Willa Ashenfelter and Irene Aukongak, Part 1, Transcript Section 2

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Willa Ashenfelter and Irene Aukongak, Part 1
Transcript Section 2

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KAREN: Willa, how did you get to become a health aide?

WILLA: To go -- to go back, my mother was a medical aid, she took care of TB patients' medicine. If they ran low, then she would order some more.

And she worked with the doctors when they came from Kotzebue. She worked with Dr. Robert -- who was that real tall, skinny doctor?

IRENE: I could picture him.

WILLA: Yeah. I don't know.

IRENE: Fraser.

WILLA: Both he and his wife were doctors at Alaska Native Medical Center.

But mama worked with them. She would report to the doctor.

And then she slowly worked to where she would report patients to the doctor on the radio. And then she figured she needed some help, that she wouldn't always be there when the doctor came, so she asked Martha Agloinga if she would be willing to work with the doctors when they came, and Martha told her yes.

They learned how to give penicillin shots and take care of medicine, report to the doctor.

Then Martha later on said she needed somebody to help her. By then my -- my mom, she retired. So the City Council had that position open. They said they'd -- they wanted somebody to work with Martha.

And I went home and I talked with my husband and I told him, if no one else was going to fill that position, maybe I'll -- I'll let them know that I would be willing, it was something I could do.

And so I started then, that might have been maybe 1966. But we didn't start our training for a couple of years. And we weren't getting paid at all.

KAREN: So was your mother getting paid when she was doing that?

WILLA: No, she wasn't. She was also the midwife in the village. And Martha and I used to get -- Martha would split her paycheck. When we finally start getting paid, it was -- I think we were getting something like $43 or $45 a month.

KAREN: Wow.

WILLA: And we thought that was a lot -- for us, that was a lot of money.

And then Martha stopped working and I was there for a long time. Then I had -- there were different people in the village that would help me. Rita Buck was one of them, one of those that worked on the weekend. There was Mike Simon, Carl Brown, Linda Kumagak (phonetic), Sally Agloinga.

KAREN: That's not good to have the microphone fall on you. Okay.

WILLA: But for a long time, I worked -- Irene, both Irene and I were the only ones that worked in the village. I told my youngest daughter, there was a time I -- I really thought of quitting. And I thought if I stop working there, there will be nobody to take care of the people in the village, so I went back to work.

I tried telling one of the doctors I wasn't going to work anymore. And there was somebody in the village that wasn't doing so well, so I'm -- I went to see him. He was at the teacher's -- staying at the principal's house. He told me the only way he will -- he will be able to go see my patient is if I didn't quit.

So I finally told him I'm not going to quit, and I went with him to see the patient. And I've been -- I worked since then. But that was a -- a long time ago.