Lindner, Mary Jane

              ORAL HISTORY OF MARY JANE LINDNER
Interviewed and filmed by Keith McDaniel
December 30, 2010
 
Mr. McDaniel: All right, this is Keith McDaniel and today is December the 30th, 2010, and I am at the home of Mary Jane Lindner here in Oak Ridge. Thank you, Mrs. Lindner, for taking the time to talk with us.
Mrs. Lindner: You are welcome.
Mr. McDaniel: Let’s go back to the beginning. Tell me where you were born and where you were raised and about your family.
Mrs. Lindner: I was born in Butte, Montana, mile high on earth.
[laughter] And I went to, of course, elementary school, and Butte High, and was in the band, and I have been a Girl Scout since I was nine years old.
Mr. McDaniel: Is that right?
Mrs. Lindner: Yes. In Butte that was one of the things that was important in elementary school and all. Then I went to college in Bozeman, Montana State. 
Mr. McDaniel: So let’s go back to your childhood. So you grew up in Butte. What did your parents do?
Mrs. Lindner: My dad was State Adjustor for insurance rates and policies, fire insurance. He worked for the Board of Fire Underwriters in Butte.
Mr. McDaniel: Was that a state office?
Mrs. Lindner: I don’t know if it was state. It was the only one in the state. He was the only adjuster. His office did that. There were several men; each one did different things. He was in charge of buildings and housing and how far they were from a fire hydrant, how many miles from town and so forth. He knew the state of Montana.
Mr. McDaniel: Right, exactly. What did your mother do? Was she a homemaker?
Mrs. Lindner: Well, Mom was there and Mom made all our clothes. Remember, I was a Depression baby, and consequently Mom was very style-conscious and color-conscious. I was always large for my age. When I was ten years old I was the same size, height as I am now, and I weighed the same when I went to college as when I was ten.
Mr. McDaniel: Is that right? It must’ve been all that good Montana beef.
Mrs. Lindner: Or something.
Mr. McDaniel: [laughter] You probably didn’t have much of it during the Depression, did you, though?
Mrs. Lindner: Dad liked hunting.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, is that right?
Mrs. Lindner: And an important part of our day was Dad had a homestead up by Chouteau, Montana, and his brother had a dude ranch joining it. So every fall, Dad would go up, because the hunters from the east wanted to get rid of their deer and elk and moose. And consequently, our garage always had meat. Of course, it was cold in Butte, so it froze and hung in the garage. So I ate well.
Mr. McDaniel: You ate well. [laughter] So did you have any brothers or sisters?
Mrs. Lindner: I have one sister, three years younger, Anita Dorothy, called Dot, who lives now in Phoenix, Arizona and is a new widow.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, is that right? Okay. So you grew up in Butte, Montana and you went to school and you graduated. I guess the weather there was great for winter sports activities.
Mrs. Lindner: Yes.
Mr. McDaniel: So what did you do as a kid?
Mrs. Lindner: Well, every night after school – of course, we walked to school in those days, you know – but every day after school, I went ice skating. I never went much for skiing. My sister liked skiing and my dad did, but I was too big and awkward to trouble with skis, but ice skating was important. And naturally, when I was in high school, to go to the professional rinks for dates was real nice, and lots of fun. That was most of the winter thing. Of course, I was a joiner. Like I said, I was active in Girl Scouts; I liked Girl Scouting. And remember, it was new when they had developed the senior scout. See, Girl Scouts stopped when you went to high school, until my day. And then as I was the only senior scout in town, I got around and got to do different things. I remember one of the nicest things I got to do was when Mrs. Herbert Hoover came to town, I got to be her hostess. Well, she was staying at the ACM manager’s house, but I was invited to come and tell her about Scouting in Butte.
Mr. McDaniel: Is that right? Do you have any photographs of that?
Mrs. Lindner: I think so, but I’m afraid that would’ve been in one that stayed in Butte. I can remember the picture, but my sister didn’t believe in keeping old things, so when the folks died she discarded. But maybe there is still, you know, among the things a picture with Mrs. Herbert Hoover.
Mr. McDaniel: Well, that’s something to cherish if there is a photograph, or at least cherish that memory. 
Mrs. Lindner: Yeah. Well, to me, after all, I wasn’t very old. I wasn’t in high school yet.
