Jeannette McGowan and Kathryn McGowan

00:03 I'm Kathryn McGowan and it is November 28th 2003 and where in Grand Central Station and I'm interviewing my mother.

00:14 My name is Jeannette McGowan. It's November 28th. 2003. We are in Grand Central Station and I am being interviewed by my daughter and I'm 73 years old and I should say I'm 36 years old.

00:32 Where did you grow up? I grew up in Bridgeport, Connecticut. And I spent the first 12 years of my life there. And then we moved to Denver after my grandfather died. My mother felt that she didn't want to leave my grandmother alone cuz she was getting older so we returned to the home where she had grown up.

01:00 And so what was it like?

01:03 When I was in Bridgeport, mainly well, I was an only child being raised by a single mother which in those days wasn't very common. So we really didn't have very much money. My mother was a sewing machine operator. She worked on men's shirts and she was always glad to get overtime because it meant that you would have a little bit more money on an overtime week. She would earn she was real lucky maybe $11 for the week. Most of the time her pay cheque would be around $8 or 8:50. And that's what we had to live on.

01:46 Until you were born in 1939 330 correct? And so you lived through the depression or I guess we was only when you were very young or we'll just because I actually the stock market crashed in 1929. And so the depression actually didn't start until probably about 1930 or so. It took a while for all of the things to get going. And of course a lot of people say the depression never really ended until World War II came along and that was all great in sparkling masconomet, even though Roosevelt have done tremendous things to try to bring the economy back. So consequently, I always remember especially being a child of was just a single mother. I always just remember feeling very poor and never having as much as the other kids did I had to dress

02:46 Best way to school and weekends my mother would wash and iron my two dresses. So I would wear one dress Monday and Tuesday and the other one Wednesday Thursday and Friday and by the time I got into High School quite some time later, I was still in that same pattern of having, you know, just two dresses to wear and I knew that I had to do something because everybody else had so much more in the way of clothes. So I've been doing babysitting and I did a lot of house cleaning of other people's houses anything that I could do to earn money and that money I was allowed to keep for myself and I used it to buy clothes and I also began shaving to go away to school.

03:37 So how is it different from the other kids that you went to school with? You know, you mentioned that you had two dresses that they have different with a different especially not so much in my early years because I grew up in a neighborhood. That was a lot of immigrants in a lot of black people which wasn't common in those days than white people would be living in a mixed neighborhood like that. But we did I'm sure because the rents were less expensive and so consequently you were working and we're bringing home a larger incomes because men always made more money in those days. So I always felt like I had the last one they had more.

04:25 So how did you know that I mean was there they just you saw that they had different clothes or did they say things to you or about my clothes or anything? I could just see what people were wearing. I had a lot of friends in grammar school. So I would visit their houses and I would see how they were living and they always had much more than I did. So when you went to visit your friend's house is what was that like

04:54 Well, I would usually be envious on some of my friends. For example, we're having electric refrigerators and we didn't have that in my house. We had an icebox where the Iceman brought to you no ice with tongs a couple of times a week and you would have to empty the pail of water under the ice box. Otherwise, it would run all over the floor. And that was one of my jobs at one point and my mother would get very angry with me if I left the water run over and forgot to empty them the pal so and so when you went to visit other people, you got to see other things. I haven't we didn't have you know to what kinds of things besides the refrigerator and other people contact him cleaners long before I in fact, I bought the first vacuum cleaner that we had after I was came home from nursing school and that was like in 19

05:54 52 by that truck before we we even had a vacuum cleaner and it was several years after that that I was able to buy the family. I am a television set by then other people had those around you now by put growing up. It was always like I didn't see that. We had two things that most people were able to acquire much sooner.

06:18 What so you had lots of friends in grammar school you said would you choose to do for fun? I remember doing a lot of roller skating after school. I lived in an area where the block was huge and you could go around without coming to a street that you had to cross. So one of the favorite things that we would do on fairly warm afternoons would be to go roller skating cuz we should go all the way around this block over and over. I also had acquired a dog when I was so I guess probably in maybe fifth grade. I am Tice this dog home was a little puppy and told my mother that the dog had followed me home. Of course, I have encouraged the dog tooth to come but she let me keep it. So I used to play with the dog along and take the dog out walking. We would play hopscotch was one of the favorites.

