While interviewing Connie Gangwer,
I was struck by her commitment to helping her fellow human beings. Connie has served others throughout her life
in several capacities. She helped heal
the sick and wounded as a nurse in the
Well, about
the earliest memory that I have is of my mother who was always carrying me around,
looking at pretty pictures, and reading nursery rhymes.
I was born and raised and went through two years of junior
college in
Well, let’s
start with [how I became] a nurse first, because that’s kind of an unusual
event. I had never thought of being a nurse when I went through school. When they had career days, I never went to
the nursing one. I was always interested
in journalism and things like that. So,
I went through two years of junior college preparing to go onto K.U. [
Oh, my folks
were tickled [about me becoming a nurse]. They thought it was too hard a road,
the journalism one, and they thought, “Oh, wanna’ be
a nurse? That’s great.” So I pleased a
lot of people by going into nursing.
Well, in those days, that was the 1950’s, it was very structured, you
know. We had certain hours like,
That was,
well, the school that I entered was Mercy School of Nursing in
Yes,
everything was pretty strict in those days.
But it was nice in that, I think, I had more money to spend in those
days. After the first six months, we
started getting paid ten dollars a month because we worked in the hospital when
we weren’t in classes. So we were
staffing the hospital; and then our last year, our senior year, we got fifteen
dollars a month. We lived in the nurse’s
home; that didn’t cost us anything. We
ate in the hospital; that didn’t cost us anything. We had to buy our uniforms, but they were
laundered in the hospital, so we didn’t have any expenses once we got in and
got our books and uniforms. No, [there
were no male nurses], not in my school, there started to be some more in the
sixties I think, but we never had any.
Sister Alphonsus was the director, Sister Mary Eileen was one of
our teachers, Sister Mary Victoria, they were all nuns who taught us; and they
were strict, but they always came across as warm, friendly people. But we had to toe the mark.
Well, [how I
entered the Navy], that’s another kind of interesting story, maybe. I decided, after being in nursing for a few years, that I was going to teach. So, I got my master’s degree in nursing, and
I was teaching nursing at
Connie by the
seal of the
Well,
everyone I knew thought it was a pretty good idea, I think, I never had any
opposition. My dad, I think, would liked to have been in the military, but he
was too young for World War I and too old for World War II; and so he always kinda’
felt bad, I think. Kinda’
gave me the idea that he was glad that I joined because he had never been able
to. No other member of my immediate
family had been in the military. I had
an aunt who had gone through nurses training during World War II, but she never
practiced nursing. She married a sailor,
and they settled down in Georgia. She
never did practice nursing, but she did go through nurses training.
I was in
nine years as a Navy nurse. And it was
most of that time during the Vietnam War; but I was never in Vietnam. I never was sent over there. But I spent my, well, the indoctrination
period for officers was in Newport, Rhode Island. That lasted a month. And while I was there, I learned how to
identify ships at sea and all of those kinda’ things
the Navy people were all supposed to know.
And we did some drilling, some marching, and some drills; but really not
too much of that. Most of it was
classroom work, and learning how to obey military regulations. Ya’ know, things
like “You never fraternize,” that was the word they used, with enlisted
people. That sort of thing, and how you
should treat your superior officers and how you should be treated. Like those that were under you. So that was a month long, and my first duty
station then after that was Portsmouth Naval Hospital. I was there about eighteen months, and then
was transferred to Quonset Point, Rhode Island Naval Hospital, and was there
three years. And then went down to the
Naval Air Station in Meridian,
Mississippi which, we didn’t have a hospital all we had was a clinic for
dependants of Naval personnel. We had a
few beds, but we hardly ever used ‘em, just as over
night for active duty people. So, if we
had anyone who was really sick there, we had to send them to a civilian
hospital and they got taken care of through ‘Champus’. They called it ‘Champus’
insurance that paid the civilian hospital.