Mr. McDaniel: How big was Butte at that time? What was the population?
Mrs. Lindner: About thirty thousand. It’s gone down quite a bit. But it was a mining town. ACM managed it. Of course, I knew at the time every rock that was – what it was, whether it was important. And also a lot of foreign folks were there.
Mr. McDaniel: I guess a lot of miners came in from other countries.
Mrs. Lindner: Miners came from other countries. So we had what we called Wop-town, that’s where the Italians lived; that was where the wonderful Italian restaurants were. We had Germantown. Each part of our city was divided, and many of my schoolmates, folks could not speak or read English. My mother signed a lot of report cards. But even though we were of different nationalities and everything, we were always friendly.
Mr. McDaniel: Were you able to pick up any of their language?
Mrs. Lindner: Oh yes. I know that I could, you know, nowadays it’s a matter of understanding it rather than using it. But there were like a lot of – I had several good friends that were Czechoslovakians, and of course the Irish there were something. Also, Butte was mainly a Catholic town.
Mr. McDaniel: Is that right? 
Mrs. Lindner: Yeah, there were, what, sixteen Catholic churches there, but only five Catholic schools. But still, when we went to high school, we were friends. I also got very acquainted with lots of different religions.
Mr. McDaniel: Were you raised a particular denomination or religion?
Mrs. Lindner: I went to the Congregational Sunday school, but when I was going with Phyllis, I went to the Baptist; when I was going with Carmen, Christian Science. I had a date when I was real serious with a – gosh, I don’t remember what he was.
[laughter]
Mr. McDaniel: You went to his church, whatever it was.
Mrs. Lindner: Yeah. And then I had dear friends that were Greeks, scouts; they had a lot. So I got very acquainted with all religions.
Mr. McDaniel: Well, it was great to be exposed to that at a young age, I suppose.
Mrs. Lindner: Yeah. And to me it was just, like I can’t say I was devout, but I had a faith.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure. So you grew up in Butte and you graduated high school there.
Mrs. Lindner: Yeah.
Mr. McDaniel: And then you went to college. Tell me about where you went.
Mrs. Lindner: I went to Bozeman, Montana State College. And I was the second class of nurses. It had just started one year or two years before I entered.
Mr. McDaniel: Right. Did you know you wanted to be a nurse?
Mrs. Lindner: I knew I wanted to be a nurse when I was very young. Very often when Dad was checking towns we went with him, and I had relatives all over the state. I’d ride in the car and he’d always park in front of the hospital, because when I could see nurses, I’d sit all day. I can remember asking different nurses – I was in – there were only four hospitals in Montana, but I can remember being in those places. And then, of course, by the time I got into nursing, there were several hospitals more, but that was when I was little: there was one in Butte, one in Great Falls – well, two in Great Falls. So it was the Catholic and the Deaconess, one in Missoula, and one in Miles City.
Mr. McDaniel: Is that right? I guess back then there were, not like there are now, but there probably weren’t a lot of options for women, I mean as far as that wanted to work in the workplace, was there?
Mrs. Lindner: Oh well, yeah. I can’t really say except that in my glory years, it was wartime. By the time I went to college, you see, college was open in many ways for women.
Mr. McDaniel: Before the war there weren’t that many opportunities, I mean, professional.
Mrs. Lindner: I mean for special courses, professional, for women. 
Mr. McDaniel: But so you went to Bozeman State College, which is now Bozeman State University, and you went into the second class of nursing students.
Mrs. Lindner: Yeah.
Mr. McDaniel: So tell me about that. How long did it take you?
Mrs. Lindner: I had two years on the campus and three years in the hospital. Then because I was getting a degree, I had to do an internship in ward teaching and management. So being Gordon was in that place called Oak Ridge – 
Mr. McDaniel: And you had met him at the university?
Mrs. Lindner: Yeah, and we were married when I was in training, because like he probably told you, he came home on furlough because he thought he was going overseas, so we got married. Then they sent him to a place called Oak Ridge. So I knew about Oak Ridge.
Mr. McDaniel: Let me just kind of fill in here: he was part of the SED and he’d come to Oak Ridge by himself, even though you all were married, because you were still having to finish some things in Montana, right?