07:18 Jumping rope was another thing that we did most of the time you were outside. It wasn't so much that you would get invited inside to do things. I don't think that mothers wanted kids coming in and messing up the house that they had spent all day cleaning and whatnot.

07:41 What's your best memory of childhood?

07:46 I remember.

07:49 It must have been probably 1936 or 1937. My mother took me on a train and we came into New York City for the first time and we stayed at a hotel here in Manhattan overnight because we went to the World's Fair.

08:08 And I just as an example, most of my friends had already been to me or a number of times, but I had never been able to afford to do that. But we did and I have great memories of the World's Fair and the long pointed. What did you call a periscope? I forget the names of now but you could go inside around 1 and they hand on the future of tomorrow or what the world was supposed to be like and that was just fabulous to go on this moving sidewalk and see what they were predicting for the future. I remember going to an exhibit where they had silkworms that were leaving shock and I was allowed to buy some of these little woven silk the inside look like small eggs and I had them for many many years. I have no idea why

09:08 Happened to little since

09:11 So you mentioned that you got to stay in a hotel. So what was that like for you? You must have been what six or seven? No, because I must have been probably 7 cuz we didn't go right away. When I when the Fair start at one that was the night when we was the 1939 World's Fair. I've got the dates wrong. So I would have been maybe about 10 to see when we did and that's why I think I remember so much of it. The hotel was well, it was different to sleep in bed in the room that you were paying for. You know, that's I have don't have a lot of memories about other than climbing into bed and going to sleep cuz we spent most of the time out at the ferry runs the next day and then we went home and so what else did you see at the fair besides the the World of Tomorrow?

10:00 You know, I I really can't remember off hand. I'm sure if I thought about it, I might talk but those were the two big memories that stuck in my mind that I've already described.

10:16 How would you describe a perfect day when you were young?

10:21 Well, I enjoyed school and I love going to school and I got good grades in school. So I would like a day where I could go and feel like I have done a good job, and I'm good rewarded by Cheap Thrills by sprays are good marks and then coming home and playing with my friends doing things like that. So did you love of school lead to your wanting to go to college? I wanted to go to college. And in fact when I was in high school, I had talked to one of the advisors while I went to her that information about nursing school and I knew that they were just starting to talk about putting nursing programs in two colleges at that time. So I asked her about it and she gave me a little information and told me that I certainly had the ability to go to college and I should really try hard to do that which made me feel good cuz I guess I didn't realize that

11:21 I was doing that well in school that someone would be pushing me to to go to college and I even dragged my mother down to the University of Bridgeport. Cuz that was one of the places that was supposed to be starting a nursing program, but it wasn't going to start for several more years. They were just in the early phases of doing it and I never would have been able to afford it. So I ended up going to Mount Sinai here in New York. It was very inexpensive of course for that time, but even so it was costly I had just about enough money was four years of working for my tuition with $100.

12:03 And that was a lot of money it was but also because they were heavily and down and a lot of people were in the same situation that I was in they didn't have much money. They gave us $8 a month after capping. So after a first five months we started getting these texts and $8 was just enough for me to take the train home once a month and we were back in those days College's nursing schools were very big on really substituting for your parents. So we were not allowed out during the week after 10 at night on weekends. I guess after your first five months you could get a Midnight Pass and you could go out until midnight. I guess senior year you could stay out until 1 in the morning, but it was so different than the one you got a Midnight Pass what kinds of things did you go to?

13:01 Well, we would sometimes go to the movies and just go to a later movie so that we could stay out late. I didn't do very much dating in nursing school because I had started going out with somebody when I was a senior in high school. And so I kind of felt like I had a commitment to him so I did date occasionally, but not very often and then we finally became engaged in my last year in nursing school. So then I stopped going out altogether with people, you know.

13:36 And it was hard to meet people because the hospital had very strict rules. You could not go out with any of the interns of the residents. That was strictly forbidden. We both would have been, you know thrown out of school and then you were so busy the rest of the time working and going to school that you didn't have time to do anything else.

