BETTY BAILEY, R.N.
Patient Care Coordinator
Pitt County Memorial Hospital

July 25, 2000

Interviewer: Beth Nelson
(Sally Lucido sitting in)

Beth Nelson: Tell me something about your background-where you are from, your education and how you came into being associated with the hospital.

Betty Bailey: I am originally from Biscoe, North Carolina, a very small town in the Piedmont. We came to Greenville in 1961 from Chapel Hill. We had been there for four years and my husband came to East Carolina University and when we came down for his interview with Dr. Jenkins we were taken on a tour of Greenville and we drove by the hospital and my husband had made the comment that he hoped that we were not within a hundred miles of a hospital when we came to Greenville because I had worked full time in Chapel Hill while he was in graduate school and I was very impressed by the hospital on Fifth Street. Dr. Bond showed us the new hospital. We drove by and the new wing had just been added. I did not know the Johnston Street hospital as that was before my time. We came in July of 1961 and I had come from Chapel Hill working there as the head nurse on a private medical floor and I think the intention was that I would not work when we first came to Greenville but I was impressed by that little hospital that I saw because it reminded me of my community hospital where I came from in Montgomery County. After we had been in Greenville for a few months I called Miss Phyllis Martin who was the Director of Nursing at the hospital and asked her if she hired part time people and her comment was that they did. I also asked her if she hired pregnant nurses and she said she did. I was about seven months pregnant with our second child so I made an appointment for an interview and came to the hospital to see Miss Martin and the first thing she told me was that she couldn't interview me then because one of the doctors wives had died suddenly and that she was upset about that. She asked me when I could come to work and I told her that I guessed any time and she asked me to come tomorrow. I thought that was real strange. We did talk by phone after that and I came to work and I worked one or two nights a week until February of 1962 when our daughter was born. I guess at that time I probably would not have gone back so soon but she called me and told me to come back any amount of time that I could work because they were so short, so that is what I did. I started back one or two nights a week again with two small children and worked part time prior to moving to the new hospital.

I was so excited about learning a new hospital from the ground up so I decided to go back to work full time with the permission of my family. My children were in agreement and so was Don Bailey. I started full time in the new hospital in 1976 - actually this was just prior to moving to the new hospital.

Betty Bailey: What about your education?

Betty Bailey: I am a diploma graduate from Presbyterian Hospital School of Nursing and I can certainly tell you the year I graduated which was in 1954 and my experience has been from graduating from Presbyterian I went to my community hospital which was very small and, of course, I went in as a new nurse and I thought I knew everything and it didn't take me long to learn that I had quite a bit to learn. I worked there for two years and then went back to Presbyterian and worked for a year and then my husband went back to graduate school so that is how we wound up in Chapel Hill prior to coming to Greenville.

Beth Nelson: Over the years, tell me about the different roles that you had.

Betty Bailey: I have worked as a staff nurse and I love bedside nursing. I think that it is the most important aspect of all nursing and I loved it. I went from bedside nursing to Assistant Nurse Manager-I worked as Charge Nurse quite a bit in Chapel Hill and then worked as an Assistant Nurse Manager and was working as Nurse Manager when we left Chapel Hill. When we came to Greenville-one of the things that I like to tell to the staff today when they complain about their salaries, how much they make and this type thing, I tell them that when I started in the old hospital my starting salary was $12.50 and I immediately for some reason got a $0.50 raise and that raised my salary to $13.00. The other night one of the new nurses said that wasn't really too bad to start per hour back in those days and I told her she misunderstood me that it wasn't per hour it was $13.00 for an eight hour shift and that is what it was. One of the other things that was kind of funny was that Miss Martin asked me if I would do some relief supervision in the old hospital. So, the nights that I worked as a Staff Nurse I made $13.00 and the nights that I supervised I made $14.00, a dollar more for supervising. Sometimes in the old hospital the Supervisor would see one of the registered nurses, of course, and then there might be three or four other registered nurses in that hospital.

Beth Nelson: What would have been minimum wage at about the time that you were making $13.00 for an eight-hour shift?

Betty Bailey: I do not know but it couldn't have been very much.

Beth Nelson: I remember when I started working part time it seems like it was like $1.60 back then. I would imagine that would have been around 1970 or so. It was probably was closer to $1.00 when you came or about $1.25. You were not making much above the minimum wage.

Betty Bailey: We didn't hear people complain about salaries. It was a wonderful opportunity because I was doing bedside nursing and also doing the supervision. You got a taste of both. You got a taste of management and you got a taste of staff nursing, which I thought, were good and I really did enjoy that role.