Mrs. Lindner: Yes. Well, because, you see, when the war broke out and he was taken by the Army and put in school and that was it. But when he didn’t, after fifteen months got a furlough. [laughter]
Mr. McDaniel: Which was a good place for them to put him, wasn’t it, in the Army?
Mrs. Lindner: Oh, well, it was grand for us. Always has been. Also at college, I was a sorority sister, and then I started a Girl Scout program so that during the war years, the Bozeman troop would go to the hospital, because the General Hospital in Bozeman also took soldiers in. Of course, it was, what, a hundred-and-fifty bed hospital. The girls then would deliver the papers and pour water and everything. 
Mr. McDaniel: This is when you were in nursing school, you started the Girl – 
Mrs. Lindner: Well, I was at college.
Mr. McDaniel: Right, you were at college.
Mrs. Lindner: I had the two years in college. I was acquainted with the hospital people, and they asked us to come down in spare time to help, because at that time, there were only two doctors, and one of them, by the way, came to Oak Ridge. Dr. Ennebol came from Bozeman to Oak Ridge, so that meant that there was just one doctor for the town, the college, and the world.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, my goodness.
Mrs. Lindner: So that’s when I got started doing hospital volunteer along with hospital work.
Mr. McDaniel: But when you finished your program, your two years of college and then three years of, I guess, in-the-field training – 
Mrs. Lindner: Yeah. Then, see, they moved me then from Bozeman up to Great Falls, Montana for the hospital training. And then I was to have an internship.
Mr. McDaniel: Right. Now when you finished, you became I guess what, a registered nurse, is that what it was?
Mrs. Lindner: Yes.
Mr. McDaniel: Okay. So they moved you to Great Falls and then you had to have an internship. Tell me about that.
Mrs. Lindner: Well, when I found out that I could come to Oak Ridge for the internship and Ms. Webb wrote to the hospital, you know, they decided I’d better take state boards because I probably wouldn’t come home to take state boards when I finished the fall course, because I would’ve finished at Christmastime, and they knew that I probably wouldn’t come to take state boards. By law in Montana you had to take state boards so many months after finishing – after graduating. So I took state boards without any preparation.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, my goodness.
Mrs. Lindner: However, evidently I did pretty good, because she called me down to the office after – when I came to Oak Ridge, I was especially interested in pediatrics, and I was on pediatric floor and taking care and everything.
Mr. McDaniel: So when you came to Oak Ridge to join your husband, you got your internship at Oak Ridge?
Mrs. Lindner: At Oak Ridge.
Mr. McDaniel: At the hospital here in Oak Ridge?
Mrs. Lindner: Yeah, the hospital at Oak Ridge, and I got here in October.
Mr. McDaniel: When was that, October of ’45?
Mrs. Lindner: Five.
Mr. McDaniel: October of ’45, right after the end of the war.
Mrs. Lindner: Yeah. And then I wasn’t on the floor very long and they had a nasty epidemic here of scarlet fever, and of all things, Rocky Mountain spotted fever. There was four or five youngsters came in and a couple – well, the doctors here didn’t know. And I said, “Oh, well, I’ve had the shots. I had to have Rocky Mountain spotted fever shot every spring.” “You have?” Consequently, I lived in glory for a couple of weeks, working two shifts a day, because I had the shots, and taking care of only the spotted fever cases.
Mr. McDaniel: What do you mean, you ‘lived in glory’?
Mrs. Lindner: Well, I’m telling you, the doctors just – 
Mr. McDaniel: You were running the show, weren’t you?
Mrs. Lindner: Yeah, I was on Contagion. Do you remember Dr. Louis, Philip Louis? 
Mr. McDaniel: Uhn-uhn, I don’t.
Mrs. Lindner: Or Louis – 
Mr. McDaniel: Louis Preston.
Mrs. Lindner: Preston.
Mr. McDaniel: Yes, Dr. Preston.
Mrs. Lindner: He was here then. And two or three of the doctors that have been here lately, they had no idea – see, pediatricians, what in the world that rash could be. And I says, “Well, if you ask me, I think it’s Rocky” – “How would you know?” “Well, I took care of it all summer,” you know. So they sent tests to Minneapolis and they called me up and said, “Lindner, can you take care of the kids? Because you’re the only one, until we get the material here to protect other nurses.” So that’s what I mean. I not only diagnosed something, but I was able to take care of it and know what to do about it. And I love little kids, so it was fun.