14:00 What did you think you were going to be when you grow up when you were younger? Well from the time I was about three years old. My mother tells me I always wanted to be a nurse and so that never changed for me in my last year in high school. I started trying to make sure that was what I wanted to do and I remember sitting and thinking about the occupations over open to women at that time. I'm in my mind. You could like be a secretary in which meant you had to learn how to type you could work in the five-and-ten. You could be a teacher if it going to nursing I thought about teaching because we had a so-called normal school. I'm not sure where the name normal school came from but at that time you could go to normal school in 2 years and become a teacher but when I try to visualize myself in front of a classroom, I didn't see myself doing that. So I wish you were that nursing was for me.

15:00 First letter, I had the opportunity to teach nursing for a while and I discovered how right I had been because I hated teaching nursing. I did it for two years to help save the School of Nursing because they were going to close it and by that time I had a master's degree and they wanted they had to have somebody with another person with a master's in school nursing or the state was going to close us down. So they can like begged me to go over there and two years later. I had to beg to go back because I couldn't stand it anymore. And I said to them well, if you don't put me back in the nursing service, I'm going to go find another job so they immediately move to me then so that finally worked down.

15:49 I slept around a lot. However, there's no rules. It's okay. We mentioned having a master's degree and it's somewhat unusual for a woman of your age to have a master's degree. So what made you want to pursue that well as I told you I had been engaged like in my last year and in our school, I broke that off about a year after I moved back home. My family didn't like the the boy that I was going to marry and I realize deep down if it really wasn't for me. Although I very much resent the fact that my mother especially was very opposed to this guy and I think if I had been growing up in a different era, I probably would have just said well tough I'm moving out and I'll bet I didn't do that I gave in to her and I realised a short while later that I was going to be supporting myself for a while and I do

16:48 Sign in. I better do everything that I could to earn a good living because I did not want to be as poor as I had been as a child. So I so I went and took one class at the University of Bridgeport by this time, but had their program going and had a way that you could do and they gave you advance credit for your 3 years of nursing school. And then you needed like another 62 credits or something to get your bachelor's so I liked this first class that I did on a trial basis and I spent like the next five years getting my degree and working full time and going to school part-time again. It didn't give me much time for much of a life, but I didn't think about that too much cuz I loved what I was doing. I really did and then I finish that and by this time I know that if I was going to continue to advance my career, I'd have to get a masters because I was a soup.

17:48 At this point I had climbed the ranks off and it become I started out as an assistant night supervisor in Denver. And then I was an evening supervisor and I knew to go further I had to get the master of so I kept right on going cuz I thought if I stop I am never going to go back to school because by this time I've had school up to here, but I went and I took his many classes as I could have Columbia, I'd went down every single Friday for like three three and a half years. I think it took me and I got my man and then they promoted me to First assistant director and then associate director of nursing and I knew that I couldn't rise any further where I was and I read about the hospital over in Carmel that was open and I went and I applied and I was young. I mean this was 19.

18:49 64 I guess they opened. My mother died in 63 from 1964. And so I was like 34 years old and I thought well, they'll never give me a job like this, but they did the job they gave you a director of nursing of a brand new hospital.

19:11 Just to go back to something. You said a few minutes ago about when you broke off the engagement with the boy that your parents didn't your mom didn't like you said that you felt deep down inside that he wasn't right for you. What would make how'd you know, I saw that he was having difficulty holding onto jobs after I move back home and he tried several different things and also he had developed some illness and hope they have made it to the hospital and I went and talked to the doctor and he told me that he thought some of his illness was psychosomatic. Will that kind of shook me up a little bit too, you know, and I might have reached this conclusion myself if my mother left me alone, but I resented the fact that she interfered.

20:02 So you discovered something about your parents after you were an adult you discovered something about your parents that was surprising to you that you wanted to talk about. So, why don't you talk about that real? I don't know if you phrased it quite the way that I would have but that's alright if different ways to know. I always knew that there was some kind of problem because whenever you went to school they first thing they would ask you at the beginning of every year the teacher set up at her desk and all of the kids were lined up in front of her. There'd be like 35 kids in the classroom and she would go around the room one person at a time and I guess you must have had these forms to fill in like where you last and where you were born and your mother's name and father's name and things like that and right off the bat. They would always ask, you know, your father's name and I never

21:02 You have to answer so I guess early on I went home and I said to my mother what shall I say? And she just said will you tell them you have no father? Well that horrified me but I mean I was just a little kids and everybody would laugh every year and it was really was very tough for me, but she was never able to really talk about this whole thing after she died. I found a lot of material while I was aware things as a kid growing up because kids have big ears as we all know until I would listen when adults were talking and I have learned a lot of things that way but the proof came after she died and I found all of these various things there was a picture of my father and on the back she had written to know that a day's father and she had written his name Lawrence Conklin and so I warned more realize that I was a so-called illegitimate child at that time.