Well, at the
Naval hospitals in Virginia and Rhode Island we had active duty wards. So we had a lot of men, lotta’
men patients; but we had some dependents in both of those hospitals. But in Meridian, we had no hospital for
dependents; and we had a lot of active duty people there. So, there were a lot of men around all the time. We treated a lot of sailors comin’ back from Vietnam and their dependents while they
were gone. I think, a lot of the
nursing, itself, is the same no matter where you are. It’s just, ya’
know, a different setting. But the one
thing, or at least one of the things that’s different in the military, is you
stand inspection just like all the personnel on the base. Periodically you stand inspection. When you do that, you’re outdoors and they
raise the flag and they play the Star Spangled Banner and you just get goose
bumps up and down your spine, ya’ know. You feel like you’re doing something special
Well, what
drew me to nursing was just the idea of helping people. Like I say, I hadn’t really thought about
that when I was younger. But it’s
something I think most nurses --they have a commitment and a dedication to want
to help people when they are sick. I
think it was easier [to be a nurse] in the Navy because in civilian life, if
you’re a nurse and you have any kind of difficulty with the physician-- if you
have any kind of, question about what their plan of treatment is or anything--
it’s pretty hard to get anybody to back you up.
In the Navy, there is always a doctor who is superior to the doctor
you’re having trouble with. So you
always have somewhere to go if you have any kind of trouble.
Well, let’s
see, name the worst thing. Well, it’s hard to think of anything really too
bad. I guess the worst thing [about
being a nurse in the Navy], something that got under my skin a little bit, was
when the commanding officer came into the Naval hospital for an inspection of
the hospital-- everything had to stop.
You couldn’t give anybody any medicines.
Everything stopped. Everybody had to stand at attention; even the men
who had been in bed, sick, they had to get out of bed unless they were fallin’ over. And
the commanding officer usually wore white gloves; and he’d go to the darndest places to find dirt, and he’d usually find some
somewhere. Then you got written up for
that, ya’ know.
Oh, really the only punishment was to correct the situation, ya’ know. I don’t
think anybody was ever really punished, or nothing was ever put in your record
or anything like that. Just had to
correct the situation, and then you were really gonna’
watch the next time.
Change me,
hmm, I don’t know. I don’t know how it
[being in the Navy] could have changed me, unless you might say that it gave
you a perspective of things, what really is important and what’s not so
important. I can’t think of anything else.
Every time you go in you needed to focus on those things that needed to
be done first, and let things go that weren’t so important to do that day. But I think that’s probably the same as any
nursing situation, not just in the military.
Now about
what I was saying though. Let’s see we
were talking about, oh yeah, I am
normally a shy person; and I’ve overcome
it a lot, but I’m still a little bit.
So, it was difficult for me in the very beginning because I would even
get red in the face when I took a tray into a patient’s room when I first
started out. I thought, “Woah, golly”, ya’ know, and all you do is set it down and fix it up so
that they can reach everything. Ya’ know, their cartons need to be open; and man, I’d be so
embarrassed to do that. But I guess over
the years you lose that, pretty much, and you’re thinking about the patient
instead of yourself; and then, you get over some of that. But over all I’m basically kind of a
introvert, probably. Oh, I’m sure it
[being a nurse] has [made me more outgoing] and the military did it a lot
. That was a big thing, I didn’t think
to say that, but the military did it a lot; but it’s easy to go back into your
shell, too. (laughs)
You know, in
those days I really wasn’t thinking so much of the war being right or
wrong. It was just something that was
there, and you needed to help the people that were gettin’
injured in that area. But I came it
ended, I came to feel like the war was wrong.
But, in the beginning, I didn’t really have those ideas. Well, when we got the information out that a
lot of what we had been told was not true, then you began to question
everything that was coming out, “What is going on over there?” I remember that
situation with the; remember that [Calley]? I don’t
remember all the details now except that he had killed women and children or
something, this [Calley], and they were punishing him
for it. And I thought, ya’ know, “When you don’t know
who your enemy is and you get fired at from civilians”, ya’
know, “who is your enemy and who isn’t?”
That started me thinking about a lot of things.
Well, in
Nurse Corps, which is really the only experience I have to draw from, we
weren’t treated any differently [after our service during the Vietnam war]. I
know the men were, who fought in Vietnam; they didn’t get any recognition and
it led to a lot of personal problems and all that. But as far as my own personal experience, I
never had any difficulty. Well , that’s a sad affair, ya’
know, really sad. Shouldn’t have
happened.
But ya’ know, society
is something that goes and learns from
experience; and so I think now there is so much support for people in the
military, and I think that is probably a reaction to the lack of it back
when. We realized how much we didn’t do
it then. So it’s a good thing.
