Clydie Pugh-Myers Interview

Interview

Interviewee: Clydie Pugh-Myers
Interviewer: Jessica Roseberry
Date: January 18, 2006
Place: Pugh-Myers’s home in Durham, NC

Jessica Roseberry: This is Jessica Roseberry, and I am here with Clydie Pugh-Myers. She’s a graduate in 1949 of the first class of practical nurses at Duke, in a joint program with Duke Hospital, the [Durham] city school system, and the State Vocational Education Department. It’s January 18, 2006, and we’re here in her home in Durham, North Carolina. Thank you very much for agreeing to sit down and talk with me today. And I understand that you have done a little bit of research, actually quite a bit of research, and have written down some of the history, and if you don’t mind reading some of that, that would be wonderful.

Clydie Pugh-Myers: Okay. You ready?

Roseberry: Sure.

Pugh-Myers: (reading from prepared statement): “In 1947, the state of North Carolina appropriated funds to start a practical nursing program class. Started June 1948. There were seventy-two black womens registered, and only twenty-nine graduated in June of 1949. We did our prep work at Duke Hospital. It was very rare for black nurses to be a part of Duke Hospital, because black nurses weren’t accepted then. We were considered as pioneers there, by being the first to graduate from North Carolina Educational Vocation. Mrs. Jones, Mrs. Charmin Watson and Miss Lucretia McCoy were the oldest of the group. Age was a limitation. May 1949, class two started, fourteen members. Only eleven graduated. Class one and two decided to unite together. Class two only had fifteen graduates remaining at this time. Under the leadership of Miss Adele Butts, Miss Gertrude Henry and Martha Johnson. Our spirits were kept high, being under pressure at Duke. We did our very best, and it shows today. The fourth anniversary banquet, we all worked together to make it a success. We were the first LPN to graduate from the state of North California. The name of the pin was North Carolina Vocational Education, now known as Durham Technical Institute.” I’ll stop right there.

Roseberry: Thank you very much.

Pugh-Myers: Now, that was the beginning of the first two classes.

Roseberry: Obviously you’ve contacted some of your friends, and they’ve given you some of that information as well.

Pugh-Myers: That’s the information—whenever anybody dies, they look for me, (Roseberry laughs) and then—this is the history, because this program was only offered to blacks; it wasn’t offered to whites at that time. And when we entered Duke, there wasn’t any professional help black there, nothing but floor workers, dish washers, and the kitchen help, and we were the first. No other technicians were there, so we were really rare. At this day and time, it shows how far that we have came. In 1950 there was a Jessie Smith. In ’58 there was Ernestine Turner. And Alma Farmer, she used to be one of the presidents of the National Federation of Licensed Practical Nurses. We had an association, and we always went from state to state at different times, all over the state, uniting together, and at the National Federation of Licensed Practical Nurses, only practical nurses belonged to it, no RNs. Alfonso Reed, as I said—he was the first black [male] LPN. After we graduated, he was so proud to wear a cap.

Roseberry: He was the first man that was—

Pugh-Myers: He was the first man LPN, and he wore his cap coming down the hall and it was funny to a lot, and it was exciting to the rest of us. We only worked on the public wards, and the public wards is where we stayed. As we did good work, they sent about three of us to come to the private ward, and that’s how we got there. But it wasn’t any RNs at all but one. That was Miss Shaw, and she was on the ward which was called Nott. I can remember Dr. Swift [Robert Randolf Jones?] getting shot. They had no private beds for him. They made a room from the second floor, which was all white male, put him in a private room because he was Dr. Swift. He was critically ill, but he was taken care of by all. Duke didn’t have many student nurses, and I feel like at this time, when we came in, we helped. Working on McDowell myself—that was only the head nurse, assistant head nurse, myself and a student nurse from Duke, which was in training, and a maid named Miss Minnie. That was all that worked the ward on probably thirty-two patients. Of course, the student nurses had to go to class, and we had to go to class.

Roseberry: Oh, this is after you were hired? No, this is before you—

Pugh-Myers: No, this is while we—

Roseberry: This is while you were in training.

Pugh-Myers: While I was in training.

Roseberry: Okay. I’m sorry.

Pugh-Myers: But now, after being hired, that’s when we went to work without a cap until we passed the state board. After passing the state board, we were able to put a cap on.

Roseberry: So a different cap maybe.

Pugh-Myers: No.

Roseberry: No?

Pugh-Myers: It was our a regular cap. We had a white cap with a blue band. We were able to wear our white uniforms through the streets then. They’re ours. And white stockings. In training, brown stockings, pinstriped blue uniform saying “Practical Nurse” across the front, and a patch on your sleeve says, “Practical Nursing.” It was interesting. We worked hard. Some of the equipment, they don’t have now.

Roseberry: What equipment?

Pugh-Myers: Like a Wangensteen [tube]. A Wangensteen was jug that hung up. Patient had a tube in the nose. We hung this drug of water, and then it goes out on the floor.

Roseberry: It would go into the patient?

Pugh-Myers: Yes.

Roseberry: Like an IV or similar?

Pugh-Myers: Yes, but they called it a Wangensteen. Now they hook it in, hook it into the wall, into the jug. They didn’t do heart surgery back there. It really—appendicitis was terrible. Gall bladder was terrible. On my floor, we had patients to come from the sanatorium to have an operation because they had TB [tuberculosis]. I can remember one time when they went into one lady, and when they got in, she didn’t have TB, and they had to move her from that portion of the ward and bring her out. She had cancer. Cancer wasn’t worldwide then, but she didn’t have TB and had been at the sanatorium for years. The sanatorium was down east, but they would bring these patients up to Duke. And they were on what we called “the porch.” In other words, they were isolated, so you had to really use a good isolation technique to work back there. If I worked back there, I didn’t work with the other patients for the day; I just worked back there, because you take care of them, and they didn’t want you to contaminate other patients. But Mrs. [Betty] Gamble, which was my head nurse; I don’t know where she is now; I wish I could find her—she was real good. She was real strict. But we washed everybody’s backs, we washed their legs, we rubbed their backs in the afternoon. We had a real clean ward, and there’s one Duke student nurse and the head nurse and the assistant head nurse and the maid and myself: we did good work. We didn’t have what you call fifteen-minutes’ break along there. You had thirty minutes to go downstairs to eat your lunch and get back to the ward. You had to go downstairs to the bathroom. You couldn’t use the bathroom on the ward.

Roseberry: Now, this was everyone, or this was just the African-American workers?

Pugh-Myers: This was the blacks.

Roseberry: Okay.

Pugh-Myers: They went to the nurses’ bathroom, but we didn’t.

Roseberry: Okay.

Pugh-Myers: So we had to go downstairs.

Roseberry: And you had to eat downstairs, too, for the same reason.

Pugh-Myers: We ate downstairs. So as integration come along in years, we went one day and sat in the dining room where they are now and wouldn’t go out, and that started a little loud noise, and then this began to get the things kind of rolling, that we were to be accepted. But this was a long road, and betwixt the time that we graduated in ’49 to the time that they integrated, it was tough through there. And when integration did come, and it was by the government that we got to mix these folks up in order to get this money, they did it at nighttime. They didn’t do it in the daytime. They took patients and just put black with white. Some went home, because they didn’t want to be in a room with a black person. But they said it couldn’t happen. And then things begin to fall in place.

Roseberry: So you were at Duke at that time.

Pugh-Myers: Yes. Where else was I going to be? But the thing about it is I drew for eighty hours every two weeks. My salary was about eighty-six dollars to bring home. But we made it. But then we had to catch the bus. While we was in training, when we got to Duke, they gave us a stipend, and this kind of helped. Our first three months or two months was thirty-five, the next two months was fifty, and the last three was seventy-five.

Roseberry: Now, this was while you were training.

Pugh-Myers: This was while we was in training. When we got to Duke, they gave us that stipend once a month, and of course that helped us ride the bus and kind of helped buy you lunch. While we was at Hillside [High School] in training in the classroom, we didn’t get anything, but you had to buy your own class books. We would go off to class somewhere like the Duke amphitheater or either in one of the doctor’s examining room. When they didn’t have a meeting, they would let us have class there. But we had one instructor from Duke, and a lady from Canada, and Miss [Adele] Butts and Miss Henry and Miss Johnson, they still intervened right along in there, too. But we had a pretty good time. When we graduated, we graduated over to Hillside.

Roseberry: That’s where the ceremony was?

Pugh-Myers: That’s where the ceremony was. And we marched. Got pinned and got your cap, and then you’re ready to go to work. (Roseberry chuckles) And then after this, they didn’t know whether they want to hire us or not. They said there wasn’t any room. But when people began to kind of leave, it looked like it made insecurity of patients, and then they called us back. They called us back before I got ready to go. Some did, though. And they hired us. I was hired June the twentieth; I went to work from 1949.

Roseberry: They said there was no room even though there was a nursing shortage? Okay.

Pugh-Myers: Well, just had finished, and they didn’t know what to do with us.

Roseberry: This is a new program.

Pugh-Myers: Well, it’s a new program, plus the fact we’re black. “Noooo, not in here.” It was tough, but just like they say, the two classes, we hung together. We were scared, for one thing. We were scared whether you was doing right or scared whether you was doing wrong. You didn’t know. But there’s one thing about it is everybody gave your supervisors and things respect, and you did as they say do. You were shown what to do, and you was expected to do that. Sometime I would have ten patients. How I’m going to get ten patients done? How? Sometime I would catch the bus, and I would be at the hospital sometime at six thirty and go on to my ward and start giving my patients their water, who could bathe, you know, started washing off. But when I came out of the report, I started with my sickest patient, give them their bath first, and then come back to the ones that hadn’t washed the face and hands. So that was what Mrs. Gamble taught: Do your sickest patients first. We had burn patients, we had surgical patients, TB patients, orthopaedic patients. The ward was just mixed up, and the ward that I was working on, it wasn’t a black ward, it was a white ward, but the Nott upstairs was just—that’s the only ward they had for blacks. But I was working on a white ward.

Roseberry: So it was a public white ward.

Pugh-Myers: A public.