Beth Nelson: Of your roles here, you worked as a Staff Nurse, Assistant Nurse Manager, Charge Nurse?

Betty Bailey: I have not worked as a Staff Nurse in the new hospital. I came to the new hospital as a Supervisor full time.

Beth Nelson: In the course of your history here, you have been a Staff Nurse, Assistant Nurse Manager, Charge Nurse, and then Patient Care Coordinator. Most of your years would have been spent in a management capacity.

Betty Bailey: In the old hospital you were always the only RN on the floor that you worked unless it was in the obstetrical area. I worked on the Fourth Floor quite a bit which was the floor where Mabel Baker was Nurse Manager. I really enjoyed that. You were the Charge Nurse on any floor where you worked in the old hospital because you were usually the only RN there and you were in charge of all those patients.

Beth Nelson: How many patients would you be in charge of typically and be the only RN responsible?

Betty Bailey: Well, I was telling somebody the other night that in the old hospital we put patients in the hall and we were told that when we moved to the new hospital there would be no patients in the hall and that is true, you cannot put patients in the hall the way the hospital is designed, except in the emergency room and they are in the hall most of the time, but we would put them in the hall and even placed them next to the elevator as there were alcoves next to the elevator, when the floor was full. I was responsible for as many as thirty-one patients and you usually had no nursing assistant to work with you and those were the days that you did not have all these fancy pumps for your IV, you had to manually gauge the drip factor for those so they were on time and now everything has changed so and we are so updated and it just seems like we were in the dark ages.

I also remember in the old hospital when I went to work we had our Director of Nurses and we did not have a Pharmacist and one thing I remember is when John Stallings came to the old hospital that we hardly knew what a pharmacist was because Doris Skinner was usually in that Pharmacy all the time.

Beth Nelson: So you remember when we had the first Pharmacist who would have been John Stallings?

Betty Bailey: Yes, I do. John is still with us.

Beth Nelson: Lets talk about the things that you remember-things like technology things that were absent then that now seem so commonplace and ordinary and an expected part of the hospital-describe things to me as they looked to you back then. We think about it now and we think about how it looks over at the County Office Building which was previously the old hospital, things look old and dingy and I would imagine that at the time you came there it would have looked really fairly new, it was only ten years old at the point you came. I remember Debbie Davis recalled that the ED waiting room consisted of two chairs. Tell me some of those kinds of things that just sort of give us a stark contrast to what we have now. Can you remember some of those kinds of things?

Betty Bailey: We had a doctor on call for the Emergency Room and that doctor slept in the Emergency Room. Later on there was a full time doctor hired for the Emergency Room.We also had a person who stayed in the Lab all night. If you had lab work done during the night you called the lab technician in and that person came in and did the lab work. Basically in the old hospital it was staffed with nurses and nursing assistants, you had a doctor on call for the emergency room and if you needed lab or xray work then you had to call this person there. That certainly is not what we have today in the new facility. One thing I remember distinctly about the old hospital, which was relatively new when I came to work there, that is was clean. People did a good job of keeping it clean and everybody knew everybody which may have been good or bad but you knew everybody and it was a sense of community in that old hospital. Some people that had been there a good while when I came were certainly dedicated to that place and people worked hard in that old hospital and you didn't hear a lot of complaining about the work and how one person might be doing their work and another person's-that was just not talked about in the old hospital.

Beth Nelson: Do you think it was that people were just so busy they didn't have time to think about what other people were doing?

Betty Bailey: Yes, they were busy in the old hospital.

Beth Nelson: I know you talked about putting patients in the alcoves. I used to work at the hospital in Ahoskie, that was my summer job when I was in college, and I remember we used to put the patients in the alcoves with essentially just a drape across the end of the hallway and that was not a popular thing with a lot of people. You always had to put somebody prominent in one and end up risking your life over having done it. We think about how much demand there is now for our services but that is not a new thing; it has been with this hospital for eons. On two different occasions we had to open the Holiday Inn to deal with that kind of thing. Talk about the crush of trying to deal with all the volume back then in putting the people in alcoves or wherever over there.

Betty Bailey: They didn't stay very long-the length of stay was not very long if they were in the halls. The discharges occurred somewhat faster than they do today because it was not very popular to have people in the hall because the only privacy they had was a screen in front of their bed and their little bedside table. Sometimes you had to devise a call system for that bed so they could get you when the needed you; however, you made rounds more frequently to make sure those patients in the hall were taken care of.

Beth Nelson: How did you devise a call system? How did you rig that up?

Betty Bailey: Well, we had little bells.

Beth Nelson: Honest to goodness, you mean like a little "tinkle" bell?

