The
Early Years
A
Nursing Graduate's Recollections
reprinted from "The Gist," February
23, 1983
It is difficult for Leonora Dosland Oftedal,
92, to remember the little things from that
time. The three years she spent in St. Luke's
nursing school were, after all, nearly seven
decades ago.
But the worth of those years is evident to
nurses at Eventide Nursing Home in Moorhead,
Minn. A worn copy of "The
Cauldron," the 1929 yearbook from St.
Luke's Training School for Nurses, is one of
the few bits from her past that she keeps in
the space shared with another resident. The
yearbook rests on the seat of one of her two
chairs, as if it were an issue of last
month's magazine.
When asked to recall that fragment of her
life, she refers to the book, showing photos
of the early nurses' home, the hospital, and
the doctor she met and married after her
training.
"We were the first class to take the
state boards," Leonora recalls. "We
didn't have regular classes. The doctors
taught us what little we did know. We had a
book for the state boards to cram with that
had questions and answers.
"Anyway, I passed."
There were seven in the class of 1917. It
began with eight, but one girl died of
diabetes before completing the three years of
training.
Leonora, her last name Dosland at that time,
came to study at St. Luke's from Perley,
Minn., approximately 25 miles to the north.
She'd grown up on a farm there with a family
of nine children. A sister, hospitalized at
St. Luke's for 12 weeks with pneumonia, had
given Leonora her first opportunity to see
the hospital.
"When we started out, there were three
months of probation," Leonora recalls.
"Then we got our caps. When we were in
training, we wore blue dresses and white
aprons."
From a desk drawer, filled with photographs
and letters, she finds the portrait from her
second year of schooling. Then her hair was
dark and pulled back beneath the broad front
of her nurse's cap, with unruly curls
escaping in some spots. She still has an
abundance of hair, fine and white from age.
"I loved the operating room. I don't
know why, but I liked it very much," she
continues. "We (students) worked as
scrub girls, ready to help out.
"If there was an overflow of patients,
they put them in the front part of the
nurses' home. I never liked night duty there.
In fact, I never liked night duty at
all."
The nursing students' regular hours were
long, from 7 AM to 7 PM. When the day was
done and supper finished, it was time for
visiting. "You went around from room to
room, asking how everyone's day went,"
Leonora says.
The students were paid $2 a month the first
year, $4 a month the second and $6 a month
their final year of training. "It wasn't
very much, but it helped. Some came from
home, too."
Trips back to Perley were infrequent, since
she had little spare time away from the
Hospital. Rides were provided by
acquaintances of the family, or "friends
with a motorbuggy," she says.
While in training, Leonora met Dr. Axel
Oftedal, an ear, nose and throat specialist
who'd left general practice at Hendrum, Minn.
to join Hospital founders Drs. Olaf Sand and
Nils Tronnes at the Fargo Clinic.
Axel was one of four Oftedal brothers, the
sons of a Christine, N.D., pastor, who all
attended medical school and eventually joined
the Fargo Clinic group practice.
The summer after Leonora graduated, the
couple was married. The wedding took place
July 24, 1918, and was celebrated on her
father's farm. The Oftedals moved into a home
near the Hospital, and as was fitting the
station of a woman and doctor's wife at that
time, she ended her career.
As the nursing yearbook is placed back on the
chair, Leonora says, "I kind of enjoy
that book once in awhile. I really enjoyed
those years."