Roseberry: Okay. Was there anything in particular—was it all kinds of medical conditions? It wasn’t necessarily—?

Pugh-Myers: It was all types of medical conditions. Some people—well, you would say they would park there. I seen them halfway get them ready and call the taxi and send them home on the bus. Didn’t have cars like you have now. Had a few cars. I can remember in 1936, my people had a car, but after my grandparents died and I went home with my mother—what I mean is, I was already home, but we didn’t have a car. I didn’t get a car until—I believe it was ’52 I got a car, and I thought I had something. It was a used car. But I think I paid about thirty dollars a month, something like that. Old Chevrolet. That’s what I started out with. But after Charles Johnson—he was the first black doctor there, along with Dr. Cleland, which was a black doctor. Dr. Charles Johnson is still living, but Dr. Cleland’s dead. But they’re about to phase out the LPN class now. They’re trying to take two years and be an RN, but they’ll never make it and put in as much and learn as much in two years to be an RN that you should be doing in three or four.

Roseberry: You mean they’re trying to do that nationally?

Pugh-Myers: I don’t know whether—well, they’re trying to phase it out, but it’s so many to phase out, and the ones was left here, they are all hoppers, just like me. Hips gone, knees gone, back gone, eyes gone. They’re old. And I’m about one of the oldest. I remember when Miss Wicker came to Duke as an RN.

Roseberry: Evelyn Wicker.

Pugh-Myers: Her husband’s a policeman. She’s a friend of mine. Oh, they liked to talk to me. This and this. To even see them and talk to them. The lady that passed away since you was here, I saw a nurse, and she was Miss Saunders. She was on the cardiology ward. Had another friend. She’s a hopper. She was on oncology. We had some LPNs to go back to school, Duke helped them in these later years, and they became an RN. About the time they became an RN, they were about ready to go out of there. But I would have went back, and the money was great. That’s when I began to meet big people, professors and kings. I met the big peoples in the city. At this time, doing private duty, you started off at seven-fifty. When I stopped doing private duty, I was making twenty-five fifty, maybe thirty dollars. But staying at the president’s house, the president of Liggett & Myers. I stayed there for twenty years, and every Sunday night I drew seven fifty, seven hundred and fifty dollars. But I worked from seven to seven. And I didn’t have to do that much work because his wife was an invalid. She didn’t want to be bothered. She had arthritis bad. The hands like this, and the elbows and things. You’d light a cigarette for her, you’d have to get her on the pot. She didn’t walk by herself, she walked with stilts, uh, walkers. You know, they was up high, and she would hold on there. And you’d kind of be behind her. His son got killed in the service. The minute they got overseas, unloading, they dropped an ammunition box and blew his head off. So he was in the service, but they sent him home because he was—you know, it was just his wife, and he could take care of his wife, and he was the president, became president of Liggett & Myers. But that was a task. This program, for any poor person, if they want to make it, they should have took it.

Roseberry: How did you first hear about the program?

Pugh-Myers: It was in the newspaper. I didn’t put that down [in the prepared statement]. It came in the newspaper.

Roseberry: Where were you at the time?

Pugh-Myers: I was here. I had been to Tennessee to school. I went to Nashville, Tennessee, to go to Nashville School of Business, and it wasn’t what it was supposed to be, and I came home, and I was working in the dry cleaners, and this came in the Sunday morning’s paper.

Roseberry: What did it say?

Pugh-Myers: It says, “Offering practical nursing for black nurses to start and to meet at Hillside.” And that’s where we met. Like I said, it’s seventy-two of us started out, but we was there like flies.

Roseberry: That was the first meeting.

Pugh-Myers: This was the first meeting.

Roseberry: Seventy-two.

Pugh-Myers: No, in ’47. The seventy-two—that’s what they took in, regardless of your age. That’s what they took in, and that’s who they started out with, but didn’t but twenty-nine of us graduate. The course was hard. Miss Butts’s husband taught at North Carolina Central [University], and he taught anatomy and physiology, and that’s what threw a whole lot of us. I know I have been up at nighttime, early in the morning, late at night, trying to get that anatomy, because I wanted to pass. Same thing with state board. I didn’t go but one time. I think my grade when I passed the state board was 78 or 81, but anyway, I was in the passing group to go on to work. I don’t think we had anybody to fail the state board, but we just only had one girl couldn’t take it, because she wasn’t of age. She hadn’t turned eighteen. But when they offered this in the paper, it was on a Sunday, and we were there on Monday. I’d say to my friend girl, I said, “Girl, we got to get this.” (Roseberry chuckles) Because not staying in Tennessee to finish this business stuff, but out there on that highway where that place was. It was an old Elks’ home, and that’s supposed to be the dormitory. See, back there, your parents—my mama was too poor to go to look to see what school was about, so they just packed us up and we got on that train, my friend girl and I, and out to Tennessee we went. That was tough.

Roseberry: How was it different than what you expected?

Pugh-Myers: I wasn’t expecting to stay in no dormitory where you had a stove and you had to heat it up. I just left home from that. And we stayed in the annex because they were so overrun with this. And that came in the newspaper. “Learn while you earn.” We thought we were going to be typing and doing shorthand and stuff like that.

Roseberry: At the Nashville program.

Pugh-Myers: But that wasn’t what you do. You went out there, you clean other people’s house and you cooked and you did everything but that typing stuff. They didn’t have no jobs like that. But anyway, the first time they come to get me, I—no, they didn’t come get me; they gave me a direction, and you’re supposed to go to these people’s house, these white folks’ houses and do this work. You pay your first tuition, they call it. Well, if you pay your first tuition, why you got to go the next couple of days to these people’s house? Well, I didn’t go, I rode a bus all the time and then come back. I could never find the place. Well, I think I did that twice. The next time, they had the lady come to the place to get me. I clean up the kitchen and washed the dishes and helped with the baby and all that stuff. I’m going home. I’m not staying here with this kind of stuff and keeping all this mess. And we made eight dollars. It was tough. My friend girl—some Elks sorority of peoples, her daddy was in—they sent her, so she had to stay two or three months. By the time she got back, this program was being offered. But I came home, and I worked in the laundry, pressing clothes. At least I was at home, and that stove which you had to make a fire. And the stove would might be up here, and then where we slept was back here, and when we got there the first night or two, our trunks hadn’t come, and everybody was sitting around this pot-bellied stove. We were wondering what were we going to do. I said, “I don’t see but one thing to do: put your pajamas on and get into between the mattress and the spring.”

Roseberry: It was cold.

Pugh-Myers*: Ohh! Girl, you couldn’t even spit without it freezing! But one or two let us sleep with them that night. But then you have to leave from here to go up to the Elks home—that’s where the main dormitory was—and eat your breakfast and whatever. Oh, that was miserable. And when I saw Meharry [Medical School], I said, “How come we couldn’t go over there?” The reason we couldn’t go, our parents didn’t have no money. But this sounded good. This came in the paper, too.

Roseberry: Was your friend able to go?

Pugh-Myers: She had to stay here because somebody helped her go, but she stayed until that money ran out, but she didn’t finish. She came on back and got in this program, too.

Roseberry: So she was at the Duke program, too.

Pugh-Myers: Yes, she was in the Duke program. But all these peoples, and half of them dead—it was just about six of us, I believe.

Roseberry: From that first class?

Pugh-Myers: Uh-huh. I think. And one just fell and gone to Pettigrew Street rehab. And she’s kind of blind. We had one in the rest home, something wrong with her knee. And there’s just something wrong with all of us, to tell you the truth, but I thank God it’s as well as it is.

Roseberry: Did you have to take any kind of testing before you went to the program? Like a physical test or an IQ test? Did you have to do that kind of—?

Pugh-Myers: Yeah, we took a test, and they graded us from the test. That is how they kept us. I can’t hardly remember what some of the things—whatever they asked. But most of us had finished high school, or somewhere or another. These older ladies, their high school didn’t go no further than tenth grade. See, back there. Because my mother didn’t go no further than tenth grade, but she had to go back and get her GED from Durham Tech. She took a test, and then she passed, and then she went. She was working as a maid when they wanted her to go, so my husband, Mr. Pugh, and I—we sent her. She was a little bitty lady, but she was a good nurse.

Roseberry: When did she go?

Pugh-Myers: She finished in ’58, so she went in ’57. (telephone rings) (pause in tape)

Roseberry: You were telling me about maybe those tests and requirements.

Pugh-Myers: Oh. Well, we took a test—I guess they was testing to see how much did you learn in high school. They graded the papers; then they told you whether you were accepted or not, because it was more than seventy-two there; it was just like gobs of people, but some couldn’t pass at all. But these seventy-two was chosen. And then, when time for us to get into it, they been grading and doing different subjects, nursing arts and anatomy and physiology and nutrition and—nursing arts, I think I said—but anyway, they wouldn’t function. And some couldn’t get along with people. And then when we got to Duke, some was very arrogant. You got sent away from there for that. And so therefore, we twenty-nine, we hung till we couldn’t hang no more. And when we graduated, and you’re talking about a happy people that were crying and screaming and acting just like you had finished college, which we had. I wisht I could have gone. Well, I would have went back to nursing school; it was in South Carolina, but the money was big. I had began to make big money. I started to do private duty after the first two years at Duke. And I enjoyed it. I enjoyed my nursing field. Kings, preachers, gypsies, just all types of people I met. And I wisht I had kept the listing from names of the people. I even carried a patient home to Florida and stayed four weeks. Never had flown. Never had been to Florida. And that was something. He was a rich man. I carried a patient as far as Philadelphia. The family met us, took the patient, and they sent me back on the plane. Had never flown. That was great. Of course, in the city I would stay at night with some patients. But carry your lunch. We didn’t bother their food. Doing private duty, you cook. You know, you might prepare your patient’s breakfast or lunch or so forth. Walk them. You didn’t ride them. You might ride with them and their chauffeur, but you didn’t ride them. I met Mrs. [Mary Duke Biddle Trent] Semans. I had taken care of her first husband, which was Dr. Trent.