Betty Bailey: That is exactly correct. This was only for hall patients, not those patients in rooms. You placed these little bells beside their bed and that is how they called you when they needed something and you could hear those little bells ring at night because all the patients didn't sleep that were in the hall.

Beth Nelson: Worse case scenario-how many patients would you have in hallways, alcoves or wherever on a unit?

Betty Bailey: Probably five out of thirty-one patients. I am thinking about the fourth floor that we would put surgery patients in that little alcove near the elevator with a screen there.

Sally Lucido: I guess I don't understand something clearly enough. Beth said that Debbie Davis said they only had two chairs in the ER waiting room, you saying there was a doctor on call for the Emergency Room. We have probably since 1976 doubled the population around here, where were these sick people that showed up now, why weren't they coming in then? I don't understand this. If they didn't have a doctor in there and they had two chairs in the waiting room, we have doubled the population and now you can go in there any given night of the week and there are a couple of hundred people in there. Where were these sick people back in 1976, where were they going?

Betty Bailey: I think they did not come to the emergency room unless they were absolutely really sick and now you get a population that reports to the emergency room who have had a sore throat for five days or something like that and it is not true emergencies but we don't turn anyone away and they are all seen. It is just a different time.

Sally Lucido: Where I am coming from is the fact that they didn't even have a doctor in there even though it was only a little over a hundred beds.

Betty Bailey: I can tell you that when the doctor was called to come in he did not go back home, he stayed.

Beth Nelson: What was the mood of the place as the idea of the School of Medicine was evolving? I know you lived through all the hubbub about that over the years, I would imagine that some people would have been sort of fearful about the change that it would bring about but probably other people saw the great opportunity; some people probably thought we were too little to be a part of a school of medicine and probably other people had the sense that we could be anything that we wanted to be and bring it on. Give us an idea of what your personal perception was through that period as you watched all of those things transpire and the reactions that you saw among your colleagues.

Betty Bailey: Well, I think when they first started talking about a medical school coming to the East and to this area I think there were a lot of skeptical people who thought Greenville was too small to have a medical school and a teaching facility. Some people wanted to gear towards Charlotte and some people felt like Chapel Hill and Duke were close enough without a medical school. There was that body of people who held together the concept of a medical school here and I think that as it was talked about and it became more of a reality that people began to buy into that concept of a medical school and to see what it could really mean to this area and what it could mean to them as individuals. For a long time I think there were a lot of skeptical people about the medical school and about it coming into existence.

Beth Nelson: What about nurses that you worked with or even physicians that you worked shoulder to shoulder with, in the moments that you had to talk about such things, did you get a sense of whether people thought it was a good idea, saw it as an opportunity, or were fearful about it?

Betty Bailey: I think the nurses were pretty quick to buy into it. They thought that it was certainly a good idea but wondered if it would really ever come about and we did not have a lot of doctors in Greenville at that time who were in and out of the hospital and several of the older doctors are no longer with us. I thought that overall the private physicians thought it was well received. I might be wrong about that but I think it was.

Beth Nelson: You would have probably been among the few nurses, I would think, here who had worked in an academic medical center, would that not be true?

Betty Bailey: That is true.

Beth Nelson: I guess you probably could have told them, if anybody had asked you, what it was like in an environment where you have teaching responsibilities along with the patient care responsibilities and that kind of thing. Did people question you about that kind of thing and look to you for advice on how all of that was going to be happening?

Betty Bailey: There were some questions around that and prior to my going to Chapel Hill I had not worked in a teaching institution and when I got there it was very confusing to me to try to distinguish the medical students from the interns and the interns from the residents and the first year residents from the second year resident and they were also concerned on how this would impact the hospital overall. It didn't take long and then you realized it was a learning situation and this is what I tried to say to the staff that you could always learn from this. You never stop learning anyway. It would just be a really, really good learning experience for the staff and for everybody.

Beth Nelson: What about when it was announced that finally this was going to be occurring? In this day and age people would be high fiving that something good like that happened, was there a sense of excitement among the staff at that point and what was the reaction of people at that point?

Betty Bailey: I think there was a sense of excitement that we had been through this now and it was finally going to be a reality and I think there was still some fear there as to what it would mean to the people as the medical school came into being. Prior to the medical school we had started to get some specialists in to the old hospital and one of those persons coming on board was Dr. Ira Hardy, a neurosurgeon, and in the old hospital there was no question about what neurosurgery meant because all of the neurosurgery cases were shipped away. One thing that Dr. Hardy was dedicated to was taking care of his patients and he meant that the nurses were going to take care of his patients. If you didn't know, he was going to show you how to do it and sometimes he was very firm about it. I remember distinctly one evening he came to the nursing station with an arm full of linen and he threw it behind the nursing station and he said he did not want to ever come in here again and find one of his patients wet. We learned from that-you checked his patients and the Neurosurgical Unit had four beds in it and I have always said that he taught us everything we ever wanted to know or didn't want to know about neurosurgery in the old hospital. He came in about 1968 or 1969.