22:02 And I put a lot of things together. My mother had been working at times music store in Danbury. And from what I can gather. My father would come in and buy Irish music cuz he was very much an Irishman. Even if you look at his picture you can see that and I also don't think that my mother knew that he was married cuz knowing her and how she felt about certain things. She never would have going out with somebody who is married + you soon and was able to get money to for her pregnancy and delivery. And also we had a monthly stipend from him $25 a month until I was sixteen which was always sent to her. You know, I'm kind of rambling. I maybe I made a little help to get back on track here. Okay. Well you were saying that you put it all together after your mother died right now.

23:02 You when you really figured it out by my 30s on my mother died when she was 63, so that was well. She was born in 1899.

23:19 1963 Sudan so I would have been 33 so you didn't find out until you were Thirty. So I didn't really get enough of the whole story together to put it in our together. That's when I realized that some of the things that I had pieces I was able to put together like the fact that I had been put into foster care for two years. I apparently she was trying to decide whether she could take care of me or not on whether I would be put up for adoption the doctor who delivered me wanted to adopt me. I was born with an Erb palsy and someone I was reminded of some of the things Kay said about her aunt wanting to adopt her and when I would be angry with my mother, I would say why didn't she like the doctor adopt me? I'd be so well-off and I'd have brothers and sisters and and I probably would have had so much more, you know, does she told you that the doctor wanted to adopt?

24:19 What other things did she tell you growing up or did your family tell you growing up to sort of cover-up the real truth about me? What what did they tell you cuz they didn't really tell you the truth, you know that but they didn't say anything and when I would try to ask questions, I couldn't get an answer she would refuse to answer me. So what was that like to know that there was something different but not know what it was. I was I was very angry.

24:51 But that's really all that. I can say I always felt very angry. I know I made it a birth certificate for something at one point and my mother after while finally said, well, there's no way I can get you on one of the things that I found out after she died. I found a letter that had come from st. Vincent's hospital where I was born saying that they had no record of my birth so I couldn't understand this. So I tried to get a birth certificate after she died and I knew where to send for it in Bridgeport and I got the same thing back knowing what I did about hospitals. I took myself down to Saint Francis I drove down cuz I had a car by then and I went into Medical Records. I just walked in and I told her room in the storage so they went and they dug up the record and my original birth certificate was still there.

25:51 I had never been submitted but they found it. I'm not sure why she couldn't get one for me. But I have this letter saying that they had no record of it. So I waited a few days later and then I sent to Bridgeport and I got Maya my certificate what strange is it has this recording date on it sometime in 1960. So I guess 6465 whenever it was. I went down there instead of like most people's are filed within a few days of their birth. So once you put the the story together, we know what is it? What's what's the whole story that you kind of put together from all the little pieces of listening when you were a child and then the things that you found after mother died, what what what's the whole story

26:51 She was like 30 when I was born, I believe and I think that they must have going out for a while and then took pictures of him. She had all these Irish music which to my mind meant that she was interested enough to buy Irish music and I think that when she discovered she was pregnant she probably expected and he was going to marry her and of course he was already married and that's when she found out so my grandfather threw her out of the house. She had to live just left with the harms the people that she had worked for in the music center and she was like a mother's helper during her early part of her pregnancy while I don't know how long should stay with them, but I was named after one of the Himes children.