Roseberry: Let me turn our tape over. (tape 1, side 1 ends; side 2 begins)

Pugh-Myers: —Semans. Last husband just died. Of course, Dr. Trent. I don’t know what—I can’t remember what was his diagnosis, but she let the doctors do everything they could to save him, and I was serving private duty with him, and I was there that night when he died. But that was something to see. I was working on the white ward then, on the private side then, doing private duty. I was about one of the first to go on the white side and do private duty.

Roseberry: What did you do to care for him?

Pugh-Myers: Well, you did bedside nursing. Bedside nursing is you kept them clean, you kept them turned, you did help him deep breathe as long as he was able, you suction him, you change his dressings. You’re a nurse now, you’re going to work; you’re working hard, and you have to get these things done. And turning was very important, very important. They didn’t get patients out the bed back there like they do now. You be operated on today, today you get up today. Back there, you stayed in the bed. You had eye surgery, you kept your head still for twelve or fourteen days. You had back surgery, they roll you like a log. You didn’t get up. But now, this day you get right up the same day, go home the same day; do your eye, you looking the same day. Unh! But medicine seems to think this is better. Maybe it is. But those patients back there got good care, and they lived a long time, too. We saw vasectomy, when they operated on patients for a lung, for TB, they would take out all the lobe. Oh, that’s when these jugs got to be emptied. The bedpans—they were silver things, great big old bun things. You had to get them up on those things. Now they’re little flat things. We used draw sheets, a rubber draw sheet betwixt them. The patient—you put a sheet on top, and then you have a draw sheet and then your sheet. Now they use chucks and throw them away.

Roseberry: You used that for every patient, you used that rubber sheet?

Pugh-Myers: Yeah. That’s to keep you from messing up the mattress. But now the mattresses, the way they are, and they got chucks, which is, you know, a little plastic thing or something you throw away, but they used a lot of material and stuff this way. They had a laundry, where the laundry would come from. It came up every afternoon, and we had to fold the linen. You had to fold it a certain way and put it up, make sure everything’s right. But it was a good experience for me. But before I left, I saw then what I see now. I saw patients getting up and doing for themselves. I saw where the nurses wouldn’t give them a bath. They don’t have time. The biggest thing they have time to do is give medicines, but the rest of the part, you just have to go—so if you’re going in the hospital, I’d advise you to take a good bath, put on all the deodorant and perfume you can because you’re not going to get all that when you’re in the hospital. They just don’t have the time. I don’t know, they just don’t take time. They just don’t teach it to them. I don’t know. I don’t know. Even the people that they send to have to take care of you in the home. They send you home early and they call this—some aide to help you. They don’t do nothing. “I’m not allowed to do this.” “I’m not allowed to do that.” But you go beyond the call of duty, you be a good nurse. If I saw something needed to be done, put the stuff up, I put it up and put it where it’s supposed to be, wash off the counter. That didn’t hurt me at all. But you get this: “That’s not my duty. I’ll tell somebody else.” Now, you take the president of Liggett & Myers. That lady was an invalid, and she could tell you from her bed where to go to look for such and such a thing, what drawer and which side, and if everybody put it back like she had it fixed, you always would find it. I heard the other day or so, her granddaughter’s home. And she had left her husband with her. Mr. [Milton E.] Harrington saw that my daughter got the same thing that his granddaughter got. My daughter went to East Carolina [University]. But I don’t know where Barbara went. She was separated from her husband. Sharon’s been married for twenty years. Sharon is a social worker. She got her master’s from Central. But I wanted her to be a speech therapist, and that’s another thing. In doing private duty, I have carried a patient home that had a stroke, and they didn’t even know they were at home, because I watched everything that the doctors do, everything the therapists do, and I applied it. I carried the lady home. She didn’t know she was at home. She couldn’t talk. She couldn’t walk. I cooked. I did her exercise, I did her bath, and I looked to see just how the therapists would do. They would put me out the room because they didn’t want me to see. But when I got this lady where I could get her to walk, but I couldn’t get her to talk. You have to do speech therapy a whole lot. But she could answer ahhs, oohs, (unintelligible). But the therapist didn’t want me to watch because I paid good attention. They said, “Well, you can go in the other room.” But stroke patients, I enjoyed. And lots of times, over the city, different ones would send. They wanted this nurse they called Pugh to come wait on them. I had a lot of requests. Now, what you be doing? I’d be doing my work, trying to get them well. And it was appreciated. And if I was younger, I still would go back to work. My daughter says I’m still at work. And it bothers me in here. But of course, I do Bible reading; I’m doing some Bible stuff now, at the sheep hole and—the church. But nursing, I love. And it burns me up to see anybody mistreat a patient. If you’re not going to do what you’re supposed to do for them, leave them alone. Don’t do that. In my church, we don’t have a first aid, but if I’m sitting in the middle of the church, I’m looking at different ones, and I’m looking at the choir. They might get sick, I’m mostly out of the seat. They know there’s something wrong. I just happened to look over my shoulder, and I saw the man going back like this (pantomimes position). I don’t know, but I came out from this side, and I went and helped to get this man out, to get him out. He was in a diabetic coma. So they said, How’d you get out so fast? I told them, “I don’t know.” The man is sick in the choir, and I tried to get the usher’s attention, to get attention, and I got up, and we got him out the choir. It’s just that instinct. I don’t know, I just pay attention and I know when something’s wrong.

Roseberry: When you were doing private nursing, were you based out of Duke?

Pugh-Myers: We had a registry called Durham Professional Nurses Registry. And that register was just like Duke. At first it was nothing but white. I was about the first or the second black nurse to work for the register.

Roseberry: So you stopped working for Duke at that point.

Pugh-Myers: I stopped after two years, and I got on this register. And they told me that day when I got on, “If you go to sleep, they’re going to fire you.” I had this patient at night, and all when I wasn’t doing for the patient or reading, I stood up, every hour, so if somebody was peeping in the door and looking to and see was I asleep. Unh-uh, I was standing up. That was on Cabell Ward, on the third floor. I never will forget it. No, I stood up because I didn’t want them to catch me asleep. Then it has been where a nurse was sitting at the desk, and she was sleeping, and Miss [Elsie] Vaughn came. She asked her was she asleep. She told her no, she was resting her eyes. (Roseberry laughs) This has been a great, great program, and what you’re putting together, you’re putting together some stuff that a whole lot of peoples know. It’s like I said, Dr. [Robert] Flowers was the president of Duke when I went there. And I can remember—and Terry Sanford was a good friend of Mr. Harrington. And then Dr. [William] Anlyan, he comes along But they have had some great peoples there. Duke used to give us a Christmas party, and they’d give you a dinner and give you some candy or something. But the thing about it—they still have some dinners, but the peoples don’t half go, they tell me they will stop giving it. I don’t blame them, because that’s a waste of food to prepare for peoples that say they’re going to come and don’t come.

Roseberry: So I want to—I’m sorry.

Pugh-Myers: What did you get out of this book [Duke: Before and After Integration] that I haven’t said? You saw what she collected—of course, you saw where—the kind of language they used.

Roseberry: Um-hm.

Pugh-Myers: You saw the wards in this book. We used to have to fill water pitchers, as you know.

Roseberry: Um-hm.

Pugh-Myers: Now, this lady, what I was telling you about, Nancy Gray—she hired this lady. See, there’s that Vaughn lady. But you said Fanny (refers to previous off-tape conversation in which Roseberry asked Pugh-Myers if she knew a specific person).

Roseberry: Unh-huh.

Pugh-Myers: But this lady was named Elsie, wasn’t she?

Roseberry: Um-hm.

Pugh-Myers: Okay.

Roseberry: It may not be the same.

Pugh-Myers: This lady here was my supervisor. She was a soldier!

Roseberry: Lucille Leonard was your supervisor.

Pugh-Myers: Oh, she was a soldier! (laughs) She was in the army.

Roseberry: On MacDowell Ward?

Pugh-Myers: No, she was in the army before she became—to MacDowell Ward. Oh, she walked like a soldier. My name is Clydie. (loud, firm voice): “Clydie, come here. Mr. So-and-so in there, cover him up. He need to be turned.” Ooh, she was terrible. But she came before Miss Gamble. But she was a tough old bird, I’ll tell you.

Roseberry: Now, was she on the nursing service, or was she part of—?

Pugh-Myers: She was on the nursing service.

Roseberry: So in the hospital.

Pugh-Myers: But she was our head nurse on McDowell before Miss Gamble came.

Roseberry: Okay.

Pugh-Myers: But this girl (refers to the author of the aforementioned book, Katy Hoover Evans), from the time that she came—. (telephone rings) She was a little bit—she was a little bit late. (telephone rings.)

Roseberry: We can put it on pause so you can—(telephone rings; pause in tape)

Roseberry: I want to get back to the training program, if that’s okay, and ask you about some of the instructors in that program. You may not remember specific names, but just—

Pugh-Myers: We had—her first name was Priscilla, because one of the nurses had a baby, and she named that baby Priscilla. I can remember her name; I have something written down. But the thing about it is—and just like I told you, Miss Vaughn and Nancy Gray. They taught a little bit.

Roseberry: So they were teaching in the classes at Hillside?

Pugh-Myers: No, they taught at Duke.

Roseberry: At Duke.

Pugh-Myers: Because the only teachers we had at Hillside were Miss Butts, Miss Johnson and Mrs. Gertrude—what do I want to tell you?

Roseberry: You said Henry, I think.

Pugh-Myers: Yeah, you got a good memory; it’s Gertrude Henry. And then when we got to Duke, this is when we met up with Miss Bell. This little white lady here (in photograph). She was from Canada. She was one of the instructors, along with Miss Butts and maybe a couple of more from Duke then.

Roseberry: So were your instructors mainly white?

Pugh-Myers: Except Miss Butts and Miss Henry and Miss Johnson.

Roseberry: Okay, and they were the—

Pugh-Myers: But, see, when we got to Duke, Miss Butts and Miss Henry hung with us, and then the next—we picked up on some of Duke’s instructors. I don’t know how—well, maybe—because—now, you take Nancy Gray, she worked on the ward a while, and Miss Vaughn was the supervisor. But Miss Gray hired her (Katy Hoover Evans) as the head nurse for this particular ward, because she was fixing to quit, things were so bad. Did you read that? And she was going to quit, and then she told them, no, she won’t. And she gave her job on Hanes Ward as a head nurse. And that’s where she retired from. I notice in the paper where Dr. [J. Leonard] Goldner died. In fact, all the older doctors are gone. I can’t think of nobody but Dr. Anlyan was there and William Pete. Is it William or Charles? It’s William.