Another thing I remember in the old hospital was Dr. Armistead, who is no longer living, and he used to make rounds and you could set your clock by him. He made rounds every morning in that old hospital about 5:00 a.m. and then went to his office. You could look for him; he was there with his coat and his bow tie that he wore. He was a face that you could look forward to seeing every morning because he made his rounds about 5:00 a.m.
His wife was one of the nurse managers in the new hospital .

Beth Nelson:: What about Jean Owens? She would have come after you, right?

Betty Bailey: Yes, she did. Phyllis Martin was there when I came and then Phyllis left and Helen Abbott acted as Director of Nursing for awhile. Then Jean Owens came and we were all excited about Jean coming and then she moved into the new hospital with us. I remember her saying one time after she had been over to look at the new hospital when it was still under construction and she thought it was a magnificent building and I remember her saying there was not one bit of wasted space in that new hospital. Then when we got here we wondered where was all the storage space that we needed. I thought Phyllis Martin was a good Director of Nursing. She was very fair. She went to the ARC when she left here and she died a few years ago. Then Jean Owens came on board and I thought Jean did a good job.

Beth Nelson: Then from Jean Owens it was Betty Trought. She wasn't in the job very long?

Betty Bailey: No, I have worked under all of those Directors of Nursing and it seems that the person that came into being at the time moved us in the direction that we should be going nursing wise, regardless of how short or how long a time they stayed, that they all played a significant role in moving us along at the time that we needed to move.

Beth Nelson: Talk some more about what you remember of the old hospital, how it looked, things that are in contrast with we have now such as the cafeteria.

Betty Bailey: I'm not sure about the cafeteria. One of the things that we had on nights was that the hospital furnished us with coffee, a little jar of Maxwell House coffee and that could be picked up and you could make your own coffee at night. There was no cafeteria to eat in at night. You brought your own little lunch and, of course, when we moved into the new facility it was not open at night.

Beth Nelson: You know, I remember that for a long time too. What was the cafeteria like?

Betty Bailey: It was very small and there were not a lot of selections but let me tell you something else about that old hospital and the Morgue. When a patient died and you would take them to the Morgue, the Morgue was in the basement and you had to accompany the orderly, and then they were called orderlies, down to the Morgue and I remember distinctly every time you went down there, William would take a stick and reach up into the ceiling and turn some type of a cooler on, that turned the cooling system on to the Morgue and then he placed the body in the Morgue. Things like that now sound ancient. Then when we moved over to the new facility you had to go outside on the ramp and go down to the Morgue and now, of course, the Morgue is inside the Lab.
Everybody had dreaded thoughts about going to the Morgue in that old hospital. It was right funny in a way because the stick went up to the ceiling and turned on the cooler and there it was. The Morgue was next door to the Cafeteria in that old hospital. You know, there was a sense in that old hospital that you loved it when you entered those doors and one thing that I always thought about that old hospital when I would be gone for some time in the summertime and come back or if I took vacation and came back, there was something about that old hospital that I could say I knew I was back because I can smell it now and you know you are back in the place. We knew we were going to move to the new facility and everybody was really excited about coming over here and the day that we moved we tried to get the census down real low so we would not have a lot of patients to move but I had worked the night before and I stayed over the next morning to help with the moving and we had one patient that had as much traction that I had ever seen on a patient and we moved that patient and she was next to the last patient to move and we moved her in some type of a truck, a van of some kind, with all that traction and then there was one lady that was in the Neurosurgical Unit in the old hospital that was very critical and she was the last person to move and we moved her over and then she died shortly after that and she was the first death in the new hospital.

When we came to the new hospital they overhead paged the nursing supervisors and Dr. Clement could not stand that. He was one of the first persons to say that we needed to put ourselves on beepers or some type of pager so that overhead paging would not be occurring during the night and, of course, it was during the day too. So, we soon got beepers and that is how we were contacted and you don't hear that overhead paging as you used to. Everything was so new and so pretty and we said we wanted to keep this hospital looking like this all the time because everything was so advanced and I think people tried for a good while and then you saw papers on the walls and things getting dirty and that type thing and everything had to be cleaned up again. The other thing in contrast to the old hospital, it was so big and it took people a while to find out where they were going and to devise a shorter route to get there. For about the first three or four nights in that place I walked myself to death trying to determine where and how to go.

