our training days were, despite times of anguish over exams, extra-unpleasant tasks, the endless cleaning, fear of failing finals or incurring the wrath of seniors, and the heartache of death, supremely happy.

When our class celebrates 50 years of friendship since January 19, 1949, we will effortlessly shed grey hair, character lines, and the odd battle scars and creaks of age, and regain the energy and spring of youth for a few precious hours.

The start of our reunion will be special and moving – just we seven survivors in the surviving part of our loved old hospital – the chapel where once lay the offices of Miss Russell, Malcolm Cameron with our recycled pay packets, and the switchboard.

Our candles will symbolise generations of nurses’ graduation ceremonies, and we will remember with sorrow the two no longer with us.

We will not be alone with the chaplain. Those friendly ghosts who guided, scared, inspired, encouraged and knocked us into nurses will be there too. Miss Russell, Sister Pugh who ruled the nurses’ homes, Dr Broughton of few words but brilliant diagnoses, our tutor sisters Hyde, Drake and Miss Hall, later matron, who dragged and pushed us ‘through, will be there.

Our respected surgeons Doctors Cashmore (also feared) Comrie, Bathgate, Tyler and Romain-Wright; our physicians Ballantyne and Whyte, and the handsome younger doctors Thompson and Moller, house surgeons and students, also.

District nurses Mardon and Yorte . . . Mr Jones the pharmacis [pharmacist] Mrs Moroney and John Carroll in the laboratory X-ray’s Bruce Martin and Dr Costello . . . physiotherapts [physiotherapists] Misses Johnson and Rainey, the sisters . . . Mrs Jackson and Joyce in the kitchen . .  theatre’s George who saved junior nurses’ lives . . . Jimmy Spence the gardener . . . Miss Botheway [Botherway] and Geoff with their shoe-swiping mops . .  Sam the vegie man . . . the linen room ladies . . . the boiler man and kindly maintenance men . . . Fred Unwin and the ambulance.

Later we will continue the tradition that began in our student nursing days on coming off duty in the old brick nurses’ home sitting room – kicking off the shoes, loosening the starched collars and belts, tossing off the caps and capes, refilling the big teapot, sprawling on armchairs, and talking.

But not of the terrible time Sister gave us today, a flood or looming finals or a hopeless romance or being broke till payday this time.

No, like all reunions, this will be all laughter and looking back to those 31 memorable years that shaped our lives.

Photo captions –

The class of 1949.

Miss Russell, left, matron.

A special treat for the children of Ward 5 – a pram ride.

Gala fun . . . our community day in 1947.