Mr. McDaniel: And I bet that kind of made you stand out in the eyes of those physicians, didn’t it?
Mrs. Lindner: Yes, I mean, they knew me and the hospital knew me, because, remember, old Oak Ridge Hospital had two sections and everything.
Mr. McDaniel: So you finished your internship in Oak Ridge.
Mrs. Lindner: Yes. Well, and then by working the two shifts a day, I got through early. I had all my hours of it. And consequently, then we got to celebrate Christmas and New Year’s. And was the 1st of January then, I got called to the office and said that I was a graduate RN, and my salary, which just floored me.
Mr. McDaniel: [laughter] Is that right? Do you remember what it was? 
Mrs. Lindner: Yes. It was three hundred bucks a month. But, now, you see, I was getting, what was it, six to nine dollars a week in Montana. Then I came down here and they gave me seventeen dollars a week, so I was in it. But then to walk in and hear that I could have all of this big one – 
Mr. McDaniel: So you went from about $80.00 a month to about $300.00 a month. Oh, my goodness.
Mrs. Lindner: Yeah. [laughter] And little GI pay, you know – 
Mr. McDaniel: Right. Exactly.
Mrs. Lindner: It meant that – 
Mr. McDaniel: But by now you had had – had you had your son, your first son?
Mrs. Lindner: No, not yet. I had signs of him by that time. 
Mr. McDaniel: So you graduated in January; they told you that you were official. You were officially an RN in January of ’46. 
Mrs. Lindner: And like I say, I lived in glory in Oak Ridge Hospital. Then when he was – did he tell you about building the car?
Mr. McDaniel: Well, he mentioned that. Go ahead and tell me about that.
Mrs. Lindner: There’s pictures here. Finally, after January, they gave GIs housing. See, up until then, I had to live in a hotel.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, yeah, where did you live? Did you live in a hotel or a dorm?
Mrs. Lindner: It was – well, we have the picture, a name of it. It was one of the dormitories out on, well, west Turnpike, right there on that side. Yeah, so we paid – I had the money then. We paid thirty-five dollars a week so he could live with me. We were lucky: the Army did his laundry; the hospital did my laundry. [laughter] 
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, that’s good. But your husband said you all moved into a victory cottage.
Mrs. Lindner: Then after that they put us in a victory cottage.
Mr. McDaniel: Right. Which was about the size of – was it even the size of this room? [laughter]
Mrs. Lindner: Just about, and you can see through the planks on the floor. I had to remember to put the money in the refrigerator for the block of ice.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, is that right?
Mrs. Lindner: I mean for in the icebox, thirty-five cents.
Mr. McDaniel: Who is it told me a funny story about the victory cottage? Joanne Gailar. She tells a funny story about couldn’t open the window, so she had Roane-Anderson come out, and then she couldn’t close the window, and they came out and said, “Lady, make up your mind. Do you want it open or shut?” [laughter] 
Mrs. Lindner: Well, I know the only thing I can remember calling about was enough oil in the barrel for the stove, because very often, we kept it going all night to dry clothes.
Mr. McDaniel: So this was spring of ’46, you were living in a victory cottage.
Mrs. Lindner: And I realized I was pregnant. Gordon was fixing the car in the living room of the victory cottage.
Mr. McDaniel: Is that right? He didn’t tell me that part. He rebuilt the engine.
Mrs. Lindner: He rebuilt the engine in the living room. And then I could sweep the oil down the cracks.
Mr. McDaniel: [laughter] My goodness.
Mrs. Lindner: When he was discharged, my sister at the time was living in Atlanta, so we went – he was discharged in Atlanta – so we went on down to Thomaston, her home, so I could see her. And because I knew I’d probably never be to Florida again, I wanted to go to Florida.
Mr. McDaniel: He said y’all took a nice, leisurely trip back to Montana. 
Mrs. Lindner: We got to Wyoming and couldn’t get through because of snow, and we left here in the last of May.
Mr. McDaniel: That’s what I was about to say, you know, that was summer.
Mrs. Lindner: Yeah. Got as far as Yellowstone and couldn’t get out – couldn’t get there. We didn’t have time to stop in Bozeman; we had to go on home.