Roseberry: I think it’s Charles that’s still—.

Pugh-Myers: Charles still living? He lives in Duke Forest [Forest at Duke].

Roseberry: Did you work with any of those doctors?

Pugh-Myers: Yeah. I knew when Dr. Anlyan came to work as—what you call them? Resident? Yeah.

Roseberry: Did you have interactions with them?

Pugh-Myers: Oh, yeah. Worked side by side. Sometime they had to have dressings changed, and you go in with them. Sometime the head nurse wanted you to listen at what they had to say about that particular patient. Dr.—Miss Lampert delivered the babies. Yeah. You helped get the stuff prepared, and when you get ready to change the dressings, you get the patients prepared to take them to have the baby. I had a patient over there to Duke of the Forest [Forest at Duke]. I went over to work. I saw him and his wife. They got out those big houses. Have you ever been to Hope Valley?

Roseberry: Uhn-uh.

Pugh-Myers: Oh, child! Back in those days, those big houses all back down there was the stuff. (Roseberry chuckles) But on one side is Hope Valley, and on the other side is Hope Valley North, and on the side where it say Hope Valley North, that’s where black folks lived, but in the valley, nothing but white people. Ooh, they would have big parties. Now, you take the Hope Valley Country Club. Even though I was taking care of Ms. Harrington, get her ready, get her little nice things on, and took her to the door, couldn’t go in. They didn’t have black folks in the country club. Oh, it’s been something. It’s funny to me but what we’ve gone through. And to tell you the truth, it didn’t mean a dime in the long run. It hasn’t mean nothing. Same thing, same folks. I’m going to tell you a little joke. You don’t have that on, do you?

Roseberry: I do. Should I put it on pause so you can tell me?

Pugh-Myers: Well, you put it on pause.

Roseberry: Okay. (pause in tape)

Roseberry: This is your grandmother.

Pugh-Myers: Yes. We always had a lot of food. She would buy the different seeds and things to take to the country, drive with people. We had a 1936 Ford. We had a Packard. You get in the rumble seat. We had one of those Fords which you crank up. And on my street, we were the only one that had a car.

Roseberry: She did coat check?

Pugh-Myers: In Liggett & Myers you didn’t carry your coats to where you worked. To stem tobacco. She hung up the coats in the coatroom. Now, if you ever been up Main Street to Liggett & Myers, where this come across here, to the left was where you go up some steps, and the womens and the mens hang up the coats. But that door is not there now. I can remember going sometime up there, up Mangum Street and walk down to Liggett & Myers and sit and wait for my grandmother to get off. And we would ride back with her and my grandfather in the car, home. We lived in a big house. We had those big chairs on the front porch, those big reed rockers. But some of this stuff that some of these people have gone through, we didn’t. You had those two dresses. You had your Sunday clothes, and you had your school clothes. But now all the clothes these folks wear, it look like to me is school or street or what. But that’s just the way it was. We had shoes we wore on Sunday, and shoes we wore to school. But what they doing now, I don’t know. And me, myself, I hadn’t gotten up from it. They all—at church, if I do any different, they would know what to do with me, and I just don’t know what to do, either. I don’t know how to break down and do like they’re doing. And it’s just one of those things. Pants? To church? Lord, no! Without a hat? To the church? No, no. Even when I’m traveling, I got a hat in a suitcase, so the hat won’t mess up. They wonder where the hat come from? Come out my suitcase. Because it’s all in the way you know how to pack it, because most likely we would go to church while we’re traveling. But what they doing now, I don’t know.

Roseberry: Well, it sounds like you’ve always carried yourself with a lot of dignity.

Pugh-Myers: Well, my grandmother did. She had two pair of shoes, one pair for Sunday and one to wear to work. Had a great big old apron, put that string around, candy for me and some money in there in that old big apron. Boy. If my grandmother had lived, I’d probably have been president of the United States. I used to tell my daughter that whenever she was going to school. I said, “You go to go to college,” I said, “because you got to be president of the United States.” (Roseberry laughs) And other kids would just look at me. I wouldn’t even crack a smile. But the thing about it is you got to carry yourself. Then when I was married to Mr. Pugh, we got ready to go to town to take care of business, he would always tell me to get up and get dressed. Said, “You’re going to town to take care of business.” And he was an army man. Man, we’d get downtown, and he was—he was that good looking. “Come right in, Mr. Pugh.” And here, this little white—she’s all dressed. And we would really get recognition. When you go, you go your best. Now, when this girl of mine go for a visit, to go for an interview, she wears a suit; she got a briefcase. I say, “Why you got to carry all of that since you—these folks got to—?” “Mom! Leave it alone.”

Roseberry: Were you treated well when you were at Duke?

Pugh-Myers: I was, but we came through there—he’s dead now, Dr.—(snaps fingers as she tries to remember the name)—Dr. Baker.

Roseberry: Which Dr. Baker?

Pugh-Myers: Lennox. We was being interviewed—no, we was being orientated to different wards, and he looked back and saw all this bunch of black people. “Well, where are they going? Like a bunch of hens or a bunch of something or other.” He made a snide remark. Nobody said nothing. “These are the new nurses that we’ll be helping out on the floors as they go through their training.” That’s what the instructor said. But on a whole, it’s all in the way you carry yourself. Even though we were new to the field. I can’t remember being called out of my name, act ugly. Some patients might, but you didn’t say nothing. Patients always have the last word. You know that. Regardless of what they say, they have the last word. Then you write up your nurse’s notes of what went on. But I didn’t have it rough. I really didn’t. I can’t remember no really rough stuff, no more than I see rough stuff in the street. And I don’t deal with rough people. And if I find nurses that’s talking real ugly, I’ll walk off. I never did, and I won’t now. I just wasn’t raised in a bad place. I got a nice daughter, and everybody’s crazy about her. Her child is nice. But it’s just all in the way you carry yourself and what you say. But they know that I will go to the core—like I wanted to know from this lady, this little bit right here (refers to article about Duke School of Nursing in the paper, which does not mention LPN classes). Nobody else hadn’t thought about it but me. But then when you go to the core to get to know these things and what’s said, everybody wants to get in the boat. Everybody want to know where you come from. I told her, “She [Roseberry] called me.” “What is she’s doing?” I said, “She’s doing some compiling of different things that’s going on at Duke, and we are included.” And I says, “It’s such a coincidence she comes from Tennessee where I went to school for a little while.” They all laughed. “Was she married?” I said, “Now, what are y’all asking me all about that young lady for? I didn’t ask her was she married, was she going to get married. I didn’t ask her that yet.” But don’t you think they’re not interested, these people that I’ve been calling.

Roseberry: So do you think that they have felt like that they’ve had a proper recognition for when they have accomplished.?

Pugh-Myers: Oh, they know I’m going to tell the truth. (Roseberry laughs) They know I’m going to tell the truth.

Roseberry: Maybe before you got a chance to tell your story, was there a—?

Pugh-Myers: Well, when I called John McCann down here—

Roseberry: And he did the story in the Herald Sun.

Pugh-Myers: The story in the paper. I got it written down. And I had to call some girls to come over here, and that’s before I had my surgery. As you heard in the story where I cured myself. I thought I had cured myself. And I’m getting older now, and this story has got to be told, and told just where it come from, and how long that we’ve been here and what we’re about.

Roseberry: Yeah.

Pugh-Myers: And then here they come. I was at a dinner, at a church Sunday. Oh, man, the pastor and these people—“How did you get in touch with John McCann?” I said, “I called him.” And then I told him about you were coming to finish the story of all these girls. He says—Percy Hall; he’s pastor over here. He says, “Well, Miss Clydie,” he says, “I know you will tell them.” I said, “Well, I got to tell her the truth. I don’t know nothing else to tell.”

Roseberry: Well, we really appreciate it.

Pugh-Myers: But you get quite a bit of recognition. But the thing about it is, it is very, very, very important that it got to be heard and got to be seen somewhere, and why do they forget it? But these people that’s going to this and going to that—and I called a girl. She live in Chapel Hill, and her name is Christine Jones. Oh, boy, she was so glad, she got her diploma down, and let me see when did she graduate. Oh, she told me when she graduated, and some stories that she told me about some peoples that I knew but I didn’t know she was some kin to her. But Honey, she said, “Let me see what does my diploma say?” And she graduated in ’58. But it’s amazing how—but, now, one girl I saw at a meeting at this church Sunday, Catherine Poole—she graduated in ’55. Jessie Smith graduated in ’50. But they said, “I declare, if you was any younger, I don’t know what I would do with you.” I said, “Nothing, because I want to know.” I always want to know. And the doctor would always show me what it looked like, if they was doing something. “Put your gloves on, put your mask on. Can you see that right there?” I said, “Mm-hm.” “This will do this if you do this and do that and do that.” I believe I could deliver a baby if I had to.

Roseberry: So you learned a lot just staying by somebody’s—

Pugh-Myers: Well, I was interested. This is my life, and this is—it’s other than—there’s some be ducking to keep from doing the hard work. The time come to clamp the patients and all, they’d be ducking and going on. But somebody got to do it. Somebody’s got to do it. And I feel sorry for patients, and at this age, and I went to a funeral Saturday, the girl’s just fifty-two. They just told her she had cancer in November. The funeral was Saturday. Pretty girl. And those kind of things bother me. But just like I told you, I fell three times after I became seventy-five, and that’s when I called John. But he came over. I had fallen, but I was hopping a long trying to do. I said, “Oh, I’m gonna be all right.” But it was getting worse after I seen him. But I’m doing much better now. I went in the store today, and I went and got my nails done, and I walk without the cane. The doctor had told me, “Don’t leave the cane behind,” but I have done that well. But I think I have told you everything you need to know about these girls.

Roseberry: Let me—

Pugh-Myers: Except Louise Gouch. I would love to get in touch with her.

