When I transferred to NDSU from the nursing program at St. Teresa's College, it was with the intention of becoming a dietitian. The usual method of entering that profession was to go to a Home Economics College for four years with a major in Foods and Nutrition. NDSU had one of the best Home Economics departments in the country, and graduated about 50 potential dietitians each year.

The procedure of picking an internship was as follows: About February of the year of finishing we were given a list of all the potential internship programs in the country with details of how they ran their programs, what accommodation was provided etc. From this list we were each able to choose two which we would like to apply to. The closest venue to me was in Minneapolis and there was another in Rochester, Minnesota which tempted me because that was where I'd originally been planning on doing my nursing work - and it is a great medical centre. Then most big cities across the country had internships in their hospitals - and there didn't seem to be a lot to choose between them.

The groups that stood out by the virtue of the fact that they actually paid the interns were the Veterans Hospitals and the Armed Services Hospitals. So I picked the VA hospital in Chicago and the USPHS Hospital in New York as being representative of the highest paid internships. My parents were hoping I'd pick someplace nearer, remembering how homesick I was when I first went off to college. But I felt that I'd got over that and I really wanted to take the opportunity of seeing the country and knew this was one very good way. The US Public Health Service was considered part of the armed services because it catered for the medical needs of the Coast Guard. Another advantage of it over other service hospitals was that they didn't require that you paid back with a year or two of service at the end.

In mid May, the College had an Internship Tea at which we would be given our bids from the places we had applied to.  I had actually finished my college work at the end of the winter term and had been living at home helping take care of my mother who'd had a stroke earlier in the winter, so I made a special trip to Fargo for the ceremony. Each girl's name was called in turn and we marched up for our bids - just like in a sorority. I was offered both places that I had chosen. Most had at least one bid so we were all pretty happy. We had to make our final decisions within a few days, and I didn't even think about Chicago. I was going to New York. Mom said, "You can't go to New York." But I said I was over 21 and I was going.

The USPHS internship at Staten Island, New York offered two choices of start dates - July 15 and September 15. They had places for 12 girls in all - 6 at each intake. I chose the earlier starting time. I wrote off to see if any of the other interns were from my area thinking we might be able to fly out together, but they wrote back that the closest was from Nebraska, and that didn't seem to be of much use to me. I had never flown before, and had never been to New York or any other big city on my own - other than Minneapolis.

We had been told we would be provided with uniforms, and our rooms would have linen provided, and maid service as well, if you please. We would be housed in the nurses' quarters which adjoined the hospital which made me much relieved that I wouldn't have to find accommodation and worry about transport to work. I sent a trunk in advance, because I needed clothes for a whole year, and the hospital paid for shipping it. They were paying our air fare out too. One preliminary for the job was to be fingerprinted by the local police - because no criminal would be allowed a government job.

It was all very exciting and I couldn't wait for July 15th to arrive. Mom and Dad took me out to Bismarck airport which was a big excursion for Mom, as her stroke had left her ability to walk in a very precarious state, plus the fact that she was very selfconscious about her disability. I told them not to worry and that I would call when I'd arrived to tell them I was safe.

Bismarck in July 1965 couldn't land big jets, so I had to take a prop plane as far as Minneapolis, and it landed in Jamestown and Fargo en route. I was quite pleased in the end that I'd had that experience because it is much more interesting than flying above the clouds. You can trace each river and watch the patterns of the fields changing. I was glued to the window all the time. I had a very smooth flight and wondered what all the fuss about flying was about.

When we landed in Minneapolis my luggage was automatically transferred so it was just a matter of getting myself to another of the Northwest Airline terminals and rechecking for the continuing flight. This time it was on a big jet and we got on the plane from a loading platform inside the building. This was really thrilling and the feel of this plane in flight was very different from the little prop plane. We did have a certain amount of turbulence too, and I appreciated a bit more why some people are frighted of flying, but I wasn't worried, only thrilled by all the new experiences. We didn't land anywhere in between and when we flew into New York we had the problem of having to circle the airport until we were cleared for landing. We must have spent nearly an hour waiting for clearance but it was a nice day and we had a good view of bits of New York and the sea beyond so I didn't mind. We eventually landed safely and I had the seemingly interminable wait for the luggage to come out. I was sure that it had been left behind in Minneapolis, but out it did come in the end, and I collected it onto a trolley and went to find a taxi.

I didn't know much about the geography of New York, but I was sure that a taxi driver would have no trouble. I did ask the cab driver as soon as I got in if he would go to Staten Island. He said yes, but it was off his meter which I didn't understand - but just sat back and hoped for the best. He pointed out Coney Island to me as we drove along. He found his way over the Verazanno Narrows Bridge which was a beautiful long bridge - apparently overtaking the Golden Gate in San Francisco as the longest bridge of its type in the country. It had only been open a short while and there were still parts of it being worked on.

When we got to Staten Island it turned out that the cabby hadn't a clue where the hospital was, but he stopped and asked a few times, and we eventually got there. I was expecting a bill of about $10, but when he said $18 I paid without asking any questions, but didn't give him a tip. (I expect in current monitary terms that would be at least 10 times what it was then.) I went into the main door of the hospital and asked where I was to go, and was given directions for finding my way to the Nurses' Home. When I struggled to my room on the third floor I found out that some of my collegues were already there - it being about 6 o'clock when I arrived.