Mr. McDaniel: Now let me go back and ask you a real quick question. I meant to ask your husband this: in Butte, how many months of the year was snow on the ground, about?
Mrs. Lindner: Well, I can remember once during a 4th of July parade it snowed, but it didn’t hit the ground. As a rule, in September, first day, you know –
Mr. McDaniel: Yeah, Labor Day or so.
Mrs. Lindner: Well, after Labor Day – what’s the other September equinox?
Mr. McDaniel: Well, the beginning of fall, the first day of fall. 
Mrs. Lindner: Yeah, the first day of fall.
Mr. McDaniel: September 21st or so.
Mrs. Lindner: We depended on a snowstorm. Very often, it was too cold to snow. The ground was – 
Mr. McDaniel: Now, that’s cold, isn’t it?
Mrs. Lindner: Yeah. Also I remember one spring when I had just turned sixteen, that was the end of March, and Rainbow Girls had something on at town, so Dad let me take the car, drive the car. While we were up there, it snowed. That street was icy. But I parallel parked that car on a hill in the snow.
Mr. McDaniel: Is that right? [laughter]
Mrs. Lindner: Now, that was another claim to fame, and it was, what, a Nash, big Nash.
Mr. McDaniel: So you probably had snow on the ground nine, ten months of the year, didn’t you?
Mrs. Lindner: Oh, yeah. Well, on the mountains around anyway, or like I say, in the north part. I don’t remember icy streets, but there was – 
Mr. McDaniel: Well, it was probably so cold that it blew, didn’t it? It didn’t ice very much.
Mrs. Lindner: Yeah, it was blow. It was dry.
Mr. McDaniel: It was that dry snow.
Mrs. Lindner: Dry snow. And then it would melt.
Mr. McDaniel: Yeah, exactly. That’s where you get ice from. [laughter]
Mrs. Lindner: Another thing to brag about, when I was in the eighth grade, the temperature was fifty-six degrees below zero. 
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, my.
Mrs. Lindner: My Whittier School had one hundred percent attendance, and President Roosevelt called the school and I got to hear him because I was a Scout and taking care of frostbite in the teacher’s lounge, and that’s where the telephone was.
Mr. McDaniel: So he called the school. You had a hundred percent attendance at fifty-six degrees below zero. Oh, my goodness.
Mrs. Lindner: I can remember walking, you know, that wind was blowing so hard that I can remember walking.
Mr. McDaniel: You know, I guess when you grow up in those kinds of conditions everything else is pretty easy, isn’t it? [laughter] 
Mrs. Lindner: Well, and we know what to do and how to do it. Now if I get out in frosty weather, I get swollen. See, I had frostbite from my glasses; I had metal frame glasses and I had frostbite. My cheeks swell up. My hands and feet don’t get cold enough anymore, but that one place on my face that I can tell if I am out in the cold very long.
Mr. McDaniel: All right, well let’s get back to our story. You and your husband had left Oak Ridge and you went back to Montana, and I guess he went back to school, didn’t he, to finish school?
Mrs. Lindner: Yes. We got back in time for him to start summer school. But I went up and stayed with his folks so I could be with the doctor that I had been to school under.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure. And my understanding was his plan was to be able to finish things up and get back before the baby came. How did that work out?
Mrs. Lindner: Well, we got back in, like I say, late May, and he started school. Well, then Gary came prematurely in August. And he hitchhiked home from school.
Mr. McDaniel: Which was about 200 miles or so?
Mrs. Lindner: Yeah. So he was there. And they decided he’d had so many of the courses and everything, he didn’t have to go back for summer courses.
Mr. McDaniel: Did he not have his car with him at school?
Mrs. Lindner: No. No, we didn’t have a car.
Mr. McDaniel: Yeah, but you had the car that – 
Mrs. Lindner: No, we didn’t. We got rid of the car right away; we sold it, just because also financially we needed it. Yeah, we sold the car.
Mr. McDaniel: Okay, so your son was born, and he didn’t have to go back to – 
Mrs. Lindner: He started school again in the fall.
Mr. McDaniel: And you moved to Bozeman?