Roseberry: Let me— (tape 1, side 2 ends; tape 2, side 1 begins)

Roseberry: I wonder if you could tell me about some of the women who were maybe grandfathered in.

Pugh-Myers: Okay. That’s good. Ruth Allen and—who was that? The reason they did that is they had been working as a maid on the floor, and they was a little too old to go into training like we were, so what they did, they gave them a test, it was just two of them, and they wore a white cap; they didn’t wear a cap like we did. You know how nurse’s aides used to wear a cap? They wore a white cap. What was that other gal’s name? Her name was Harper, Amelia Harper. They was the only two. Felt like it was very unfair for them to come in, for us to come in, and they’d been helping around, and I guess they felt they were nurses. But they worked on Psychiatry, so quite naturally the work on Psychiatry wasn’t like the work on the ward. The biggest thing, you’re watching these patients and being companion to them, because everybody on Psychiatry mostly did for themselves, except they was locked up. So they did the grandfather clause with them. That’s the only two.

Roseberry: Okay.

Pugh-Myers: So that was by waiver, as they called it.

Roseberry: So they just took a test.

Pugh-Myers: They took a little test and maybe got somebody’s temperature, and the blood pressure and bedpan. You know, just a little something.

Roseberry: Yeah.

Pugh-Myers: And they gave them their license, and they were called LPNs, too.

Roseberry: So they didn’t have to take the state board necessarily.

Pugh-Myers: I don’t remember them going to state board. It’s just a matter of two, doing this for them, I believe. But several classes had been in, and they felt like they were left out, which they were, and, you know, with us coming to the floors and there they were, with these just plain white cap, like you do when you’re a nurse’s aide in the church. So that’s the kind of cap they wore; they didn’t wear the cap we wore. And I can’t even remember them going to a convention with us. You know, we always went to state and national conventions. And this is where I told you we met Jesse Helms. Jesse Helms, he was something.

Roseberry: What did Jesse Helms say?

Pugh-Myers: Jesse Helms was very racist. Oh! At the banquet he was talking about us like a dog. And here we sit.

Roseberry: He was the invited speaker?

Pugh-Myers: He was the invited speaker. But when I went to Florida to care for a patient, I met Dr. [Leonard] Palumbo, and he used to be the head of Obstectrical here in Duke, and when I got there with this patient, he wanted to—no, Urology. He asked me, “How’d you get down here?” I said, “I come with your patient to bring him.” And that was fun. I stayed in Florida thirty days. I know he’s dead now. All these people, they’re old like I am. They dead and gone. Earthworm done eat them up. But it’s something. And to look at Duke now and the way it’s going, I would get lost if somebody didn’t carry me. (Roseberry laughs) I go in the front door. I don’t go—and then it’s a long ways. But the hospitality is great. They’re growing and growing and growing. Have you met John Hope [Franklin]?

Roseberry: No.

Pugh-Myers: You haven’t met John Hope yet? He didn’t have much to do with the hospital, but you know, he’s in education, and he’s a great historical—. He taught, and he’s very interesting to talk to. He got a hothouse with African violets and some other plants in there. It’s very interesting. Your dean, your president now, stays in the house—they remodeled it—Dr. Hart. That was something to see way back there, but they redid it over. Dr. Hart was great big. He was chief surgeon. He was nice. I mean, on the whole, the doctors was pretty good after we got in there, and we met a lot, because they didn’t have very many Duke students, and the thing about it is, Duke students—they knew nursing care and failed the state boards. Chapel Hill students knew the bookwork and didn’t do good nursing work. Now, that was something else, going over to Chapel Hill to work. I went to work over there, and I worked on a ward for about forty-five days. Too much for me. I had to come from over there. And one of the supervisors from Duke, Miss Carr, was over there. And we helped her at Duke, but when I got over there to work for her over there, boy, she was something else. I said, “I’m coming away from over here.” I stayed there forty-five days, and I left. But I would do private duty over there at times.

Roseberry: Now, those state boards—I understand that North Carolina had just accepted practical nurses. Is that right? Like, they had just said it’s okay to have practical nurses, so you took the state boards to be a practical nurse.

Pugh-Myers: Right.

Roseberry: So this must have been a really new test, even.

Pugh-Myers: Right, we were the first to graduate from the state of North Carolina.

Roseberry: So they were testing out the test.

Pugh-Myers: Right. When it came in the paper—I told you this is new. This is rare. Nurses are short. So this is the in between.

Roseberry: Okay.

Pugh-Myers: That here we are. But you have to go to the state board to prove that you were worthy to do this halfway, when the other half is the RN, you see.

Roseberry: Okay.

Pugh-Myers: Know what I mean?

Roseberry: So the—

Pugh-Myers: Practical nurse—we stand between the RN—but you still had to go through this theory and our testing, and go down to state board. I think they’re paying about a hundred and fifty or a hundred and sixty dollars for two years now. I just put my license at rest. My daughter said I don’t want to work no more. But I have a license. When we started off, we paid three dollars. You have to be licensed. And when you go to be hired for a job, you had to have a license.

Roseberry: So did you feel like there were a lot of eyes on you just because the whole thing was so new?

Pugh-Myers: Sure. This was very rare, because—now, we had Lincoln [Hospital]. Do you know about Lincoln?

Roseberry: Uh-huh.

Pugh-Myers: That’s just totally black, and they didn’t have a big program. I sat beside one of the supervisors there. She couldn’t even see good. Miss Jones. But anyway, I told her about the uniform she used to wear—you used to stand it there the floor by itself because it was so stiff. But that’s where we went to the hospital. That’s where my kids were born, except Sharon. I got caught. I was doing private duty and started having pain, and I thought it was banana pudding, and the baby wasn’t due until May or June, they say, but I went to the bathroom there. I wasn’t home, because I was doing private duty. And my stomach begin to hurt, and I said, “Well, let me go to the bathroom.” I said, “This banana pudding is killing my stomach.” And then I went on, and then I didn’t nothing much one way or another, and I started back to my patient’s room and went to open the door. The pain hit me again. I said, “Oh, this ain’t banana pudding.” I went back in the bathroom. So the nurses followed me in there, and they got me in a wheelchair and carried me downstairs, and I had the baby. (Roseberry laughs) That was about the most embarrassing thing I ever—in her book, somewhere or another, they said the nurse on duty had the baby. How is this for intangible tax? I was going to quit in the next month or so, but I had the baby—that was awful. But I said, “Oh, this isn’t banana pudding.” Should have named her Banana Pudding. (Roseberry chuckles) That was something. But it was worth the money. And then if you broke the laws and you didn’t do right, you got recommended from the state board. Some peoples got expelled from state board altogether; some for being drunk, some for giving the wrong medicines, some for being rude. And that was the law of the state board.

Roseberry: So you gave some medications?

Pugh-Myers: I gave medications in the rest home. I trained for that. The wards was just too big at Duke, and I really wasn’t interested, but then, when I started doing private duty and then sometime they would call for extra nurses, then I would do medicines, too. But you got to be trained.

Roseberry: I understand that.

Pugh-Myers: And they call you advanced LPN then.

Roseberry: Ah. Okay.

Pugh-Myers: Because you had took the course and passed the course that you were capable of giving medicines. And the main thing was be sure you gave the right dose, the right patients, and the right amount. Read your label three times. Read your patient’s name band to make sure this is the right patient. I can remember one night this RN, they’re twins. They came to the floor and borrowed some heparin, I believe it was, when she should have been giving insulin, and she gave the patient the wrong medicine, and threw the bottle away. But Miss Vaughn, the supervisor—they went in all the garbage cans on different wards and found it. If you make a mistake, tell it, because it’s just as good for that patient’s life as it is for you. And that’s what I always tell them: If you make a mistake, tell it and tell the truth. I said that’s the reason the man put an eraser on the pencil; he knew you were going to make mistakes. You could save a patient’s life and save your license by telling the truth. And they have incidents report slips that you wrote out. But tell the truth. Don’t get caught in a lie, because if you do, you’re going away from there. And she did. I don’t know how in the world they found that bottle, because where she got it from and where they—here she come with it later, maybe two or three hours later, and who she had with her to help find that bottle, I don’t know. But she gave the patient the wrong medicine.

Roseberry: It sounds like Miss Vaughn knew her stuff.

Pugh-Myers They all did. They were tight. They were tight. And that’s why Duke didn’t have as many nursing students coming out as they did, is because they had a program there.

Roseberry: The School of Nursing?

Pugh-Myers: Uh-huh. I was just trying to see did she say in this article how many. But the thing about it is, this old bed here (refers to photo on a pamphlet advertising the LPN program), I can remember them letting the side rails down and this girl is giving a shot to the patient. I bet she (refers to her phone call to dean of nursing school) wanted to know what do I want with her. I want to talk about what went on betwixt here, between ’42 and ’64.

Roseberry: It’s an article about the School of Nursing.

Pugh-Myers: That’s where we come in at, because—

Roseberry: Well, maybe it has to do with the fact that you weren’t technically School of Nursing; you were kind of hospital side. I think they kind of differentiate sometimes between the two.

Pugh-Myers: Well, to tell you the truth, they really didn’t want to say we got our prep training at Duke. They really didn’t want to say. In other words, you were hid.

Roseberry: How were you hid?

Pugh-Myers: They didn’t want anybody to know you were there! I told you, we had to take our uniforms off. We didn’t wear them through the street. We went there and we wore our street clothes, and we went in a little room right as big as this, and we changed to the white pinafore blouse and that pin-striped thing, and you put it on, and you put your white shoes on, and you went to the wards. They didn’t want nobody to know we was training in there. I told you, there weren’t no black folks in there. Not doing what we were doing. And those who worked in there, they was kicking at us and picking at us, in some of the same ones ended up taking practical nursing. Oh, they had a good time. “Look at them! And them bedpan covers.” And the bedpan—like, this is the bedpan, and our uniforms were stripes, like—no, that’s not one of them, but like you see right here (in pamphlet). But the thing about it is, Mr. Collins, who was the director of the program—he liked that pinstripe.

Roseberry: So you had a stripe down the—

Pugh-Myers: And then two years later, or a year and a half later, Watts, which is the Durham School of Arts—(doorbell rings)—they went to—you want to cut it off?

