Date: Fri 21-May-1999

Publication: Bee

Author: JAN

Quick Words:

nursing-library-exhibit

Full Text:

Library Exhibit Details The Role Of Nurses In Wartime

(with sidebar & cuts)

BY JAN HOWARD

Wartime dramatically emphasizes the role of nurses in the field, giving them a

national stature at times of national crisis.

With the approach of Memorial Day, when veterans of all the nation's wars are

remembered and the dead honored with parades and column services, it is

appropriate that the C.H. Booth Library has mounted a new exhibit of wartime

nursing history memorabilia collected by Chris Beaudoin, a 26-year resident of

Newtown.

"Women at War, Nursing From the Crimea to the Gulf," a collection of

approximately 500 items, will be featured now through June in the display case

near the children's library and on the third floor.

"I have been a closet nurse historian for several years," Mrs Beaudoin said

last week. Mrs Beaudoin, a nurse who works at the Greater Waterbury Mental

Health Authority, was employed at Fairfield Hills Hospital for 25 years prior

to its closing. She graduated from the Jeanne Mance school of nursing in

Burlington, Vt., and earned a master's in nursing from Western Connecticut

State University.

"I had a wonderful education. It has given me a wonderful career," Mrs

Beaudoin said. "I've loved what I've done."

Mrs Beaudoin began collecting nursing memorabilia about ten years ago when she

found what she describes as "a marvelous British porcelain bed pan," in a junk

store in New Orleans. She had collected nurses' pins since she was in nursing

school, but the bed pan purchase "started me down the slippery slope," she

said.

Her collection has grown so large since that initial purchase that it fills

the walls of her office at work and many storage boxes at her home.

"My office is floor-to-ceiling nursing prints," she said.

The wartime collection includes memorabilia about famous nurses, such as

Florence Nightingale, Clara Barton, Harriet Tubman, Madam Curie, Louisa May

Alcott, Clara Maass, and Jane Delano.

There are books, such as Florence Nightengale in the Crimean War , Nurses in

Vietnam, The Forgotten Veterans , A Black Woman's Civil War Memoirs , and

Hospital Sketches ; magazine and newspaper articles; and videos, such as An

American Nurse at War .

Also on display are dolls, photographs, medals, nurses' pins, stamps, sheet

music, such as The Rose of No Man's Land and She'll Be There from World War I,

and an original Cadet Nurse poster.

A replica of a World War I Red Cross uniform, a World War II navy nurse corp

uniform worn by Mary Green Nelson, RN, of Middlebury, with a photograph of her

in uniform, a replica of a Crimean War Nightengale nurse uniform, and a

uniform worn by Claire E. O'Neil, a nurse in Vietnam, are also exhibited.

"In times of war, nurses are the most appreciated," Mrs Beaudoin said.

"Nations tend to recognize, respect and value nurses when faced with the

tragedy of war. Nursing has made the greatest achievements and most notable

advances as a result of wars."

Mrs Beaudoin said women such as Clara Barton often acted independently during

wartime. She and other women volunteered during the Civil War when there was

no Army nurse corps to attend the wounded.

Though always welcomed by the wounded soldiers, women have not been readily

accepted as nurses by male officers and doctors, Mrs Beaudoin said, explaining

that during the Spanish American War, American physicians didn't want anything

to do with American nurses.

Florence Nightengale and her nurses were the first women to serve in a

military hospital. During the Crimean War, she met with great resistance and

animosity from the officers and doctors, not the soldiers she cared for, Mrs

Beaudoin said. "She transformed the medical care so that the mortality rate

dropped from 42.7 percent to 2.2 percent."

Nurses also faced prejudice. "Black nurses in World War II were not considered

good enough to care for white soldiers," Mrs Beaudoin said. "They were only

allowed to treat black soldiers, and German and Italian prisoners."

She finds items for her collection in several ways. "People call me with

things they have for sale, such as families of nurses, and antique stores and

dealers," Mrs Beaudoin said. "I buy some items through Ebay on the Internet.

"When I travel, I am always hunting. I have found wonderful things in other

countries," she said.

It is almost impossible to find original photographs or signatures of Florence

Nightengale any longer, she said, because England no longer allows these items

to leave the country. "She's a British treasure," Mrs Beaudoin said. "People

speak of her with reverence for her work in the Crimea and how she

revolutionized health care in England. She really is a heroine."