Mrs. Lindner: Bozeman. And one of my friends and I realized that there were a lot of the gals that wanted to work. I did work part-time down at the hospital, you know, PM shifts and everything. But we thought it would be best and we asked the school to give us the Army barracks, the ROTC barracks building that they weren’t using then, and I started a nursery. I had a couple of friends, and we charged all daycare and noon meals, fourteen dollars a week. The school took care of the heat and the Bozeman Women’s Club took care of the lunch meals; they cooked them for us. We had quite a few youngsters.
Mr. McDaniel: Where did the kids come from?
Mrs. Lindner: They were students. They had to be from the campus. We had babies three weeks old, six weeks old, a lot of tiny babies. There was a nursery and people had donated the cribs and so forth. 
Mr. McDaniel: I guess you being a nurse, that people felt good about that.
Mrs. Lindner: That made it qualified. Also my teaching credit helps, that I can hold kindergarten classes for little kids before school age.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure. So you stayed in Bozeman until – 
Mrs. Lindner: The following spring. Did Gordon tell you that was another stroke of luck? Oak Ridge called him.
Mr. McDaniel: Right, he showed me the telegram that he got.
Mrs. Lindner: They wanted him down here, and at the campus, they figured up how many classes he had had and what he’d had, and like he probably told you, the dean said, “Heck, a job and a house with” – at that time, you don’t remember, but very few houses were – you couldn’t have housing and jobs just weren’t.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure. That was tough. 
Mrs. Lindner: But to think that with his salary and a house, the school decided what difference does it make? So consequently, he came down just right at graduation day. But I stayed until he got settled and found that we could have an apartment, and came down with the little boy.
Mr. McDaniel: Right. So let’s go back to the first time you came to Oak Ridge. What did you think about Oak Ridge? What did Gordon tell you about what was going on here?
Mrs. Lindner: Well, I knew it was going to be secret. I felt like the hospital was the grandest thing. After all, even though Great Falls’ hospital was one of the best in the state and we were – because there were two Army camps close, we were up on some things. But what Oak Ridge had, the equipment they had – and I couldn’t believe we got to change sheets whenever we wanted to. Up in Montana, when you changed a patient’s bed, you turned the top sheet upside down and put it on the bottom. There were not enough linens. There was not enough – people brought their own gowns. Even though it was an above-standard hospital, they just couldn’t get it. What was funny, the Army airbases were there, and every now and then they would close a department, so they would bring the linens to the hospital. So we had green towels.
[laughter]
Mr. McDaniel: But when you came to Oak Ridge it wasn’t like that.
Mrs. Lindner: No, no: beautiful white sheets; you could go to the closet anytime you wanted; the doctor could order any medication and it would come. After all, I was used to waiting or counting drugs. Oh, we had to count them so carefully. And that wasn’t just narcotics. That was sulfa pills and everything, because people – I mean we had to be careful.
Mr. McDaniel: There wasn’t enough supply.
Mrs. Lindner: No. So that was just living in luxury.
Mr. McDaniel: Oak Ridge could get whatever they wanted just about, couldn’t they?
Mrs. Lindner: Yeah. When I went to the doctor, I just couldn’t believe that. It was, like I say, so very, very different.
Mr. McDaniel: So when you all came back to Oak Ridge, your first son was what, a year-and-a-half? Two?
Mrs. Lindner: Not quite. Yeah, just a little over – not quite a year. He was born in August and we came back 4th of July.
Mr. McDaniel: Did you go to work? Did you go back to nursing?
Mrs. Lindner: No. I’d go back on call. I was interested in the hospital and interested in TNA [Tennessee Nurses Association] and everything, but no, I didn’t.
Mr. McDaniel: Did you ever go back to working full-time, I mean, as a nurse?
Mrs. Lindner: Oh, yeah. After Rosie came, we were living in Norris. She was about two. And I started back – I’d work midnights on weekends.
Mr. McDaniel: Where did you work?
Mrs. Lindner: At the Oak Ridge Hospital. Gordon would be home, so I could go to midnights on Friday night.
Mr. McDaniel: Friday and Saturday night?
Mrs. Lindner: Saturday night. Then I can get home in time for him – so that he could come to work on Monday. I did that for a long time. And they were real happy to have somebody. Also, I didn’t work in just one place. I knew the hospital inside-out, and every floor. 
Mr. McDaniel: So you were involved at the hospital basically from early on.