Roseberry: Sure. (pause in recording)

Roseberry: Tell me about—

Pugh-Myers After this program began, Watts looked over there and saw that we was doing such good work; they didn’t have any LPNs at all; they just had RNs. So they decided they’ll—I think they said fifty-two. They just decided they’re going to open their own LPN program. And their uniforms were gray stripes and a gray band, but they didn’t wear caps either, just like we didn’t, and they trained for the year, like we did. They had to go to state board like we did. Last week I went to a funeral of a friend girl of mine’s. She had graduated thirty years ago, and in that ceremony they talked about this nurse that she met, an older lady, thirty years ago and how we became friends and a team and how hard we worked. She was cremated. Her name was Wanda Fay Harris. I went down to Hillsboro. She had a nice funeral. But she told me she was going to be cremated. I don’t want to be burned up. Oh, no, no, no, no. No, I ain’t going to be burnt twice; I’ll be burnt one time. But even so—she graduated from the Watts program. Well, we didn’t go to Watts, either. In later years, after they got started, they let us come. That’s doing private duty to go to Watts, and then they hired one, too. We just stayed at Lincoln, Lincoln Community Center here. And then they didn’t have anybody doing private duty. I used to be a patient there whenever I was young. Tonsils taken out, and my son was born there, but that’s the onliest place we had to go.

Roseberry: So you weren’t even allowed on Nott Ward?

Pugh-Myers Well, when we went there, it was really something rare was wrong. My grandmother was there when she was sick, and they didn’t know what was wrong with her, but they had her diagnosis on her death certificate said something about pellagra. Well, when my grandfather needed a death certificate, I looked it up years ago, and she had cancer of the brain. That would have been the name.

Roseberry: So that was really extreme cases only.

Pugh-Myers: Right. Well, see, you didn’t have big (unintelligible) like we had, but she was a hard case to get along, and they didn’t keep her long because they couldn’t find what was wrong with her, and they sent her home, and she died at home. I think I was about eight or nine. She had a hospital bed. Had a rubber sheet on there because they didn’t want her to mess up the mattress and so forth. They didn’t have nurses. My grandfather stayed up—worked at Liggett & Myers in the daytime and stayed up at night, and we had to turn her and all this kind of stuff. I used to have to feed her. But this place made a big turnover. Now, Watts had the wooden floors, and I took care of Dr. Hare. He was over in Hope Valley. He was one of the Watts doctors, and I took care of Dr. Davis. He was one of the Watts doctors. But I took care of him in the home. Dr. Hare had one leg, and he wondered how I was going to get him out of the bed. I told him I was a nurse. We had a slideboard. You can get the slideboard under. Then he come down to a chair and get in. How he going to get back? He got back. Eddie Cameron, which was Duke Indoor Stadium—football—no, basketball coach. He’s a big, tall—his wife wondered how I’m going to give him a shower. I said, “I’m going to give him a shower.” But she couldn’t understand how you do it. I says, “I was trained. I told you I was a nurse.” And Eddie would just grin. But these are people—Wallace Wade. He was a football coach. I had to go over to his house. That’s in Hope Valley, right over. He was interesting to take care of. I told you I have met a lot of nice peoples, interesting peoples. And Dr. (taps table as she tries to remember name)¬—Dr. Hare’s wife told me, “When you come, bring your lunch.” Well, I always would have a carton of juice or either soda or either peanut butter crackers, like that. Ate a big breakfast. I’m going to get off at three. So she always asked me where my lunch. I said, “I got it.” So she told me to put it in the refrigerator. I said, “No, I don’t need it in the refrigerator. I’m all right.” I got this thermos. But she wanted to be sure you didn’t eat her food. Well, one day she was cooking and she was making, mmm—what’s that—I always didn’t like it no way. Them things always had poison. Mushroom sandwich. You know the big—what you call them, rubella? Those big—

Roseberry: Portabella mushrooms.

Pugh-Myers: Yes, and she was putting it in the frying pan, and she wanted me to eat some, and I said, “No, Ma’am, I can’t eat none of that. Because that will kill you.” She said, “I’m clean.” But she done already told me she didn’t want me to have none of her food, so I wasn’t going to eat none of her food. (Roseberry laughs) But that was fun. Now, what else you want to ask?

Roseberry: Well, can I ask about when you—well, first of all, you mentioned that there were two classes that you kind of stuck together.

Pugh-Myers: That was class one and two.

Roseberry: Class one and two.

Pugh-Myers: Class two, when they came—let’s see, they came—we finished in ’49, and they came in ’49, and I think it was—let me see, I think it was fifteen of them, and I think twelve graduated. And it’s about two or three of them left; all them dead, too. And my very, very, very best friend—her children takes care of me—she was in the second class, and we were friends for fifty-two years. Well, Honey, her children—they buy me so much nice stuff, it makes me want to cry. They gave me one of the prettiest two-piece white suit—ooh! This past Christmas, they gave me a blue one. If I was in the hospital, they always brought gowns and this thing and that thing, and rubbing me up and doing this and—. But when their mother was sick, and she had cancer, but she didn’t want me to know it for a long time, but she told me, “I got something to tell you, but don’t ask me what’s wrong and don’t start crying.” So when it really did come down to the final days and she was there with her husband and at home, and she had more boys than she did girls, and each of these girls had—these children had to work, and I was working at night, or either I didn’t work. I went there every morning, just like I was going to work. She called me Claudie. “Come on in, Claudie, and sit down.” I said, “I didn’t come to sit. I come to work.” I said, “We got something to do.” And she was happy. She was getting down. “Now, there you go.” I said, “You’re the patient and I’m the nurse today.” I washed and I cooked, see that she eat and clean her up, stayed until one of the children came. And so I said to her husband, I said, “I know you get tired of seeing me every morning six o’clock or seven o’clock,” but she needed me. She died, too. I was there. I said to the daughter, because she was dying and she didn’t know it but I did, and I had been to the bed, and I was talking to her, and I said, “Helen, I’m going to go over here and sit down.” I said, “But I’ll be right here.” And evidently she must have dropped off to sleep, and she hollered, “Clydie Mae!” And I got up. Nobody calls me Clydie Mae but somebody I been knowing long. I said, “Helen?” I said, “What is it? I’m here. Sitting right here.” So I said, “You go back to sleep.” I says, “Yvonne is here. I’m sitting right here in this chair.” But I had already done told everybody not to talk in the room because you can hear. When you’re unconscious, you can hear. And how I know, because I’ve been unconscious. I had a tubal pregnancy and I was unconscious, and I heard them talking. They was scared I was going to die. “Get this, get that.” They was trying to write it down. The doctor was cussing to them to get this medicine and write later, because she’s going to die. Oh! You don’t know. When they start pumping blood, I begin to come up, and I hollered and screamed, and they tied me back down, and they said, “Let’s get this gal to the operating room. She’s bleeding on the inside.” And they came to the operating room. But I heard everything they was doing and everything, but I couldn’t move, couldn’t do nothing. And that’s the way it is when you die. You can hear. This goes last. But anyway, I said to the girl, I says—I carried them out, and I talked to them, and I says, “She’s in pain, and she’s got to stay comfortable, but she’s not retching and going on and calling and pulling.” I said, “They have medicine to give her.” I said, “But it’s up to you, if you want her to have it or do you want her to pull and tear. You know that she can’t get well.” Dr.—oh—he’s a good doctor. “He done done all he can do, and he said, ‘Keep her comfortable.’ So now, I told y’all the way it look. It’d be best to keep her comfortable, not snow her under, just let her go slowly.” They called me mama C. Said, “Mama C, should we call in the nurse?” I said, “Y’all call. Not me.” So they called, and they gave her something. Well, I saw her going, going—and this girl and I were sitting over there. I told her, “Come on.” She said, “What you want?” I said, “Let’s go to the bed and hold hands and pray.” And so together. So the next time the nurse come to bring the medicine, she was gone. The lady said, “How long she been gone?” I said, “Five minutes.” I said, “I turned the light on, but you didn’t come.” So I said to her daughter, I said, “She’s gone.” She said, “How do you know?” I said, “I don’t feel no pulse, and she’s calm. A peace has just dropped over her face.” And I said, “Call your daddy and tell him to come on.” And by that time, everybody got there, and guess who passed out? Me. That’s the biggest mess they ever seen. Isn’t this awful? But nobody get acquainted with death. I don’t care how well that you been around patients. And when I work with a patient, I have the tendency to become a part of that family. It’s just like a part of me. Mostly likely, when these peoples die, I go to their funeral. I come along to the funeral. I be there to see what they do, how they do. But you got a church up there on the corner of Main—you know where Main Street is? This lady was cremated, and they had the ceremony in the little garden back there in the church. I didn’t know they do back there. I like to die dead, because I never seen nothing in church. You know, you usually get an address at a graveyard. But this lady—Senator [Kenneth] Royall—have you ever heard talk here (unintelligible). He used to be a senator. His wife—I had her up—she’s supposed to have been dying. (Roseberry chuckles) Feeding her, talking, walking her to the bed. I’m trying to get her well. But the doctor said no more. And the doctor caught me in the room and told me, “Don’t feed her no more. Lay her in the bed and don’t take her out no more.” I like to die. Well, I did what he said do and just keep her lips wet. She knew she was going to die: she had talked about it. It’s about time for me to get off, and they didn’t have another nurse, and I called a nurse that I knew and asked her would she come and stay; if she couldn’t come, I couldn’t leave. So she did come. A couple of hours after I left, she died.

Roseberry: Did you go to Dr. Trent’s funeral?

Pugh-Myers: No, I didn’t go to his funeral. I can’t remember—of course, it’s been so long. That was right after we first got out of training, when we first got there.

Roseberry: So you weren’t necessarily in private nursing.

Pugh-Myers: Yeah, I was doing private duty, but, see, I had worked two years—he died—let me see, he died about ’50, I believe, or ’51 [1948]. I’m going to call Mrs. Semans, and I’m going to talk to her and see. But I know it was back there. And one of my friends—she used to work in the garden and everything for her. But I’m young at doing private duty now. But I just—that night—mmm, it was terrible. He was bleeding from everywhere. And they was pumping blood everywhere. The doctors and things working on him, but he couldn’t make it.

