KAREN: One thing I was wondering about, you're talking about being on call and the clinic being in your house. Did you ever get a break, did you ever get a vacation or --

TRUDY: No, not for the first ten years. Was always out on -- It's not that there was things to be on call for all the time, it's just the fact that you had to be available if help was needed. But a lot of times, it just went by, you know, with nothing happening.

But it was difficult because you're on 24 hours a day. So, any time during the night, any time during the day you could be called.

KAREN: And what about when the nurse or the doctor came to town?

TRUDY: When a nurse came, we were still taking calls for our people. And that's the way it started, it was just for the Native people only for a long time.

And, oh, we couldn't stand that though we fought for just everybody in the community not just certain ones. That's what our association was doing so we could just see everybody.

“That'll be a lot of work.” I know it's a lot of work but it sure saves your face when it comes to talking to those people. We couldn't just go out and see the Native people. Because when you have them in a clinic, you can't just close the clinic to them and just let the Natives in.

I felt that way. Very strongly about it. My husband said: “Just let it go, let it go, just see the Native people.” I said: “I can't do that that.” It's very insulting to me not to be able to see the other people. And I fought for it. We won.

KAREN: You did win.

TRUDY: Now we could see both, Natives and white and not think anything of it. Because we're there to help people in general.

That's what I used to say to the girls all the time: “You know, we are health aides because we want to take care of people, we want to help people in every way we could.”

They never thought of it that way, until we started having meetings for health aides. Our last day of training we would have a meeting and they authorized it and would let us have a meeting during the day at Mt. Edgecumbe. Thought was pretty good. I thought.

KAREN: It sounds like that association was a good idea, you got good things done.

TRUDY: Right after I got that going then I got laid off. And I don't know what's happening with it now. Never kept up with it. I am really sorry I didn't.

Because I think that would be something that would be really outstanding if there were people to talk for them self to people that they know that they need to talk to.

I think that would be a easier way out than to talk to everybody under the sun and then find out you're not talking to the right person. But it's not always a bad situation that we talk about. There are different things we did talk about. It was good while it lasted.