Mrs. Lindner: Fifty years.
Mr. McDaniel: So after your kids were grown, what did you do? Did you go back to work or did you volunteer?
Mrs. Lindner: I stayed on call. I never was – and that was the funny thing, they also realized later on, I was never put on staff. Here I had been on call, I had been working for so long, but I was not considered staff, because there’d be five or six weeks, you know, I’d be on one floor at a time until they’d get a regular nurse to come in. I was even in Emergency Room a few months. When I was on Emergency Room, I was working straight days; my kids were all gone.
Mr. McDaniel: What kinds of changes have you seen at the hospital over the fifty years that you – 
Mrs. Lindner: Well, you know, it’s been so long since I actually worked, I can’t really think of them. When I go back now, everything looks just right.
Mr. McDaniel: Right. [laughter] Were there any particular doctors that either you really liked and were easy to get along with, or on the other end of the spectrum, where you just didn’t want to have to fool with?
Mrs. Lindner: I have always worshipped doctors, and I think – and now I’m one of these that can’t remember names. But of course Preston was always there. And who was the OB doctor? He delivered one of my kids. There was two of them here, two brothers. I’m sorry.
Mr. McDaniel: That’s okay. That’s all right.
Mrs. Lindner: No, but I went through them, and then, of course, the doctor that came in from Oliver Springs, and Dr. McNeeley came in from Norris. Then there was one real nice doctor that came in from Rockwood. But, of course, that was another thing, when I was in nursing you never carried a name out of the hospital, and the same with doctors, out of ethics you did not – 
Mr. McDaniel: Talk about them.
Mrs. Lindner: And consequently I think that that was one reason why my mind skipped talking about doctors, you know. Oh, and every now and then, right now, I’m thinking of a McPherson that I worked with and so forth. But no, I can’t remember being – oh, I can remember kind of wondering how come and so forth. And one of the doctors that I’ve been around lately and think was wonderful, I didn’t appreciate when he first came in. I remember he was angry with me; he was there just two or three days, and I called him at eleven o’clock at night because of a patient having trouble, and he had to come from a party in a tuxedo.
Mr. McDaniel: He wasn’t happy about that.
Mrs. Lindner: And then he says, “I don’t know why you didn’t know how to take care of it.” But now, like I say, I respect him very much and have learned to ever since. But he was brand new then and he didn’t – 
Mr. McDaniel: Sure. It takes a – doctors generally have kind of a unique personality anyway, don’t they?
Mrs. Lindner: Yes, they do.
Mr. McDaniel: It takes that. It takes that sometimes.
Mrs. Lindner: And I know lots of times there were doctors that other folks didn’t feel had the right personalities that I knew had the biggest hearts.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure, exactly. Speaking of doctors, I did one of these [interviews] with Dr. Spray here a month or so ago.
Mrs. Lindner: Oh, now Spray was one – I remember when he first came. But I worshipped him all along.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure. Well what was it like being involved in Oak Ridge? I mean, I know you lived in Norris for thirty years or so, but you were here, you were at the hospital, you know.
Mrs. Lindner: I came into the hospital. I of course knew a lot of Oak Ridge people. And they – I mean I always made friends easily and had fun with people. And consequently, even though I was living in Norris, I came here to showers and birthday parties. And we had a very full life in Norris. There were five of us nurses in Norris that felt like we ran the town.
Mr. McDaniel: [laughter] You probably did. Now let me ask you, speaking of that, were you involved in Girl Scouts? I mean, you’ve been involved in Girl Scouts your whole life then, haven’t you?
Mrs. Lindner: My whole life. Right now they don’t call me around much anymore. For a while, you know, they’d call me in to tell girls about badges and everything. And I always was interested in taking girls to camp and working at day camps. 
Mr. McDaniel: But I guess in Norris you were involved in Scouts.
Mrs. Lindner: Yeah, I was Neighborhood Chairman for years. And then I was on the directorship for East Tennessee with Alva Callahan. You’ve heard of her? 
Mr. McDaniel: Mhm.
Mrs. Lindner: And we traveled to different towns to talk about functions and doing things.
Mr. McDaniel: Were you involved in any of the Girl Scout activities in Oak Ridge?
