[Lesley Williams Brunet] We're saying that they were making
Dr. Fletcher pay for his coffee and he didn't like that.
[Ornell H. Balzer] Yeah. The girl in the kitchen told
him that she couldn't give him any coffee anymore,
and boy, he didn't mince any words,
he got his coffee that morning.
When he was walking down
the hallway to go to his office,
and you could hear him mumbling all way down the hallway.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] A lot of those early physicians
had strong personalities, would you say?
[Ornell H. Balzer] Well, see the only ones I really knew
were Shullenberger who was a hematology,
and Howe who was medicine,
so those are really the only two that I
knew were close Dr. Fletcher of course.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Right.
[Ornell H. Balzer] But those were the only two that I
really had any association with.
There was a doctor, I thought about his name while ago,
gene service but you see at that time we didn't
have any gene patients in
this small unit that we used for the hospital,
so I didn't know him.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Wouldn't be Routledge.
[Ornell H. Balzer] Yeah, Routledge.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Dr. Routledge. He's still at the hospital.
[Ornell H. Balzer] He is?
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Yes, I just saw him last week.
(laughing) Those physicians they
retire and they stay forever.
[Ornell H. Balzer] Yeah.
Lesley Williams [Brunet] They're busy.
[Ornell H. Balzer] I never did work with Dr. Routledge much.
In fact, I never worked in
the new hospital except in the therapy department,
and in the department where I worked,
they didn't treat his patients.
They treated them in the basement,
and I worked on what they
called the ground floor at that time,
and his patients were treated in the basement on
those machines so I never
did (crosstalk) know him very well.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] When you were still at the Baker Estate,
what did your duties consist of?
Can you tell me about
a typical day or some of the patient care?
[Ornell H. Balzer] My regular duty was a supervisor.
They had made me charge nurse of the hospital,
and of course, you made rounds to see that.
I never forget Dr. Trunnell.
He was a hell cat. (laughing)
[Lesley Williams Brunet] I don't know much about Dr. Trunnell.
[Ornell H. Balzer] He didn't stay there very long.
I don't think Dr. Trunnell was there long
enough that when they moved into the new hospital,
into the present hospital,
I don't think Dr. Trunnell was there anymore.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Okay.
[Ornell H. Balzer] Trunnell and Brayer worked together.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Braille?
[Ornell H. Balzer] Brayer, B-R-A-Y-E-R.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Okay. What was their specialty?
Were they medicine?
[Ornell H. Balzer] Yeah. I guess probably research
more than anything in medicine.
I guess. I don't know.
The thing that I remember more about
Dr. Brayer than anything else is
he and the lab technician would
go to Huntsville once a week,
I believe, and those prisoners down
there would give blood and they get
paid for the blood that they gave.
Brayer and this lab technician,
I can see what she looked like
but I don't remember her name,
would go down there and draw blood
for transfusions and whatever in that old hospital.
Then gradually from this one ward,
they increased the hospital ward to
a minor surgery and
Ward B and C where Ward A is where I started out.
That was the research award,
and then B was medicine and C surgery or vice versa,
I don't remember which,
but one was medical and one was surgical.
Then I was made night supervisor of the whole unit there.
Lesley Williams [Brunet] Of Ward A or?
[Ornell H. Balzer] The whole unit, the hospital.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] The hospital unit.
[Ornell H. Balzer] They had a minor surgery,
and the girl,
what was her name?
She was a black lady that was at
the head of the hospital of this new institution.
What was her name? Anyway?
[Lesley Williams Brunet] I don't know, but I think I know who you mean?
[Ornell H. Balzer] She started out as a night nurse under my supervision,
and then of course she worked herself
up the ladder to where,
I don't know, she wasn't directed.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Now that was (inaudible).
[Ornell H. Balzer] She was pretty high up in there,
I've even forgotten what her name is.
Lesley Williams [Brunet] The director?
[Ornell H. Balzer] No, the black lady.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] No, But I can fill it in,
and then you can check it when I send you the transcript.
[Ornell H. Balzer] Okay.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] I know who you mean.
