It was a good year, 1954. I had graduated from St. Luke’s School of Nursing in Denver with my new R.N. license. For myself, my husband Bob, and my son and daughter, Vancouver was our new home.
The first place I chose to work was old St. Joseph Hospital. Never had I been around priests and nuns. It was a good experience. This is where I met Dr. McMakin. I was so impressed with him and how he treated his patients, he was so caring. One time I saw him in the break room and asked if he needed a nurse. I applied and got the job as Dr. McMakin’s office nurse.
I learned so much. He had empathy for all his patients. Later, Dr. McMakin had hired Dr. Bishop and later Dr. Campbell. The clinic became The Women’s Clinic.
In 1965, I went to work at good ole Vancouver Memorial Hospital. The night shift. Worked 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. Labor and delivery, sometimes postpartum floor or the nursery.
This is where I encountered the gold and white rocking chairs. There were seven smaller nurseries that held six babies in their cribs plus a white rocking chair trimmed in gold.
Many wonderful people — nurses, doctors, patients, volunteers — sat in those rocking chairs and rocked babies. Most every person around the ward that was born at good ol’ Vancouver Memorial Hospital started out life being rocked by a very caring person. Too many to mention.
Then the day came when the Obstetrics Department was changing. The decor and the rocking chairs were being eliminated. I asked if I could have one.
The rocking chairs were looking unloved and uncared for. White paint was chipping off. I was in the process of refinishing a table and chair and larger and smaller buffets that my hubby and I brought back from our home in Colorado. It was a beautiful set. The rocking chair got the refinishing job also — beautiful oak wood under the paint.
That rocking chair was Bob’s favorite place to sit. That was until 2008. Bob passed away. The rocking chair was pretty low for me. I felt like a beached whale trying to get out of that chair!
It needed a new home. But where? Then I had a superb idea. It needed to go back to a nursery where caring nurses, doctors and parents could rock newborns again.
I worked with Gretchen, who was the manager of Legacy Salmon Creek’s family birth center since its beginning. Who better to talk to? I knew she had rocked babies in the rocking chair and maybe some of the nurses she had on her staff were born at good ol’ Vancouver Memorial Hospital and were rocked in this very chair!
Gretchen was in favor of the rocking chair going to the family birth center at Legacy. So my new rocking chair is now getting a new facelift. It will be where it should be, rocking babies again, with a loving staff at Legacy. Gretchen tells me there will be a plaque on the rocking chair: “Donated by Joyce Kidder.”
I’m so very proud of the above story.
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