Alumni Spotlight: Insights from Helen S. Lydon

My mother talked about nursing and healthcare issues as long as I can remember. My aunt was one of the first nurse anesthetists at Duke Hospital, and I loved hearing her experiences and stories as well, not just at Duke but later in her career. I always was interested in the sciences and started leaning toward healthcare (particularly nursing) when in middle school. As a teen I volunteered at a large hospital in Buffalo, NY, during the summers and thought all aspects were fascinating. The patients, the doctors, the routine, and environment. It seemed like nursing would be an interesting, challenging, and fulfilling career with so many varied opportunities in different types of clinical settings: community, inpatient, ORs, ICUs (which were very new), teaching, managing. My mother didn’t work while I was young, but she volunteered every month at the Red Cross Bloodmobile in our community.

My mom talked all the time about her years in nursing school and her work at Duke Hospital. She told of the extremely strict Miss Baker, who ran the school with an iron fist, and how hard they had to work! Bed making was a VERY important skill and must be done “exactly right.” [At the time] students worked nights and weekends staffing the hospital, believe it or not! I guess that’s how they got such fabulous experience and knowledge. After graduating, my mother stayed at Duke and was an OR scrub nurse for a highly regarded Duke neurosurgeon named Barnes Woodhall.

She talked about how hot the Durham summers were with no air conditioning anywhere (it wasn’t invented yet), and how humid and uncomfortable the operating rooms were. There was a staff person assigned to mop nurses’ and doctors’ brows during an operation. My mother later traveled to California to work in a hospital in Santa Barbara with a Duke nursing friend for a couple years. When World War II started, she returned to Durham to work again at the hospital. A group of surgeons, physicians, medics, aides, and nurses started a MASH unit along with the US Army in 1943. It was called the 65^th General Hospital, and they were stationed in Suffolk, southeast of London.

The team of several hundred or so took care of injured British and US airmen, many of whom were shot down over the English Channel. Those were frightening but exhilarating times. She talked about how on a day off they would take a bus to London to shop, eat, and go to the theatre. London had blackouts where no one was allowed to use any lights. They walked around using flashlights at night, and every home and business had blackout shades/curtains. Many friendships were made during those years and remained strong for many years. Those stories I found so thrilling that I knew I wanted to be a nurse.