We were taken over to the hospital cafeteria by some of the current interns who would be finishing their year in September, and started to get to know each others. The girl from Nebraska turned out to be Jeanette Hake, a tall blond girl with an enormous bust of which she was very self-concious and very proud. She was friendly and bubbling over with enthusiasm for it all. She told us that the airlines had told her she'd have to pay excess baggage because of her extra load on front. I found her a bit overwhelming as a first impression, but I certainly was prepared to like her.

The next girl I met was Carolyn Ready a rather quiet, pretty girl who came from Indianapolis who had the room more or less across the hall from me. Her parents had brought her and they were just saying their goodbyes. They seemed a bit worried about leaving her in this big city and I was reminded of my own parents, so I went off to phone home to tell them I'd arrived safely and that all was well.

Next I met Helen who seemed very efficient from the word go - a real organizer was Helen. She came from Pennsylvania (same place as Marcie who was my next year's roommate in Evanston) and was tall with curly blond hair and glasses. I had recently started wearing contact lenses, but found that I couldn't wear them happily all day and evening, and was very relieved when I took eventually took them out and put my glasses back on.

The next person I met was Ruth Pabst and she was from Wisconsin. There was something very reassuring about meeting Ruth. She was from my part of the world, roughly speaking. She talked sort of like me, while Jeanette's accent was southern, Helen's was eastern and Carolyn's was very posh. Ruth looked like home - she'd come from a small farming community and reminded me of some of my cousins. Ruth was slightly plump with medium length curly brown hair and a very relaxed happy sort of face.

We only had five in our group rather than the six that could have come - but I suppose that was the hazzard of that method of chosing interns.

The next day we met with out bosses and had an official tour of the hospital. The internship program was divided into three major phases: the main kitchen experience where we learned about ordering and preparing the food as well as planning the use of staff and supervising everybody; the food service section where we were to be responsible to see that the food was delivered to the patients on the wards and in the cafeterias and again in supervising the employees who actually did the work; and the third section was therapeutics where we learned to write the special diet menus and to teach the patients about their diets, and to run the outpatient clinics.

The chief dietitian was a very tall large woman called Lettie. We never called her that of course. She was Miss Warnock. I couldn't understand why a person who was so obviously overweight would be the chief dietitian whose job involved telling everybody else how bad it was for them to be overweight. She was pleasant and efficient but somewhat distant as if we were a very small part of her work life.

Our main teacher was Lois, the deputy head dietitian. She was short and dark and very Jewish - and would tolerate no nonsense. She impressed me as being extrememly bossy and almost overbearing, but as we got to know her we all came to think of her as a good friend as well as a very powerful boss. As we made the rounds of the hospital we met the other people we would work with.

In Therapeutics the dietitian in charge was called Miss Alice Stang, and she was pleasant but rather remote. She had a senior dietitian helping her called Joyce who looked the sort who would push her weight around quite a lot, which proved to be the case. She was rather bossy and aggressive and enjoyed being in charge of us novices and putting us firmly in our lowly place.

In the Main Kitchen we met the dietitian in charge, Miss Witter, and she was tall and masculine and appeared rather unfriendly and rough, but again as we got to know her we realized how soft and pleasant a woman she really was.

The dietitian in charge of food service was a recently finished intern called Patsy who was married and therefore wished to stay working in the hospital which was near her home. She was very nice but not very forceful, remembering her own intership days of not long before no doubt.

The department was organized with a very large main kitchen in the basement of the main building with maybe 50 workers in each of the various sections - all men and mostly black or brown. They wore white uniforms and the chefs and main cooks were designated by peaked white caps. I was overwhelmed by the thought of having to work in the kitchen and was glad I didn't have to start out there straight away.

There were two large cafeterias, one for ambulatory patients and one for staff. Then on each of the wards there was a small kitchen where the trays would be finally assembled and delivered to the patients and then brought back to be broken down before they were returned to the dish washing area. The food was delivered to the smaller kitchens in bulk containers on trolleys, and the food was portioned and placed on trays in these small kitchens, with a hot and cold section for each of the tray trolleys that went around the wards.

My first assignment was to the therapeutics unit, and Carolyn was there too. I was very pleased about that because that was the aspect of dietetics that appealed to me most. Miss Stang and Joyce showed us how to take the cardex with the special diet patients names on how we checked through the menus which had been headed by the therapeutic secretary, Sandy, to make sure each person had the appropriate color menu. The bland diets were written on blue paper, the salt frees on yellow, the low proteins on green, the reducers and diabetics on pink and the other special diets on white.

We had to learn the specifics of what foods were and were not allowed on each diet, and to do that we had a diet manual, and individual diet sheets which were used for teaching each patient about his diet. I say his, because there were only men in this hospital with the exception of the maternity ward where a very few wives were accommodated. The hospital was for coast guard officers and men and the merchant seamen of the area.