I really intended, when I went in, to stay for
twenty years and retire. But I had my
mother with me all the time. Even when I
was teaching at Fort Hayes, my mother
lived with me; and she had problems. She
couldn’t really function without someone with her. So when I decided to join
the Navy, she went with me there, too, except for that month of indoctrination
school. She didn’t get to go to that;
but she was my dependent, actually, in the service. As my dependent she was able to go to everything
that was on the base, ya’ know. The grocery store, and the P.X., and all of
those things. So, she had an I.D. card
and she was just like a dependent, only in the Navy, a daughter and a mother
don’t constitute a family. So I didn’t
qualify to get on base housing; I always had to live off the base. So we would have either an apartment or we
bought a home in Rhode Island when we were up there, and we bought a home in
Mississippi. Sold our home in Rhode
Island when we moved to Mississippi, and bought a home there.
My dad died, well let’s see, it’s hard for me
to remember years any more; but he was twelve years older than my mom. So he died fairly young too, he was only
fifty-eight years old. I just knew that
after he died, that mother shouldn’t be by herself; she couldn’t be alone. I’m her only child. She was only nineteen when I was born, and
she and I, kind of, we were almost like sisters when I was growing up. She always was so child-like. And I don’t know, she could never understand
the value of money. If a person ever had a credit card, I don’t think she ever
realized you ever really paid anything for that. You just show ‘em
the card, and you get what you want, ya’ know, and
that was it. She just never got some of
those ideas. And she was a wonderful
person to be with. She was always a lot
of fun. I say that I got out of the Navy
to take care of her. Actually, we had a
lot of fun together; and during the Navy too, was a lot of fun. But there were just parts of life that she
was just like a child, and that’s real sweet in a lot of ways; but it can sure
get you into trouble.
By the end
of my tour down there, and I was down there four years, a long time, longer
than most tours of duty are, they had decided-- the people in Washington, the
Naval personnel people that assigned the nurses-- that I should go to Japan next. That if I was going to make the military a
career, I should have at least one overseas experience. That would have been just fine, and mother
could have gone over there with me; but she wouldn’t go, and I wasn’t going to go off and leave
her.
She didn’t
want to go overseas, she just didn’t want to go overseas, and you couldn’t make
her do it, so I decided. A thing that
happened while we were in Mississippi was, that series on T.V., Roots was shown. Ya’
know, its tracking your roots back to where you came from. All of a sudden I started having this tug at
my heart to come back… to Kansas, to
Southeast Kansas in particular. It’s like
there was a magnet up here [that] wanted to draw me home; and I think seeing
that Roots had a lot to do with that.
And so I decided, then, to start looking for a position here. Cecilia Wagner was the department chair out
here at Pittsburg State, and they had a faculty position open. I came up, interviewed for that, and she
hired me and so that’s the reason I decided to get out. So, I said, “Goodbye” to the Navy at that
point, and we moved here to Pittsburg.
Most people,
I think, leave the Navy-- well I wouldn’t have any good background for that
except in my own personal experience with a few people-- they don’t like the
authority probably, is the main thing. A
lot of people don’t like to take orders.
I’m a good Indian. I take orders
easily; giving orders, now that’s difficult.
But taking orders, that’s not hard; but that’s hard for some. They just rebel against it and quit.
Oh, I think
I got several certificates [for serving in the Navy]. (Laughs) I’ve got a
picture. This is a picture of when I was
promoted from lieutenant to lieutenant commander. (Connie points to a picture) This is Captain Brody here, taking my oath to
protect and defend the constitution. (Connie points to another picture) And
this is another picture of that same time.
This was my chief nurse, Alice Shedyack was
her name. She was my chief nurse at
Quonset Point, Rhode Island. And she always
had a uniform that was just gorgeous, never a hair out of place, never a
wrinkle. But, of course, she didn’t do much work. She walked around and supervised everybody
else.
Yeah [I made] a lot of friends, and I still
keep up with quite a few. In fact, one of the physicians that I worked with in
Mississippi, Dr. Bill Campbell, he’s in Chicago now. He comes twice a year with
his wife, and they stay a couple three days with me. So we keep up, and there are several others
that I keep up with. Haven’t seen them
in a long time, but I talk to them on the phone or write to ‘em.
No [I don‘t
receive any benefits]. That’s the story of my life I guess. I don’t stay long
enough to get, uh, well, I can’t say that about the University because I get my
retirement there; but I don’t get anything from the military because I didn’t
stay twenty years. Well, I started as an
assistant professor out here at Pittsburg State University, in the department
of nursing, then after… fourteen years I had made full professor out here, and
I was out here sixteen years, total, and retired. Teaching nursing has the best of every world
in it because you don’t have quite the same hospital responsibilities as you do
if you’re a staff nurse at the hospital.
