Rose Winkleman Transcript, Section 3

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Rose Winkleman,
Transcript Section 3

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KAREN: So when did you start working as a health aide?

ROSE: Oh, that was many years later. After I had been married and had my children and my husband died in '40 -- in '48. I started working the next year. April of '49 I started to work. I was -- '49? I guess that's right.

KAREN: So this was the second time that --

ROSE: '69. '69, I guess. Yeah, my husband died in '60. Not '40s. Got to get away from that '40s.

KAREN: '68 and you started working?

ROSE: '68, and I started working the next year.

KAREN: '69.

ROSE: And there was -- they had just started that program the year before. This little gal that was staying over there with her husband had originally come from Nome or somewhere up North. But she didn't last long. She quit and moved back to Nome or -- or further North, further North somewhere. So these people asked me if I wanted to be a health aide.

Well, what impressed me with the health aides was, you know, we had no -- we didn't have a Public Health nurse hardly over there. We did have but just there part time. And if you got sick or your kids got sick, you had to take them to Anchorage.

And my boy, one of my boys had this trouble with his tonsils always getting infected, and I thought that I'd have to take him to Anchorage to have his tonsils removed.

Years ago, they used to -- travelling doctors come around and removed kids' tonsils, but they quit that when they got -- when we got airplanes.

Anyway, I took -- I called the doctor in Anchorage. I didn't know anything about the health aide there or nothing. She hadn't been there long. So I called this doctor in this hospital in Anchorage, and he told me, well, you've got a health aide there, you go and see her and talk to her.

So I went and saw her, and she, of course, she talked to the doctors, that's what they did. And they decided he just had strep throat.
So what impressed me is she came over and give him a shot, Bicillin shot, and he got all better. And that really impressed me. I thought I was going to have to take him to Anchorage, you know.

So when they -- they offered me the job, I thought, yeah, that sounds like a good deal, you know. I was thinking of my own kids, too. And so that's when I started.

KAREN: So who came and offered you the job?

ROSE: It was somebody in McGrath. Somebody on the Village Council.

KAREN: Okay. Do you know why they came and asked you?

ROSE: Well, one of my -- one of the -- well, everybody knew me, you know. They knew I could do it. I used to help people around town that was sick and stuff, with what little -- what little knowledge that people do have, you know, without having to go somewhere to learn about it.

Ernie Holmbrook is the one that suggested me. So one of the Village Council people came and asked me. He said you're not doing anything anyway, you might as well -- you might as well do it. I said, yeah. I had five kids yet to raise there, you know.

KAREN: Oh.

ROSE: But they were getting big.

KAREN: So this was -- your husband who died in '68, that was the second husband?

ROSE: That was my third.

KAREN: Oh, third husband.

ROSE: I had another one. I don't have to talk about that one.

KAREN: Oh, okay. Just keeping track of the time periods.

ROSE: Yeah.

KAREN: Okay. So at this point, you had five children?

ROSE: Yeah.

KAREN: So how did you manage taking care of your five children as a single mother and working as a health aide?

ROSE: Well, he left me. I at least had a roof over my head with a nice home over there. And he was -- he was thoughtful. He had insurance and he had provisions and stuff.