Mrs. Lindner: Well, just as I had an office job. Oh yeah, I was in charge of cookies one year, [laughter] some of those things, even when I was living there in Norris. But after we moved to town, I have not had too much connection, except gone to the district meetings with a couple of them.
Mr. McDaniel: But you and your husband were in Norris for thirty years and then you moved back to Oak Ridge in what year? ’80?
Mrs. Lindner: ’80.
Mr. McDaniel: But for you it was kind of like coming home, because you knew everybody in Oak Ridge anyway, didn’t you?
Mrs. Lindner: Yeah, and used the stores. Like he said, it was just easier coming in, not having to get up that extra hour early, and also so many of our Norris people were leaving or not with us. The TVAers in Norris were about ten years our senior. The Girl Scout leaders were leaving when I got started. The men were retiring before we were even thinking of retirement, and we were losing them. A lot of the TVAers didn’t want to live here. So that was part of the business of – 
Mr. McDaniel: Of deciding to move back to Oak Ridge.
Mrs. Lindner: Yeah. Towards the end we were called nearly every day to take people to the doctor that couldn’t drive to Knoxville. And TVAers wanted to go to Knoxville. Consequently, we decided, “Well look, we’re kind of close to retirement. Are we going to be like that?” So let’s make it easy.
Mr. McDaniel: When you moved back to Oak Ridge, what kind of activities did you get involved with here? Did you get involved in any clubs or groups?
Mrs. Lindner: Yeah. Of course Women’s Club, so I could play bridge. I was more active in the Scouting. And TNA was very active – hospital was very active then. Remember that was when there were strikes?
Mr. McDaniel: It seems like I recall some of that.
Mrs. Lindner: Yeah. After I came back to Ridge, you see, that’s when I started working more.
Mr. McDaniel: But you were very involved in the – I guess the main thing you were involved in in Oak Ridge was the hospital, over the fifty years.
Mrs. Lindner: And then I did start working – at the end, I wasn’t working as a nurse; I was working at the reception desk. Then they decided to remodel the hospital and they didn’t have that desk, so I didn’t go there anymore.
Mr. McDaniel: You didn’t go there anymore. My goodness. Well is there anything that I have not talked to you about or asked you that you��d like to talk about, your life or your life in Oak Ridge?
Mrs. Lindner: Well, how very important it was to my kids. Just the idea, you know. Well, then another thing that I can talk about, when we went back home to the college fifty-year reunion, we had made attachments, you know, to go, and my sorority didn’t have a special table at the alumni banquet. So Gordy and I were kind of left alone at the alumni banquet. Well, all of a sudden, here comes one dean. My folks were there from Oak Ridge, you know, “Can I sit with you?” And then one of the – gosh, big head guys with all kinds of robes and everything, he had heard about Oak Ridge, so he had wanted to talk. And the nursing head, she was one that had been with students when I was. She wanted to come to Oak Ridge. And so here we were sitting at the table with the deans.
Mr. McDaniel: You were the people to be that night, weren’t you?
Mrs. Lindner: But it was just the idea that Oak Ridge is famous the world over. And we are happy to be Oak Ridgers. Consequently, our children gained college friends because of being from Oak Ridge. And Rosemary has the feeling I do; she likes people from foreign countries. When she went to school in Maryville, she went to foreign countries. Since she’s been out, she has gone and she became, what was it, Highway Director from North – well, from Washington and Oregon, Idaho, and Alaska, retired now.
Mr. McDaniel: You know, that kind of goes back just a little bit. This may be a good way to end this, is to talk about your exposure growing up in Butte to the different nationalities and the different cultures. It was kind of similar in Oak Ridge, because people came from all over the world to work in Oak Ridge.
Mrs. Lindner: When I was in training, there were some things that they asked me about, because they knew I had been around Greek people, they knew I had been in different religious cultures. It’s surprising back then how many ideas people had concerning burrs and circumcisions, inoculations. I can remember I knew enough of some languages that I could help. Also people from all different states, and with Scouting I had had contact with so many different states that I could name towns or, “Oh yes, you’re near so-and-so.” You know, that makes a difference.
Mr. McDaniel: Well thank you so much for taking the time to speak to me.
Mrs. Lindner: Well thank you for listening.
Mr. McDaniel: I appreciate it. Thank you.
[end of recording]