[Ornell H. Balzer] Yeah.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Since you mentioned the black nurse,
were things segregated at the Baker Estate?
[Ornell H. Balzer] What?
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Was there still segregation at the Baker Estate?
Separate bathrooms?
[Ornell H. Balzer] No. When I first started there,
we could have a census of seven patients,
and of course, most of them were surgical patient.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] I was going to ask you that.
[Ornell H. Balzer] Then they had added Ward B and
C and one was medical and one was surgical.
A was the experimental or research ward.
Then we had a minor surgery
that was put in out of the old place.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] You quit for a while and then came back.
[Ornell H. Balzer] Yeah, and they came back because
Paul Yoder kept pounding me all the time,
"Balzer come back here,
come back here." (laughing)
[Lesley Williams Brunet] I did mean, were things segregated racially.
Did they have white bathrooms and colored bathrooms?
[Ornell H. Balzer] No.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Say use them at
the old estate or
drinking fountains or anything like that?
[Ornell H. Balzer] No, we had one bathroom and everybody used that,
and I don't think we even had
the drinking fountains (laughing) out there.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] That's probably why they weren't segregated. (laughing)
[Ornell H. Balzer] If you wanted water, you would get a paper cup,
went to a tap some place, and get water.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] How about patients?
Were patients segregated? White and black?
[Ornell H. Balzer] I don't think we had anybody.
We had one black patient there,
and the doctor said,
I can't remember what her diagnosis
was or anything about her.
The only thing is the doctor
said she can't live longer than,
say, two weeks.
She lived on and on and on and on and she was in
that hospital six weeks before she drew her last breath.
Medicine, they don't know anything.
They can't predict when your last minute is up.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Was that unusual to have a patient stay that long?
[Ornell H. Balzer] (noise) Excuse me.
It was a little bit unusual so far as I can see it for
the doctors to say she can't live any
longer than two weeks.
How do they know how long that ticker's going to go?
[Lesley Williams Brunet] I guess she had a more of
a will to live than they realized.
[Ornell H. Balzer] Evidently, she had a much better heart than what they
thought she did because that's what kept her going.
But she was flat in bed.
We had to bathe her in bed and everything.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Did most patients not stay that long?
[Ornell H. Balzer] I don't really remember that.
I think the most impressive thing that I can recall about
this old hospital was
these poor people that had gum cancer.
Having the whole lower jaw would be removed.
(noise) Excuse me,
and then they had to wear
these heavy gauze flats with a mask.
I guess they still do
for those because they salivated so,
and this one patient (laughing),
she was such a comic.
I think she lived in Dallas and they had
removed part of her nasal cavity and put
a prosthesis in there and then
one Monday she had to come back for
a checkup and she (laughing) said
damn bus ran through a hole
and my whole prosthesis fell in my lap (crosstalk).
She said you should have
seen people looking at me. (laughing)
[Lesley Williams Brunet] They were doing prosthetic work that early?
[Ornell H. Balzer] Yeah.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] In the late 40s, early 50s?
[Ornell H. Balzer] Yes, that was still in the old hospital.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Do you remember who did the surgery?
[Ornell H. Balzer] I don't.
I can't remember who the surgeon was.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] That's interesting.
[Ornell H. Balzer] See Howe was on medicine.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Maybe Dr. Clark.
[Ornell H. Balzer] And Shullenberger was hematology.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Or Dr. White, maybe. Ed white.
[Ornell H. Balzer] Yeah. Ed White.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Do you remember Ed White?
[Ornell H. Balzer] Ed White. Yeah. (laughing) He was a funny one.
He was a heavy smoker and you know where they had
the clinic patients and then the hospital part,
there was a big space there,
and one day (laughing)
he was worried they had finished seeing
patients in the clinic area and he came home
to the hospital ward to see some of
the patients there and he had his hand in his pocket for
some reason or another and he had some of
these little gopher matches and they ignited. (laughing)
[Lesley Williams Brunet] In his pockets? (laughing)
[Ornell H. Balzer] (laughing)Yeah and he thought he'd have to
pull his damn pants
off because he couldn't get his hand in there.