Roseberry: Let me flip our tape over here. (tape 2, side 1 ends; side 2 begins)

Roseberry: So tell me about that switch from the public ward to the private ward.

Pugh-Myers: Well, in this book [Duke: Before and After Integration], they had made—they made the new wing. It used to be nothing but just one side, and they added on this wing over here. When they added on this wing, they had mostly people that can afford to be on these wings.

Roseberry: So it was private.

Pugh-Myers: Because this is private, strictly private. There was Cushing [Ward]. No not Cushing, there was Reed, Hanes and another one under them. But they was nice rooms, but one day they’re short of help when I was working, and they called for a nurse to come over and help do some beds and some patients. Now, that’s how I got a chance to get over there at that time.

Roseberry: They asked you to come over there permanently?

Pugh-Myers: No.

Roseberry: No.

Pugh-Myers: We just went out. But that day—you didn’t go all the time at that time. But as time went on and the more patients you waited on, they wanted to see that colored girl.

Roseberry: Because they liked you?

Pugh-Myers: They wanted to see that colored girl that was over here yesterday, and they would send for you. Then sometime they might send another one or so, and then they began to kind of gradually—there’s one, one to floor maybe, maybe two. But they wanted to see that colored girl what they had yesterday. Then they would reassign you to the—but that was a slow progress thing. Then in ’55—see, we’d been there since ’49—’49, ’50, ’51, ’52, ’53, ’54—we been there six years when they made her (taps Kay Hoover Evans book) head nurse, but see, she got a lot of stuff that wasn’t even there. She wasn’t even there when we got there. And some of these people’s names that she has in here, they were friends of hers, and they had a club called a breakfast club. They all got in except me. I didn’t want to be in that.

Roseberry: I want to say for the tape that we’re talking about a book called Duke: Before and After Integration by Katy Hoover Evans.

Pugh-Myers: Right.

Roseberry: I’m sorry. Go ahead.

Pugh-Myers: But she came way after—and if you notice, Miss Lucretia name from here, and Charmin Watson who was there, and Mr. Kerns—he was the public relations man. He used to go around and see everything going on right or wrong. Big old man. But she missed a lot of things. When she was writing the book, she didn’t ask me anything about—then when this girl sent me this book, I was surprised because some—a lot of things, she missed. She really did.

Roseberry: What did she miss?

Pugh-Myers: She missed the beginning of—let me see, Elsie Moss Vaughn, the night supervisor. Joanne Douglas—she was a head nurse. And the supervisor, Miss Leonard—that’s the lady I told you that she was an army nurse. (Roseberry chuckles) And boy, she was—(makes loud, evenly spaced mechanical noises). And when she do it, everybody be all—(Roseberry laughs)

Roseberry: Got to watch out.

Pugh-Myers: But it was a lot of fun. Just like I told you, my cousin did the cremation, and I was there. They had a great big old thing made like a grate. In fact, it was a furnace. Laid the body on there.

Roseberry: At Duke?

Pugh-Myers: Uh-huh. He had (unintelligible), and then you save the ashes. His name was Reverend E. J. Simms. He used to do the cremation. I didn’t like that either. Laying on a grate Then they had ward betwixt where they did studies on different things, and why they did this, I don’t know. They would have babies in jars, like the fetus—the baby might have died—in formaldehyde. They were on shelves along this way.

Roseberry: Where was that?

Pugh-Myers*: At Duke.

Roseberry: Any particular—?

Pugh-Myers: Yes, off of McDowell. You will go through here. This is where they would test the urine and test the sputum, back in there, in these labs. Okay. I had a friend—she was a Supe. I guess you heard talk of Dr.—the Rice doctor, Dr.—

Roseberry: Dr. Kempner.

Pugh-Myers: Dr. [Walter] Kempner. He hired her. She was a technician. But he paid her. Duke did not.

Roseberry: She did dietician stuff?

Pugh-Myers: She was doing the testing of—you see, Dr. Kempner had all his patients. You had to pee in these jars. If you go there and eat, he can tell it. The proteins and stuff would go back in the urine. But he had her special. But this little place—I don’t know what’s back in there now. It was off of MacDowell, something like a lab. And they would test sputum; they would test urine; they’d test pieces of tissues and stuff back through there. But back through there were shelves like here, and in jars was parts of babies, some whole babies, but they were in formaldehyde. And I don’t know what they were going to do with them later on, but I saw that when I was there. Maybe a lady might have a birth of a baby and didn’t want it, and they preserved it. Maybe they might use it later. I don’t know. But that was something to see, too. Just like I told you we was late getting from lunch, and we got ourself taking a short cut. Miss McCoy and I—she was much older than I was. We was just a-running. We got on this elevator and when we got off, we got off into the morgue. That was something. And, “Come on in.” They was all working on—not the morgue. You know where they was—

Roseberry: Anatomy?

Pugh-Myers: Yes, where he was—

Roseberry: An anatomy class or something?

Pugh-Myers: Right. That scared us to death. We shut that elevator, and we got back down, and we were late getting to the floor. But they got something in there for you to see. Okay, have you seen the patient—not the patient. Have you seen the peoples over there in the chapel?

Roseberry: Um-hm.

Pugh-Myers: You seen that?

Roseberry: Yeah, yeah. Oh, the people [in sarcophagi] that are preserved over there, yeah.

Pugh-Myers: Yeah. You ever seen that?

Roseberry: Yeah.

Pugh-Myers: Oh, my. Ugh! I seen that, too, but I don’t care for that. But it’s a lot around to see, and you being as old as I am, writing all this stuff, (Roseberry laughs) getting it together. But somebody’s got to get it together. And it’s very interesting to know what went on back there, because this program here (points to LPN pamphlet) spread out to other counties, as in some of the papers you saw—

Roseberry: Yeah.

Pugh-Myers: —that they had classes and things and how they got started.

Roseberry: Because of the success of your program, do you think?

Pugh-Myers: Um-hm. So it has worked. And it has caused a whole lot of peoples to have more than they ever would have gotten if they hadn’t went to this program. And you still got some nurses there that ought to be at home. Just about to fall down. Their legs hurting and their backs hurting and all that, but they’re trying to make it till they get sixty-five. But a lot of us have gone that way. But girl, because we worked. We worked. And I mean we worked hard. And you didn’t have no break like you do. The onliest thing you had was your lunch break, and if you happen to do get sick and had to go to the bathroom, somebody went with you to be sure you didn’t stay too long. “It’s time to get back.”

Roseberry: They did that with everybody, or they did that with the practical nurses?

Pugh-Myers: They did it with we black folks, because we just got there.

Roseberry: Ah.

Pugh-Myers: I don’t know what happened to the peoples in the kitchen. Of course, they ate the same place we ate. I’ll tell you something else. Just like if you were getting ready to make chicken salad—and I worked in the kitchen when I was a teenager, after school. You weren’t allowed to eat. Just like you pull the skin off and keep your white meat and get ready for your chicken salad. You weren’t allowed to eat that skin. You’d get fired. They’re going to throw that away.

Roseberry: That was at Duke?

Pugh-Myers: Sure. No, you didn’t eat nothing. Uhn-uh! Go on and throw it away, and you hungry, because you were not to eat it. And I love to eat the chicken skin. I’m not thinking about—I made some chicken—day before yesterday with chicken soup and rice, and this Chik-fil-A—the white part, breast that was sent to me from Omaha by a friend. It turned out to be a pretty good dish, and then after it got done you’re supposed to sprinkle some shredded cheese on it. It tastes right good. But I want to go to something else now. I’m through with that.

Roseberry: Can I ask how old you were when you started this program?

Pugh-Myers: I was twenty.

Roseberry: Twenty. Okay.

Pugh-Myers: Was I twenty? Eighteen? I’m seventy-seven now, and I’ve been out since ’49. I believe I was—I believe eighteen, nineteen, something like that, because I graduated high school about eighteen. Between eighteen and nineteen.

Roseberry: Okay. Thanks. And I’m a little confused about when the wards integrated. Now, you worked there for two years after you were hired.

Pugh-Myers: Um-hm.

Roseberry: So that would be 1951 when you went onto the registry.

Pugh-Myers: Yeah.

Roseberry: Is that right?

Pugh-Myers: Yes.

Roseberry: And when was the integration of the—?

Pugh-Myers: When it was signed that they weren’t going to get no more money from the government, and the government said, “You have to integrate.”

Roseberry: Okay. But that was after you had gone onto that private registry.

Pugh-Myers: I believe so.

Roseberry: Okay.

Pugh-Myers: Martin Luther King hadn’t marched then, but the government was—something about the money.

Roseberry: They were starting to change their attitude.

Pugh-Myers: You couldn’t get paid if you didn’t integrate.

Roseberry: Okay.

Pugh-Myers: So you had to integrate in order to get the government’s money, you see, because we had a lot of patients on welfare. Welfare was where you couldn’t pay your bill and the government paid for you. Black or white, because at that time they didn’t have nothing like insurance like we’ve got now. Just like I told you, sometimes when the patient get well, they will call a taxi. Put the patient in a taxi, buy them a bus ticket and send them home that way. That’s one of the hardest things I have ever seen.

Roseberry: I’m not sure I understand. They would call the taxi and then—

Pugh-Myers: Get the taxi, get them a ticket at the bus station, and the taxi would take them on to the bus station—

Roseberry: The taxi would take them to—okay.

Pugh-Myers: And then they would go on home, and I imagine the people would be waiting on the side of the road, I guess. I don’t know.

Roseberry: Did you ever have to do anything like that?

Pugh-Myers: You get them ready. You get the clothes ready and everything, and you would go with them down to the door, and the taxi would take them on to the bus station or train station or wherever. They sick, now. And that’s a tough pill. Sometime they would give them a couple of dollars or give them something to eat. Sometime they would give them a sandwich to carry with them.

Roseberry: So that was blacks and—

Pugh-Myers: Well, that was either.

Roseberry: —or poor whites.

Pugh-Myers: When time for you to get ready to go.

