Monday November 8, 1943
My dearest little cherry blossom,
Uh huh, I got here OK without getting frizzed. Please send my winter coat soon as it is a shade cool in the mornings. Or hadn’t you noticed? Oh, I forgot, you don’t get up that early. Meow. I’m just jealous because I have to arise for my 8 AM tussle with a badminton bird…
In 2024 Violet Mae Doolin (later Schroeder by marriage), donated a collection of letters she wrote while attending the Washington University School of Nursing in the 1940s. Violet’s generous gift of letters gives us insight into what her life as a nursing student was like. She writes to her parents about roommates, dorm life, classes, teachers, and dates. For example, Violet has some thoughts to share about a particular chemistry lecture in May of 1945:
In Chemistry lecture today we were studying alcohol and its effect on the body. It was nearly a temperance lecture, and what was so peculiar was the fact that this character we have for an instructor[…] Anyway, she was telling us that if we didn’t want to order cokes when everyone else was drinking highballs (that sounded too much like ordering a glass of milk), she would suggest a horses’ neck, which sounds perfectly gruesome to me. She says it is plain ginger ale with a curly-q of lemon peel and a cherry in it. Can’t you just imagine looking up at a waiter and saying, “I’d like a horse’s neck.” Why, I’ll bet he wouldn’t know what I was talking about. This instructor, Mrs. Freiberg, is a real character. She isn’t a nurse as most of our instructors are and you can certainly tell the difference. She often lectures in class with a cigarette in the middle of her lips and smoke surrounding her[…]she tells us that nurses have to be perfect but she doesn’t have to. However, she really knows chemistry and we get a big bang from her classes.
Violet was born in 1925 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and she entered the Washington University School of Nursing in 1945 through the Cadet Nurse Corps. The program was managed by the United States Public Health Service and provided scholarships, room and board, and a monthly stipend to qualified students enrolled in a nursing school. Violet earned a Bachelor of Science in nursing in 1948 and also continued on to earn a Doctor of Nursing in 1949.
Violet’s letters to her parents are a part of her personal collection (PC070), which can be found in the Becker Archives. This collection is open and accessible for research, and it contains more than 250 letters. Some of the letters are on display in Becker’s digital exhibition: Nursing Knowledge: Students of the Washington University Medical Campus. A selection of Violet’s letters have been scanned and made available on her page.
Nursing Knowledge: Students of the Washington University Medical Campus features items from the personal archival collections of seventeen women who earned nursing degrees on the Washington University Medical campus. If you would like to learn more, check out one of the archives’ newest digital exhibits, Nursing Knowledge.