27:43 And then of course, you couldn't I'm sure before her pregnancy got too obvious. She was forced to leave town. And so that was why she ended up in Bridgeport when we moved back there when I was 12, we would meet people on the street and they were obviously shocked even then that she was walking around with this illegitimate daughter again. I felt that I really did all through high school. I would run into people who take I know your mother and grandmother and what not, you know, cuz it's pressure going back to my grandparents my great-grandfather than very prominent in the community in Bethel. And so the family was very well now on so that didn't help the situation either. I don't know if I'm answering your question or not. You are you are you mentioned that you know people react reacted strangely to

28:43 Do you know how what was it like, you know how to how are you treated? If it were you treated differently, I guess just one experience. I remember when I was a supervisor at the house, but I'm by this time, you know, I'm either in my late twenties or early thirties. And I remember one of my staff nurse is coming to me and saying, you know, there's a woman in room someone. So who says that she was your foster-mother and I was totally shocked because I don't know if I even knew at this point that I have been in foster care and so I just said, oh, well, that's I don't know what they're talkin about. I just played denial I can do and I never went in that room the whole time that the patient was there. So but I thought about that since and from what I can gather I was only there until I was like 2

29:43 So this woman should have realized at the age of two. I was not going to remember having been taken care of by somebody. You know, I'm so how did you find out that your mother had put you into foster care for a little while written back and forth between her and the social worker for children services. And what was really weird that I didn't know until after it was too late when I did when I was getting my Bachelor's degree. I had to do three months of Public Health nursing to get my degree and one of the people that I ended up working with was the social worker who has handled the case when I was born

30:37 But miss King and I but I didn't know that until I found these letter you know, but that was much later don't know that you found the letters that you remembered her name from someone that you had worked with right to me when I went and had the opportunity to interview different people agencies who worked with the Visiting Nurse Association in Bridgeport. So that was how I came to to meet her.

31:06 So you mentioned that your mom sued what what is what is that? And I don't know any details because I'm doing some genealogical research. Eventually. I would like to search back into those court records and get that information. But I know there was a suit and that was how she came to get this money that came to us every month, but I don't know any details about it other than your unnatural to another reason why I felt that she didn't know that it was married so that you know, that was all part of it.

31:50 What do you think the greatest effect? This is Hannah is the greatest effect. This has had on you.

31:55 I think for a good part of my life, especially as I got into high school and we had moved and I had lost all my close friends. I would care much more of an introvert than I was a young child. And I think that has had that effect because I think there were many many times in my life when I felt I wasn't as good as other people.

32:19 Because of the way I was treated.

32:23 You talked a lot about your grandmother's house and how much you loved it. So are you to me? You've told me this in the past. So why don't you talk while you tell us about your grandma's house? So you built by my great-grandmother.

32:40 She had been married to well, I guess a day it would have had to be because my grandfather was with Arthur day and he was a very heavy drinker so consequently well and I'm not saying this right I'm getting Generations confused. Let me go back a little bit my great-grandma. I don't know that much about who she was married to a but apparently he was an alcoholic. So this was like a trend in the family and so she divorced him which was very unheard-of back in those days. This would have been probably in the 1880s or somewhere around there because my great-grandmother built the house in Danbury and it was they that began living in it in 1888 the year of the blizzard and they still were talking when I was a child of the snow being up over the first

33:40 Your windows during a blizzard, but apparently she was a very wealthy woman the house was built so that the dining room there was a a little alcove in hallway that went around into the kitchen so that the servants could serve dinner there and there was one that was inside of your four-bedroom house and the the top bedroom on the left hand side was for the maid. She didn't have a closet in her room. I guess you wasn't expected to have very many clothes. It was a huge picture piece of land probably about an acre of land that was like the second house that was built in that area that time of course when I was there the whole neighborhood was developed in the war many many other houses, but this one had this huge parcel of land and my grandparents loved to Garden so they always had

34:40 Huge amounts of fruits and vegetable stand for cherry trees on the property and pear trees and it was just a lovely place. My grandfather was amazed and so he had been on top of a fish pond out in the backyard. There was a chicken coop during World War II difficult to get me we had chicken every single Sunday.

35:11 And I ended up getting tired of chicken even to this day. I'll eat it but I don't want to have it too often at the one thing. I got out of that was how good a very freshly killed bird can taste and there is a difference in that as opposed to what you got when you go to the supermarket these days. Is there anything that we haven't talked about that you want to talk about?

35:38 Well, I guess I am maybe I should make some comments about the fact that since I married late I had this wonderful opportunity to be like in the Vanguard of what women were able to do and I felt very privileged to have risen too high of my profession and to have made excellent money and I saw all of these changes that came in the 1960s which is when women more and more begin going out to work and I felt very much a part of the whole thing as it happened.