Finally he said,
''I finally just grabbed my pants and
smothered (laughing) the fire in my hand.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] That's a determined smoker.
[Ornell H. Balzer] (laughing) Very much so.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Very much so. Do you remember Renilda Hilkemeyer?
She was the director of the nurses.
[Ornell H. Balzer] Yeah. But you see I didn't have much to do
with Hilkemeyer because she was
strictly in the hospital unit
and I was in the therapy department.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] At the new hospital.
[Ornell H. Balzer] What was her name? I called her name.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] It was just common there, wasn't it?
Is that the black nurse that you were talking about?
[Ornell H. Balzer] No. She was a doll hospital.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Who are you talking about? Not Mary Walker.
[Ornell H. Balzer] Yeah, Mary walker.
(laughing) She was head of
the therapy department and that's who I worked on then.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Okay.
[Ornell H. Balzer] It's Mary Walker.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Just one more question about the old Baker state.
You mentioned you worked in war day,
the research or the experimental ward.
What kind of work did they do there?
What kind of patients were there?
[Ornell H. Balzer] Well, they had all different types of cancer,
all different diagnosis and at that time,
this is really wrecking my brain. (laughing)
[Lesley Williams Brunet] I interrupted your flow and
(laughing) it's funny how our memories work.
Let's come back to that later.
Once you moved to the new hospital,
you worked in radiotherapy. Is that right?
[Ornell H. Balzer] Yeah.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] What things did you do there,
or what machines did you work with in patients?
[Ornell H. Balzer] I worked on the cobalt machines.
I worked on the (inaudible) for a while.
Then mostly on the cobalt machines.
We had a doctor there by the name of Dr.
I thought about his name while ago.
He was a heavy smoker and he died of lung cancer,
but he never quit smoking.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Let's see. Not Dr. Howe? No.
[Ornell H. Balzer] No. Barkley.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Barkley.
[Ornell H. Balzer] Barkley. B-A-R-K-L-E-Y. Barkley.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Right.
[Ornell H. Balzer] One day he had a patient there and I was on
the D machine and he
told me how he wanted that patient treated
before we ever went into the room
there to play with the machine.
I told him, I said, ''Dr.
Barkley, it won't work.
I can't do it on this machine.''
He said, ''Why can't you?''
I said, ''Because I can't angle the machine to
the table the way you want the patient treated.''
He said, ''Come on Ornell''.
I said, ''Okay. Come on,
Dr. Barkley and I'll show you.''
He said, '' Well, I'll be dammed.''
(laughing) But then on what we call the ABC machine,
the tracks weren't fastened to the floor.
You could move your double tracks around because
the table was moved
on these tracks and you could
move the tracks around so you could angle your table.
I said, ''Now you can treat that patient on
that machine but not on my machine.''
''Come on Ornell.''
I said, ''No.'' I said,
''Come on in here and I'll show you.''
(laughing) He didn't believe me.
He had to see it to believe me.
He was so funny.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] In what other ways was he funny?
Would he listen to the nurses?
Did the physicians listen to the nurses?
[Ornell H. Balzer] Sometimes he had to see it.
He wouldn't take your word for it.
You had to prove it to him.
That's (laughing) how he worked.
You had to prove it to him.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Now, I'm sorry.
[Ornell H. Balzer] When you work, when you set up patient's,
day after day and
work on that machine for several years,
you know what you can do with a machine,
(laughing) and what you can treat.
You had to prove it to him.
He had to see it before he'd take your word for it.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Did you see the same patients?
I guess what I'm trying to find out,
how successful was the radiotherapy then?
[Ornell H. Balzer] How what?
[Lesley Williams Brunet] How successful?
[Ornell H. Balzer] The only way that you could
console yourself when you left,
walked out of that door in the afternoon,
this is a research hospital and someday,
they'll find a way to do it.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Why? They did much better.
[Ornell H. Balzer] Some of the girls would take that work
home with them and you couldn't do that.
When you walked out of that door in the afternoon,
you left your work there because it
was just too touching.
You had to tell yourself this is a research hospital.
Someday, they'll find the right way to do it.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Did you work with all kinds of
patients and all kinds of cancer?