Other nurses have been heroines, also, Mrs Beaudoin pointed out.

Edith Clavell, one of Miss Nightengale's nurses, was executed by a firing

squad for helping allied soldiers escape to freedom during World War I.

Clara Louise Maass (1876-1901) was a heroic nurse who gave her life during

yellow fever research during the Spanish American War.

"She volunteered to be bitten by a mosquito and died proving the point," Mrs

Beaudoin said.

"Nurses have always been volunteering to go to war," Mrs Beaudoin said. "They

ministered in the trenches in World War I," and were exposed to poison mustard

gas.

"Ninety-six songs were written about nurses in World War I," she said.

A hospital ship, the Solace, was one of 96 ships at Pearl Harbor; it was the

only one that received no damage. The nurses stayed on the Solace for six

months, treating the injured.

Eight women died in Vietnam. On February 18, 1966, Carol Ann Drazba, a

Naugatuck native, became the first American nurse to die in the Vietnam War

when a helicopter she was flying in was struck by enemy fire and came down on

high tension wires.

Mrs Beaudoin has a wealth of information on nurses and nursing in addition to

her enormous collection. The "Women at War" exhibit is just the tip of the

iceberg of Mrs Beaudoin's entire collection of nursing memorabilia and her

knowledge about the subject.

She speaks about nursing history to alumni groups, hospitals, and schools of

nursing, sometimes wearing historic nurses' uniforms from her collection. She

is scheduled to speak to a group of World War II female pilots.

In addition to her speaking engagements, Mrs Beaudoin writes for the American

Association for the History of Nursing. She recently completed a biography of

Florence Wald, who began Hospice in the United States, for a Famous American

Nurses series.

She has also volunteered to review some correspondence of Florence Nightengale

that was recently found in England. "I would love to be one of the people to

do that."

She is also interested in researching the role of nurses held captive in

concentration camps. "One nurse saved many children by saying she could find

work they could do with their small hands that adults couldn't do," Mrs

Beaudoin said.

Mrs Beaudoin, who wears a Vietnam POW/MIA bracelet, was a state coordinator

for the Vietnam Women's Memorial in Washington, D.C., which was dedicated on

November 11, 1993.

The memorial is wonderful, she said. However, "I was struck by the number of

women in wheelchairs" attending the dedication.

The bronze memorial by sculptor Glenna Goodacre, which depicts three nurses

taking care of a wounded soldier, stands across from the Vietnam Veterans

Memorial wall. Its dedication in 1993 came ten years after project founder

Diane Carlson Evans and Doris "Dee" Lippman of Westport and others began the

campaign to erect a monument to the women who served in Vietnam.

Mrs Beaudoin said the average age of soldiers in Vietnam was 19. "There were

men crying out for their mothers. Nurses were holding their hands as they

died. The girls were young. They were never prepared educationally for the

carnage they saw from the time they arrived in Vietnam," she noted. "The North

Vietnamese wanted to maim and mutilate. There was no front line, no such thing

as safety behind our lines."

Mrs Beaudoin said 58,000 soldiers died and 350,000 were wounded in Vietnam. "I

shudder to think what the numbers would be if nurses were not there," she

said.

She said nurses received the same hostile treatment as returning combat

soldiers when they returned from Vietnam. "They were spat at and jeered and

called `baby killer.'"

Mrs Beaudoin said 48 percent of the nurses who served in Vietnam have Post

Traumatic Stress Disorder. Yet few have sought help. "PTSD is an easy

treatment, it's talk therapy," she said. "It's hard to get them to do it. They

don't talk about it."

"I've always wanted to be a nurse," Mrs Beaudoin said. She said she read books

about nurses as a child and saw the movie Captain Newman, MD , starring

Gregory Peck, when she was nine. "It sealed my fate," she said.

Mrs Beaudoin is one of four nurse historians in Connecticut. All are avid

collectors. "We fantasize about having a corporation donate a room for our

collections or winning the lottery so we could donate the space ourselves,"

she said.

She laments the loss of items from nursing schools. "All the schools of

nursing are gone, and most of their memorabilia is lost."

Mrs Beaudoin said her collection is "my homage to women who have been so

courageous and given themselves as volunteers so often."