36:17 So you were you were in the Vanguard you did it before the sixties?

36:22 You mentioned to me that you went to your high school reunions. Your what is your 50th? It was my sister and there really weren't any other women in your class or very few who had worked since that's right and I was really surprised that they asked people to stand up and talk about what their professions have been and what they had done cuz by that time most people were either retired a very close to it and I was shocked that no women were asked to speak and it was just a man that they invited to talk up and I remember even when I worked in Carmel, there was a big Hadassah meeting that a luncheon that all of the women went to it was a fundraising activities and the women were all introduced by their husband's occupation.

37:16 And I would be introduced but only after they had said that my husband was mr. Eugene McGowan the director of engineering at Putnam Community Hospital. I miss you sister wife. Mrs. Eugene. Magallan who's the director of nursing there? But it was like an afterthought and that was very typical.

37:45 So

37:48 I were there any other women that you taught that you met at the high school reunions that had worked, you know, just kind of Talk Amongst yourself since you weren't asked to speak. No I did but they were they were good doing some of the kinds of things that you do working in the five-and-ten or sewing and what not most of them that I talk to you. Anyway, they had all

38:13 Really had spent their time in the home, which is what I had really thought. I would be doing because that's what my generation did I did meet one woman who had worked as a volunteer. I don't know if I told you this story at Melrose and she had been filing records away and that's how she found out what had happened to me because I hadn't seen her in years since we graduated and she found out that we had a daughter and she told me that you were considered to be very bright. I think you what do you think was the hardest thing about being a Vanguard woman with a profession in the 50s as opposed to the women who did it later in the sixties and seventies John up into the ranks of nursing Administration. I had to start dealing with more and more mad and they weren't used to dealing with women at higher levels. And now it's sometimes very difficult.

39:13 Well, just an example it may not quite fit but it was time for raises at Putnam community hospital and I got a raise in your father got a raise and Dad wasn't happy with his race. So he went in to talk to Andy Levine the administrator and he said to him, you know, my wife got certain percentage, but I did an MBA told him that the board had looked at what we were both make a and decided that we had enough family income for the two of us and that they weren't going to give him one. Well, of course your father had the ceiling and they did have to give him an increase, you know, so they considered because you were married to each other they didn't look at your work and have separate my run. They just thought well if you add it together, they're making enough money. That's fine and early on when I was first married to your father father was good for me in a lot of ways. I got a rash that was no

40:13 They are one year and he pushed me very hard to go in and complain and if it hadn't been for that, I never would have done that. I would have just said oh, well, I'm stuck with this measly Ray but he pushed me to do it and I learned by doing things like that with his pushing that you know, I could get some of the things that I wanted even though. I was a woman, you know, so did you feel that money was a big issue getting paid the same amount as men that were doing the equivalent work absent was very difficult. There's more now than there used to be. They always got paid more than female nurses and today you have to look very carefully. I'm sure that still goes on it's still there.

41:01 Until what other kinds of things were hard about being a woman working in that time will someone like your father who grew up in a different era and then we were in at that time they expected that you were still going to run the home take care of this the kids and that I had this this job that required a tremendous amount and I remember that we kind of had this agreement that Dad would take care of the outside work and I would do all the inside stuff then all of a sudden I realized she was paying somebody to cut the lawn. So I said I am not going to to do this I said we were supposed to share this this workload. I do the inside near do the hour. I said, I want somebody to do, you know take care of my house. So that's when I got on to him so calm and clean

41:56 But against his pushing me had also backfired on him cuz he gave me though the guts to say, you know, this isn't fair. So if he was going to pay someone to do part of his work, then you can pay someone to do part of your work, right?

42:16 I don't know.

42:21 Have you learned any new things? Maybe I should ask you? What have you? What have you learned in life? I learned in life.

42:31 If you work hard and really put forth your best effort, you can achieve almost anything that you'd like.

42:43 Maybe not totally because sometimes circumstances come along and what not. But two largest time you can get a great day or two if you were willing to work for it.

42:56 Good morning, honey. I think I'd like to say to you is I am just so happy that you're married to such a wonderful man, and that this is finally happened for you. Thanks, Mom.

43:09 And thank you for telling us some stories.