Chip Chick
During World War II, this woman’s grandmother dove into her nursing career while part of the Cadet Nurse Corps. Once the war ended in 1945, her grandma officially became a registered nurse and worked in a hospital in her hometown for 12 years. She spent most of her career working the cardiac floor but moved around to areas where she was needed.
Even though her grandmother adored her job, she felt like she had no other option but to find work somewhere else after an incident involving one of the doctors she worked for. So, her grandma started a new job at a nursing home, where she continued working until she eventually retired many years later.
Her grandfather passed away before she was born, so she hadn’t had the opportunity to get to know him in person, instead learning about him through photos and stories that her mother relayed to her. While her grandma didn’t talk about her late husband much, she didn’t mind her daughter passing down stories about him.
Several years after her grandfather’s death, her grandmother met a waitress named Clovie at her favorite local restaurant. The two women lived together for the remainder of her grandmother’s life. Her family lived in the South, where most of the citizens in the area were devout Baptists, and society wasn’t as accepting during this time. Even though everyone knew that her grandmother and Clovie were romantically involved, everyone still spoke of them as just “‘roommates.'”
Years ago, her grandma and grandpa purchased a farm, and her grandma and Clovie continued with its upkeep and were incredibly successful with it. They had enough money to eventually hire farmhands, so they had more time to spend on their jobs outside the farm.
Over the course of her grandmother’s nursing career, she had some odd experiences. When her grandma was in her 30s, she was working at the nursing home where a resident named Thomas was living. Thomas was able to speak but often didn’t choose to. He moved slowly and enjoyed wheeling himself around the facility, choosing to arrive over an hour early for meals or activities. Thomas was unable to get dressed on his own, and he couldn’t alert a nurse if he needed to use the bathroom.
He had two children who put two bird feeders outside his window. Nearly every visit, they brought a seven-pound bag of birdseed with them, regardless of how much leftover birdseed Thomas still had stored in his closet. In the beginning, maintenance agreed to be responsible for filling the bird feeders. Several months later, though, they said they didn’t have enough time in their day to continuously refill the feeders and refused to keep up with the task.
A nurse’s aide named Nellie, who worked directly with her grandmother, chose to take on the responsibility of filling the bird feeders. Whenever the birds were almost out of food, she would fill the feeders, which it seemed like Thomas was grateful for. Everybody noticed that Thomas seemed sad when his birds stopped coming around, so after Nellie began filling the feeders regularly and the birds returned, everyone was thrilled to see him in high spirits again.
Nellie was dedicated to keeping the bird feeders full. Nellie was kind and young and cared deeply about bringing joy to her residents’ lives. She was a dependable employee, always arriving several minutes early for her shifts, and her co-workers and residents could always count on her to lend a hand.
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