Roseberry: Oh, okay.

Pugh-Myers: So that was either, then. It’s time for you to go, whether your peoples were there or not, and you didn’t have no money. By this time, a social worker come in, and her name was [Sarah] Harriette Amey. She made these arrangements. She was black. I knew her. Her mother taught me school.

Roseberry: That was before you left.

Pugh-Myers: That was in the two years—you know, when I was there working.

Roseberry: Okay.

Pugh-Myers: These peoples kind of started kind of creeping—. She came in, but she did other work other than social work. And just like I told you, this Supe girl, Kempner hired her. Dr. Kempner paid her. Duke didn’t pay her. You see, he just got in from Germany, I think is where they said he’s from. Rice was the main thing there. But you eat anything else other than that rice, he would know it because we had to get these specimens over there to his lab, and he’d come and raise the devil, (Roseberry chuckles) because you was there on the program. But I do know—I had a patient had high blood pressure, and I made sure I fed her her rice and fruit, and her pressure did come down like they wanted it to come down. But boy, she would raise the devil about rice and applesauce and rice and peaches and rice, that we had nothing but fruit and that big bowl of rice. But you had to eat that rice, and I made sure that she ate it. Nice lady. Up on Nott Ward. “Oh, here she come!” But boy, they give you the runoffs, because I tried to go on a diet when I was—. (Roseberry laughs) You need something else but that rice. I don’t know, give me some rice and gravy. But it was something. I told my pastor, and I told some of the church—my Sunday school class—I told them, “If Miss Roseberry don’t hurry up and get back here,” I said, “By next week this time, I be done for. Everybody’s getting Alzheimer’s around here.” “Well, there ain’t no days that you get Alzheimer’s, because you stay busy.” They have a program at my church, and each woman was supposed to get five—after five people that you got, you’re supposed to ask these five peoples, and they’re supposed to give you a dollar. This is Women’s Day. We had colors. My color was purple. Well, I knew a lot of people, and the younger people—they didn’t know these peoples, and they wouldn’t ask these people. Well, when I go to you to ask you for something, it’s not but one thing you can say: yes or no. You go to these peoples and you explain what you’re doing, you explain what the church is about and what we’re going to do or what we’re trying to do and what we’re going to do with this money when we have this program, and want you to come, and my color is purple. You wear anything you want to. I have some carrying a flower vase, some carrying flowers, some carrying—oh, you should have seen me. I looked just like I don’t know what. But anyway, they all became jealous. I was trying to get $10,000. Remind you, I’m not supposed to have but five. They got their five or their six or whatever. And they got a whiff in the air that I had more money, and they was worried about the money. “She got the money.” Yeah, I got the money. But then it’s the Women’s Day program. I asked some mens of the church to help us out because we’re going to help them when their time come. They hadn’t thought about it. And I got about fifteen or twenty men. They gave me money. Well, everybody wants to collect the money. “No, I have one lady I give my money to to take it in.” When I get it, I turn it in right away, because I don’t want to hold nobody’s money. Well, time for the program, everybody had everybody’s money. I had on purple. You know, in the Bible days. I had something tied around my head, and it was hanging down. I had something hanging down with some things hanging with bells and that. And this little silver box here, I was carrying it because in the meantime I was carrying a cane because my hip was hurting. And they wanted to know what’s in the box. I told them, “Money, the money.” My keys was in there. The money’s gone. When time for the program: “I know you got the money.” “Sure is. It’s in the box.” And a lot of people were there. They didn’t know what I had, but I knew what I had. I had six thousand dollars. And they like to died. The ones that’s supposed to know everybody and know everything and those that’s supposed to do this and supposed to do that, instead of going on and getting that money, they was worried about me. And, “Where did you get this money from?” I didn’t get a dime, nobody outside the church. I got it from the people right in the church. They didn’t know what to say to some of the people. They didn’t know the people. One lady gave me five hundred, two hundred, three hundred. But I would never tell nobody. But I knew I had pretty close to five thousand, but I didn’t know I had six.

Roseberry: Pretty impressive.

Pugh-Myers: They gave me a big old plaque. The preacher asked me, “How’d you get in touch with—?” I said, “Do you know how old I am? And I’ve been in this church over fifty years, and I’ve been nursing here about fifty-five years.” I said, “Do you know the peoples know me?” I said, “But I didn’t get any money from outside the church.” So then they had another program, and then something came up and they gave me another plaque. I don’t want no more dust hoppers. I don’t want nothing but just live the life and just go on. I don’t feel good. Just leave it off. In fact, I don’t want to do nothing.

Roseberry: Well, you’ve done plenty. You’ve done very well.

Pugh-Myers: I got to get in touch with this lady here, though. I got to see what she said. I want to know what happened and why they made mention of a few—we called in a few nurses, even though they wasn’t RNs. But right in there. It’s a big missing space. You know they had to be nursing.

Roseberry: Yeah.

Pugh-Myers: But the limitations of the nurses was small. They wore blue, plain blue, with an apron and a cap. They looked right nice. White stocking and shoes. They were scared, too.

Roseberry: That was the School of Nursing—

Pugh-Myers: That was School of Nursing at Duke. And a white cap. And Dr. [Jay] Arena, which used to be the children doctor—his daughter [niece, Mary Jo Arena] was a nurse. She worked with me. I don’t know where are those peoples now. But it’s a lot, lot, lot, lot, lot, lot, lot, lot, lot, lot, lot, lot. Mm, mm, mm. Now, when you get through with all this, when do you—do you take one subject—are you putting together? Say, for instance, you’re working on nursing now. Where would you go from here, after this, after nursing? Which category will you take next?

Roseberry: Well, that’s a good question. I think a lot of it depends on kind of what comes up.

Pugh-Myers: With this story here and with what I told you—to me, it look like it ought to blend in there together.

Roseberry: The history of the School of Nursing.

Pugh-Myers: Because Dr. Flowers was the president of Duke at that time.

Roseberry: Um-hm.

Pugh-Myers: And I met his wife, and she had to sit up real proper. (Roseberry chuckles) And then Dr. Terry Sanford. Dr. Terry Sanford and Mr. Harrington, my boss—they were real good friends. He was a down-to-earth man.

Roseberry: Who was your boss?

Pugh-Myers: Mr. Harrington, when I went to work for him.

Roseberry: Oh, I see. Okay.

Pugh-Myers: He gave Duke a lot of money. He had a lot of money. In fact, he gave me thirty thousand dollars. He sure did. When his wife died. I like to died myself. But he did some awful nice things for me and my daughter, because my husband left when my daughter was twelve. He worked at Liggett & Myers. He knew he had left when I didn’t. Reason he knew he had left because Liggett & Myers had a big policy, and he took my name off the policy, and he knew it, Mr. Harrington. So when he called me to work for him—Mr. Pugh left in October, and this big policy what they had in the office—he took my name off and put my daughter’s name on, and he knew something had happened, because he was well thought of at the factory, too. So in December—he left in October. In December, before Christmas, he called. “Mrs. Pugh?” I said, “Yes, Mr. Harrington. Hey, how you doin’? Merry Christmas. Glad to hear from you.” I was in bed, sleeping. He said, “I know.” “Know what, Mr. Harrington?” “I know Charlie left, and I want you to come to work for us.” I said, “When?” He said, “Can you come tomorrow night?” I said, “I sure can.” I hollered, and I cried that night, and I got up from there. But when Mr. Pugh was here, we used to visit them. We used to go over and see them, him and his wife. Mr. Pugh would get all dressed in his brown suit. He was a good looker. And they had something in common. But he knew that. And he called me to work two months after he left, and I stayed there twenty years. So be it. His wife died.

Roseberry: You took care of her for twenty years?

Pugh-Myers: For twenty years. And this Nancy Poole, which graduated—she was the day nurse, and I was the night nurse. She worked in the daytime, and they had some sort of disagreement, and he let her go. It grieved his wife. I begged him to let her come back. In other words, she’d always do nice things for her. If she needed money or needed to borrow money and give her some money, but then he’d do the nice things for me. So each one of us had each one. But it was very nice.

Roseberry: Was there anything that I have not asked you today that needs to be said or needs to be covered?

Pugh-Myers: I think you’ve heard everything about practical nursing classes. Oh, Durham Tech was not built until the—Durham Tech was built—

Roseberry: In the fifties.

Pugh-Myers: Between ’59 and ’62 somewhere, they started building on it.

Roseberry: Okay.

Pugh-Myers: So this is why we had to go to Hillside.

Roseberry: So this program grew into Durham Tech.

Pugh-Myers: Yes, it grew into the junior college. But you see, that’s the reason we was at the school, and Durham Tech—have you seen it?

Roseberry: Yes.

Pugh-Myers: They built it in ’62, I heard somebody say. But Mr. Collins was still there, but Phil Wynne is there now. He goes to St. Joseph over here. He’s been there ever since Mr. Collins was there. But the place is large; they have a whole lot going on there. You know, they’re getting degrees for different things. I’ve been in there once, and I thought one time I was going to take up some subjects. That’s too much time. The biggest thing I want to take up is computer, to get more familiarized. I can do a little bit, but I want to do more with it. But at this age, you can’t get too busy. You’re too busy, you have Alzheimer’s. I remember at least some of this stuff along. Because I like to do a lot of things at the church, and then I like to go to Bible study; I like Sunday school, and you got to study your lessons in order to keep up with those peoples, and if you don’t study your lesson, you won’t know it, because I went to another church Sunday, and the lady started in the wrong list of my prayer. I said, “Lady,” I says, “I’m a visitor now.” I said, “I don’t know where you’re reading from,” I said, “but we had that prayer last week.” And I said, “The prayer changes, but today the lesson is about choosing those elders and those bishops and things,” so another lady picked it up and picked up the book, and we started. But you got to study your lesson. She said, “Oh, excuse me, excuse me.” Do you go to church? What kind of church you go to?

Roseberry: I go to Watts Street Baptist Church.

Pugh-Myers: Oh, that’s a good church. What did we go to Watts Street for? We went to Watts Street Baptist for what? Something.

Roseberry: Let me cut this off here. Thank you very much.

(end of interview)