So you come in with your students and you say, ya’
know, “You wanna do this, and this, and this, you’ll
be here this many hours.” You do that
and you’re gone. So you don’t have to do
any of those other kinds of things that you have to put up with if you’re on
staff at the hospital.
There are
things, though, that you have to put up with at the university, those are
different. You have to do some things,
you have to evaluate yourself every year.
Annually you have to write this evaluation document, and tell what kind
of service you’ve done for the community and the university, and any research
and publication that you’ve done, you have to say all that; and then you have
to have some proof of your teaching effectiveness. So there are things you have to do at the
university too. But as far as the nursing is concerned, it’s
really fun to teach it.
Well, the
worst part [about teaching nursing]; I’ll start with that I think it’s hard to
evaluate students. A lot of times you
have someone who just does so well with patients ya’
know, sets up their nice relationship, just does so well and performs the
procedures and things so well; and then on a test in the classroom, fail. Not able to answer the questions, ya’ know. A lot of
times its because they get all worked up and stressed over the test, and then
they just forget everything they know.
You know they know a lot because you’ve seen ‘em
do it, and what you wanted ‘em to do; and so that’s
the hard part, is evaluation I think, of students.
I think I
mentioned that one of the best parts is you just go and say “We’re gonna’ do this.” And
I guess another best part is we have such close contact with our clinical
students. We’re working with them for
hours through the week. I had them in
their foundations course, which is their first clinical course their fall
semester; and in their spring semester I got to be one of the people in the
leadership course, and that was the senior nursing student’s last semester. So
when you had some of those people on their first semester, and you saw how
shaky they were when they gave their first shot and how nervous they are in the
very beginning; and then their last semester, here’s this mature person who’s
just not afraid to do anything. So
that’s really, that’s a very fulfilling feeling.
I am so
grateful, and I suppose this is the biggest thing in my life, was being able to
take care of my Mother, who in my last few years of teaching here in Pittsburg,
started developing Alzheimer’s and then had a stroke. And I was able to take care of her at home
because I had the nursing behind me, and it was no big deal to do that. I suppose that’s the biggest thing in my
life-- is being able to do that. I am
really grateful that I was able to take care of her at home. [I] Always, wanted to stay with her. Yeah, always wanted to stay with her. Um-huh, never had any regrets about that.
Well the only thing, I’m having a few regrets
right now because I’m seventy-two years old, and I have no family. Being an only child, and my mother had a half
brother and half sister. My uncle is
still alive, but we’re not real close.
So I feel like I don’t have any family.
I’ve got all of my, all of my things throughout my life that, I don’t
know, no one is going to care anything about them, that’s the only thing. I kind of regret the fact that I don’t have
anybody interested enough to want my pictures, or any of those kind of things
that have been important to me. [Friends
are] somewhat like family, I’ve got lots of good friends; but they’ve got a lot
of stuff, too. So, they don’t want my
stuff as far as that goes. I’m a Catholic, and so I try to get to Mass
everyday; and, yeah, that’s [the] prime thing in my life.
I guess what
I’d like to see everyone have the chance to do, who’s young now and deciding
what they’re going to do with their life, is to find the one thing that you
love to do so much that everyday when you get up you’ll want to go and do
it. Because if you don’t feel that way,
it seems like everything you do is not going to help you feel good about
yourself-- that’s probably the main thing.
Oh, I don’t
know [if I wish I had gone into journalism]. I still like to write. I’ve served as the secretary of every
organization I’ve ever belonged to, and I don’t mind it. And I really kind of
like to do that kind of thing. Paper and
writing and, I like the feel of paper, I like to file things. But no, I wouldn’t change being a nurse for
that now. The only thing I wish I could
have done is stay [in the Navy] twenty years.
If I had stayed twenty years, boy.
I had a friend who stayed twenty, and she had gone into the Navy; right
out of nursing school. she wasn’t like myself, she had gone right
into the Navy, spent twenty-two years actually
in the Navy, and when she retired, she just had money. I tell you she bought everything and anything
she wanted to. But of course, that
seemed like a good thing, but money isn’t everything. I kind of wish that I could have spent twenty
years and then retired from the Navy.