We were given a certain section of diets to write each day, and our work was checked by Joyce or Alice to make sure there were no mistakes. When we had sucessfully written diets with no mistakes for a few days, we would be considered passed on that aspect and would then be allowed to write the menus without supervision. Carolyn passed a long time before I did. There were so many fiddly details that one had to remember. Some salt restricted diets got ordinary butter and some had to have salt free. Some diabetics got bread and some didn't. I learned the importance of paying attention to small details, and when I started checking my work, I managed to pass that stage too.

We also had to go around observing Joyce as she instructed patients on their diets. We'd watch her do a few, then we would do a few with her watching and if she decided we had done well enough, we then would have passed that aspect and could do the diet instructions on our own. As well as those jobs we also had to make the rounds of all the wards during mealtimes to see that the patients were actually eating the food we provided, to take notice of their likes and dislikes for when we were making out menus, to answer any questions about their diets, and spot any problems that might arise.

I didn't much like these ward rounds, because I found most therapeutic diet patients thought the food was pretty bad, and I had a hard time defending its curative properties. One such visit to a patient sticks in my mind. He and those on his ward had syphilis - we had access to patient notes and we liked to know as much as we could about what was wrong with our patients. Anyway, when I went to check with him about his food preferences, he asked me to open the top drawer in his bedside table, and there was a huge collection of condoms (which we called rubbers). He was so pleased that he caused a reaction in me, and said if ever I was in need, I would know where to come.

We also had to stand guard over the patient's cafeteria to make sure they chose foods that were within their diet restrictions. Each ambulatory patient was given a color coded card which he took with him down to the cafeteria line. We then knew if he was entitled to one or two scoops of mashed potatoes, and if he could take any kind of juice or was restricted to grapefruit only. The patients tried to get away with cheating, and it was a sort of game for them to try to sneak things they weren't entited to, and to make us go through the agony of finding them out.

We didn't actually serve on the cafeteria line - unless we were learning about a particular job. The philosophy of the department was that you were not capable of supervising a job if you hadn't done the job yourself so we each had to do bits of cooking and vegetable preparation and bread making and serving, just so we knew what we were talking about. But the employees knew that they knew their jobs far better than we ever would. Some of them resented our interference but most of them laughed quietly behind their hands at us trying to tell them how to do their jobs. But for the most part, I think they liked us. The interns were much more popular than the qualified dietitians, who they labelled as frigid spinsters.

As I mentioned before, the learning experience was split into three parts and while Carolyn and I were doing therapeutics, Ruth and Helen were in the main kitchen and Jeanette was working in food service. After a few months we all changed around.

We worked 8 hour days, 5 days a week, but because hospitals had to be staffed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, our schedules varied. Sometimes we did the early shift which started at 6:30 for therapeutics and food service and 5:30 for the main kitchen. And sometimes we were on the late shift which didn't start til 10 but carried on until seven. And then we took it in turns to be "on call" for the time between 7 and 5:30 the next morning. We had keys to the back door of the hospital and had the responsibility of opening up the main kitchen to do whatever was required in the middle of the night. The usual "on call" orders were for bottles of milk to be sent to a ward for a bleeding ulcer patient, or for sandwiches to be made up for a late arriving patient who was hungry. Also, the person on early shift in the main kitchen actually had the job of opening up, and I hated that. Mice were a problem in the kitchen, and the thought of being the one to disturb them after their night's feasting did not appeal to me at all.

The first weekend after we arrived Ruth, Jeanette and I decided we would like to see something of Manhattan. We took the Staten Island Ferry (three decks and space for cars) across which was the best value for money ride in the world in those days. It cost a nickle and took about half an hour. The ride took us past the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island and Governor's Island and into the downtown section (meaning the bottom ) of Manhattan with its world famous skyline. I never tired or failed to be thrilled with that ride.

Anyway, it must have been wet that day because somehow we managed to get our shoes muddy and I remember going into the ladies room at the Manhatten end ferry terminal and washing our feet in the sinks there. We took another boat out to the Statue of Liberty, and climbed about half way up to the top and took an elevator the rest of the way. The whole trip would have been just too much. Then on the return ferry trip I was amazed again at what a small world it is, for who should be on the ferry but a young man from Bismarck. I didn't know him well, but his brother had been in my high school class. I'm sure the statistical evidence of we two North Dakotans both being on the Staten Island ferry at the same time must have been rather impressive.

After I'd been at the hospital for a few weeks I contacted a man who was my half-sister's cousin. I had met him when we were children but hadn't seen him since. I knew he lived in New York, and we saw his mother fairly often. His name was Keith Hutchinson, and he came over to the island the next weekend and we went wondering among the docks and just seeing unusual bits of New York. He was very quiet and intense, and although I liked him, I didn't want to become involved with him. The next evening he took me to see My Fair Lady at a movie theatre in Manhattan. I enjoyed the evening but felt all the time the need to discourage him, and I guess I did a good job. He invited me to see a play with him, and bought the tickets, but when the time came, he sent me the tickets and said he didn't want to go after all, and I gave the tickets away and never heard from or saw him after that.

(Keith died recently, and he had never married. He left £35,000 in his will to my sister Kathleen, which was a complete surprise.)