[Ornell H. Balzer] Yeah. Well, (noise)
the only patients I did not work
with were gynecology patients. (crosstalk)
[Lesley Williams Brunet] They were on the lower floor.
[Ornell H. Balzer] They were in the basement and I never
worked on the machines in the basement.
I worked D machine and B machine.
I didn't work A much at that time.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Were they different kinds of machines
or were they just configured differently?
[Ornell H. Balzer] A and D were the same type machines.
Only the D machine was
a little later model than the A machine was.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] I see.
[Ornell H. Balzer] B and C were independent.
Now that's as far as I can go.
I don't know in what way they were independent,
but that's all that I know.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Okay.
[Ornell H. Balzer] Because I never was that somewhere.
I worked with Teddy (inaudible) on (crosstalk)
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Teddy (inaudible)?
[Ornell H. Balzer] Yeah. That's another one.
She's still living.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] How do we spell (inaudible)?
Got your little book there.
I think your vision
is better than mine.
(laughing) I'm serious.
[Ornell H. Balzer] R-A-U-F I know is how it starts.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Well, I'll try and trap
rough raw files and.
[Ornell H. Balzer] H-E-I-S-N, I believe.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Okay.
[Ornell H. Balzer] Her name was Teddy?
Yeah. I hear it is.
R-A-U-F-E-I-S-E-N.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Okay. Do you work with her?
[Ornell H. Balzer] Yeah.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] When she was a radiotherapist,
a nurse, or a therapist.
[Ornell H. Balzer] Radiotherapist. See at that time,
they didn't hire any technician.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] I was going to ask you that.
[Ornell H. Balzer] Just RAN.
Lesley Williams [Brunet] Why was that?
[Ornell H. Balzer] I don't know, just a policy of the hospital, I guess.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] They trained you on the job, I guess?
[Ornell H. Balzer] Yeah.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Did you work with
Maryland Stovall? Remember Maryland Stovall.
[Ornell H. Balzer] I knew Maryland,
but I never did really work with her.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] She's still there too.
[Ornell H. Balzer] She's still there?
[Lesley Williams Brunet] She's still there working, yes.
[Ornell H. Balzer] Shame on me.
She's put in a lot of years with Anderson.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] I think she may be one of the longest working.
[Ornell H. Balzer] Yeah.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Yeah.
[Ornell H. Balzer] Oh.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] She's a doctor now.
[Ornell H. Balzer] I was thinking the other day.
I wonder if there's some people there and
the last two years or so that I worked at Anderson,
(laughing) just walk ahead screwy ideas at times.
She said, Ornell you're getting too old to work.
I said I like it, Ms. Walker,
and I want to work,
I have to work to get my 20 years servicing here.
I can do that before I'm 65 and half to quit.
At that time you had to quit at 65 or take a severe clap.
I said I can still work.
All you're getting too old to work.
I said you're not getting too old to eat.
When you want to eat,
that's got to be food on the table.
I don't plan on going around begging for food.
She said, well,
I'll see if I can find something for you to do.
You know what she had me do.
They had this new hospital that they built,
didn't have any furniture in it yet.
But there was supposed to be an examining table
and a chair in each examining room, which makes sense.
Lesley Williams [Brunet] All right.
[Ornell H. Balzer] Of course, the examining table
was set up for a gym patient.
She said, I want you to get a measurement of
the examining table and cut
a miniature model and the chair.
I cut a little piece of cartoon board
(laughing) that long and
about that wide and
then the square about that big for the chair.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Measuring about an inch or inch and a half.
[Ornell H. Balzer] That was a stupid thing to do.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] What was that for? To mark-up.
Do a mark-up or something?
[Ornell H. Balzer] Yeah, so I could complete.
I was too old to work on machines,
but I needed to do something so that
I could get my 20 years in there.
(laughing) That's what I did.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] That's unusual. Now,
would that be the Lutheran Pavilion?
This was for one of the additions.
[Ornell H. Balzer] No, Lutheran Pavilion,
yes, it was built at that time.
But yeah, I guess,
it's been so long ago.