I started [ to keep a diary] several times,
but I never kept it up. Yeah, that’s me,
I start a lot of things and then never keep ‘em
up. That was one thing I never kept up. Well,
in nursing out here at the University, I got the opportunity on a
sabbatical, I took a sabbatical year and did some historical research for a
history of nursing and wrote an article for a magazine. It’s an American History of Nursing
magazine so I did get to publish an article in there. The Kansas Nurse published two or three of my
articles, but that’s about it. I like
the history of nursing-- a fantastic history.
For example, this person that I decided to write about was Emily Hanes
Harrison, who was a nurse during the Civil War.
And after the war, she came to Kansas-- out around Ellsworth, Kansas--
and she wrote about her experiences out there.
Not of the civil war nursing part, but of her experiences as a pioneer
in Western Kansas; and she’s a very colorful character. She tells about how she sold buttermilk and
all kinds of little things like that.
But oh gosh, nursing has a long history so to say anything about that
would take me forever and a day. But the
individuals, I like to study about the different personalities of the people in
the military or in nursing. Military
nursing too, there are lots of histories written’ up nowadays about Army nurses
and Navy nurses already, histories are already written.
The America
Legion post, the Betty Lou Vilmer post, here in
Pittsburg, is an all women’s post, and there is no other one all women in
Kansas. There are about seven throughout
the United States that are all women posts,
and the one here in Pittsburg. We
celebrated our fifty years back in 1998, and we had a big celebration out at the country club at that time. And these are the charter members who were at
that time. We’ve already lost Sue Martin
and Margery Simpson. They have died, so
we still have four charter members
alive. And these are all of the members
who were present at that time, but that was 1998. Alice Wilkinson, Genevieve Ristau and Janet Kramer, are our four charter members who
are still alive. This was Susan Martin
and Margery Simpson.
Connie, back row second from left, and other members of the
Betty Lou Vilmer Post.
(Connie
points to a picture) Here I am and all of these people are up here too, plus
those of us who are not charter members.
We were there at that fifty year celebration. So, that’s seven years ago. We’re fifty-seven years old now. (Connie points to a picture) 
Connie Gangwer’s
official file photo.
This is my official file photo of the Navy nurse picture. I always said if you’re
having any trouble with roaches, you might just put that picture down there in
the cabinet and it might scare ‘em away. This is a picture of, from out here at the
Veteran’s Memorial by the seal of the United States Navy. That’s a fairly recent picture of me out
there, and this is my paver, and this is a paver of another member of our post, Joann Marshall-Hunter,
She lives in Raymore
Connie and Joan’s pavers at the Veteran’s Memorial in
Pittsburg.
She and I came to the
University at the same time, taught nursing.
She and I both came here in seventy-seven. And one of the things we like to do is,
uh. This is my car, (Connie points to a
picture). It’s a 1965 Plymouth
Belvedere, the first car I ever bought brand new. This is the Christmas Parade here in
Pittsburg a couple of years ago. We try
to do that, and we drive the car in the Christmas Parade, and we are color guard; we carry our flags, the
American Flag and the post flag, in the Arma
Homecoming Parade, the Frontenac Homecoming Parade,
and the Girard Fall Festival Parade. So we try to do that, and if anybody wants to drive or ride in the
car [who are] members, why, we have the car in the Parade, too.
Members of the Post in Connie’s Belvedere during the
When I first
came to Pittsburg, Joann Marshall and I were the same time, we hadn’t been here very long and Nadine
Johnson contacted us and said, “You’re veterans, you should belong to the Betty
Lou Vilmer Post.”
So we joined right away. So, she
was on the ball to get members. Now
they’re not all nurses. Any military
woman, ya’ know, could be, in fact we have a new
member just recently, Jerry Bass, and I can’t think what she is, but she’s not
a nurse. But a lot of these people are
not nurses. Let me see if I can think.
We have some who are in the Marine Corps, quite a few in the Army. Betty and Genevieve both were Army nurses.
But Nola Clark here (Connie points to a picture) was in computers, she did
something with computers in the Air Force, she was U.S . Air Force. So it’s a variety-- not all officers, not all
nurses, any woman veteran who served during any war period.
*[] Indicates implied meaning, not said by Connie
**()Indicates performed action
This oral history researched and prepared by Kevin Huebner December 28, 2005.