Didn't they add some more to
the basement there? (crosstalk)
[Lesley Williams Brunet] The gimbal, Wayne.
[Ornell H. Balzer] I think that's where it was. (crosstalk)
Lesley Williams [Brunet] It might be.
[Ornell H. Balzer] (laughing) Cooked those a little bit.
Then I'll have to draw
dimensions of the room, put the cabinets.
Cabinets were built them.
Then a stool from the doctor was already in there.
All I had to plan was examining table and then the chair,
and then show that to her,
which was so stupid.
No odd way of killing time there. (laughing)
[Lesley Williams Brunet] I get, is a little bit odd.
Yes. Was that just
in the last few days or something you were there?
[Ornell H. Balzer] No, about the last two years?
Lesley Williams [Brunet] Oh, really?
[Ornell H. Balzer] Yeah. Then of course she had new girls coming in.
Then she said,
why don't you take these new girls and give them
a quickie introduction to what we expect of them.
Well, that's hard and I enjoyed doing that.
Lesley Williams [Brunet] The training.
[Ornell H. Balzer] Yeah. Showing them around and
lecturing to them the do's and don'ts.
Then taking them around there.
She also said you
have to give them a test (laughing) to see.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] If they were paying attention?
[Ornell H. Balzer] Yeah. (laughing) This one girl, Aida.
What was her name?
I thought I never would forget her name.
She was a loner.
She was the only one I had.
She hadn't been on duty at
Herman for I don't know how long.
Well, and then the day time was her asleep day.
I'd be sitting there talking to her and
explaining things to her and I would sit there.
(laughing) Why do you ask?
This was a long time after that,
we got to be real good friends.
A Group of us used to go down to beach,
run houses down there for the weekend or so.
I would come down there with us.
I told her about that one day I said,
you know something Aida,
I think about that so often I can still
see you sitting there nodding.
I'd say Aida did you hear what I said? (laughing)
[Lesley Williams Brunet] We don't know her last name, do we?
[Ornell H. Balzer] I can't remember what her last name was.
See that's a bad part about it.
Everybody knew each other by first-name only.
They said the reason they do
that is that the patients cannot,
if they have anything,
come up at night,
that they can call,
look in the telephone directory and call
the therapist if they had
any problems called the doctors.
That's why our patients just knew us by first name.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] I don't understand, so that they
could call you or so that they call the doctor.
[Ornell H. Balzer] No, so that they could not look us up in
that telephone directory at night.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Then call you at home or call you in the hospital.
[Ornell H. Balzer] Well, see we went home.
If they knew our last name,
they had the opportunity of looking up our name in
the telephone directory and calling
us instead of calling the hospital.
Where they could get the help they needed.
That's why nobody knew our last name.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] That makes sense.
[Ornell H. Balzer] Yeah.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] I'm about to run out of tape.
I know you have to go to lunch at 12:00, right?
[Ornell H. Balzer] Yeah.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Anything you want to add or we can always come back and
add some more or you can
tell Dr. Olsen when she shows up?
[Ornell H. Balzer] Yeah. What happened to him?
[Lesley Williams Brunet] (noise) Nothing, I hope.
He probably got the time wrong.
Well, I'll find
out if he's going to come down and talk to you again.
But before I run out of tape,
I do want to thank you for taking the time to talk to me.
You have a very good memory.
Quite spry.
[Ornell H. Balzer] I enjoyed that because
Anderson has a big part of my heart.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Yes, it does for a lot of people
and you obviously spent a lot of time there?
[Ornell H. Balzer] Yeah. I saw Anderson go from nothing.
In fact, my daughter and I were out there on
the grounds the day they had the groundbreaking ceremony.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] For the new building. (crosstalk)
[Ornell H. Balzer] For the new hospital. Yeah.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] I don't suppose you have any pictures from those.
[Ornell H. Balzer] Yeah. There's one picture there.
My son and his wife;
we went to a lunch in there one time,
just a couple of years ago.
It's up on the second floor.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] You saw the picture?
[Ornell H. Balzer] Yeah. Bertram looked and he said.
No, we couldn't see you and Hermanail in that group.
But my daughter and I were there.