The other thing, from the day that we moved in that hospital to this day I cannot remember when something was not under construction. We just continued to add on and to make things better I guess. I know that but it was just such a different place from the old hospital and I remember Rick Gilstrap who was here and he said one time just before he left that he used to know everybody in this hospital and he didn't know everyone in this hospital anymore and left for a smaller place. We used to call the Administrative Staff the young executives because Mr. Ward was the hospital administrator when I came to the old hospital and then Jack Richardson came and we all thought he walked on water.

Beth Nelson: What about Mr. Ward, not many people can remember much about him except of all the folks I have talked to Jack remembers him and Kenneth Dews and Rick Gilstrap. Talk about Mr. Ward.

Betty Bailey: I think he was a very personable person. He was out and about in that hospital. You could see him, he made rounds and he always spoke. I think he made it a habit to speak to everybody and then when Jack came I think Mr. Ward kind of bowed out somewhat even before he left and then this new hospital was Jack Richardson's baby. He was very instrumental in this place going from where it started to what it is today.

Beth Nelson: If you were going to name two individuals who had a big role in our success, Jack Richardson would be on the list for sure? Who else?

Betty Bailey: Yes, he would for sure and I think Kenneth Dews did a lot to move this hospital forward. I think of the private docs in their own way had a big part in this hospital developing into what it is today and certainly with the coming of the medical school. Dr. Wally Wooles was the first Dean of the first year medical school and I think he did a lot. I think he is one of the key persons in developing this into a four-year medical school and certainly Dr. Ed Monroe as we mentioned before. Then Dr. Laupus came when it developed into a four-year school and Dr. Wooles went back to our Pharmacology Department.

Beth Nelson: Any other people, say Board Members, key Vice Presidents jump out at you?

Betty Bailey: They might but I am getting tired. I don't want to miss anybody. I think Dr. Frank Longino and Dr. Vick who were prominent surgeons who came to us in the old hospital. I think they played a part in the med school also.

Beth Nelson: Let's talk first about major obstacles that the hospital had to overcome. When we interviewed Jack Richardson one thing he talked about was just the constant shortage of money; that there was just almost a daily grind about being able to meet the bills and hold everything together. You almost wonder if he had a chance to get excited about the idea of a medical school because he was so busy just trying to run the place on a day to day basis. What do you consider to have been some of the most important obstacles to the development of the hospital and school of medicine?

Betty Bailey: I think certainly the budget played a big part in just keeping the daily operations on go and then to undertake such a major task as the new hospital and the medical school and trying to keep salaries competitive for staff and that type thing and I think that had been an obstacle and somehow I think that most of the obstacles have been overcome because look where we are today. One thing I remember too about Jack Richardson was that and I don't know what kind of mentor Mr. Ward was to Jack but Jack was very personable for one thing, but he did get out and about in that hospital and I think he knew what was going on and then the people that worked with him. I think you will hear Dave McRae today make few speeches that he doesn't mention Jack Richardson's name that he was his mentor and I think that says a lot for Dave McRae that he reflects back from whence he cometh and that Jack was a big part in his life and in his success today.

Beth Nelson: What are other obstacles that you can think of? I think staying up with the learning curve as we grew so fast would have to have been an obstacle. Trying to stay current in changes in technology. I would think that trying to do inservice would have been hard, as you had to have people on the floor. Do you want to talk about any of that?

Betty Bailey: I do think a major obstacle was trying to keep up and things were moving so fast. Changes were occurring not only in the physical plant of the move to the new hospital but also in modern technology because when we came we came over with major intensive care units with all the equipment there and the technology there was just almost overpowering and yes, the inservices did have to come. People had to be taught and then you had to get the staff, you had to increase your staff too. Then there was the learning process for them about new equipment and the changes in that type thing. That was a major thing. I guess the concern was that at one time we wondered if we were moving too fast in trying to keep up and it was a lot crowded into a small timeframe that you had to learn all this.

Beth Nelson: I just wonder about how you managed to staff units when you had to pull people off the floor for inservices. It looks to me like a lot of time we were short of staff and yet you couldn't afford not to keep people up-to-date on their technology and on their skills and that kind of thing. You would have been in a position where you would have had to be responsible for that staffing. How did you manage that?

Betty Bailey: Well, we had Educational Nurse Specialists that would come on the floors also and some of them would come off shifts and do some of the inservicing on the floors with the nurse and the equipment but also with that came the challenge in that there were so many new things to learn and I think it was challenging to the staff to pick up and learn those new policies and procedures and especially the people who worked in the critical care units. Some came with experience and some came who were fresh new graduates that had to be taught and this type thing and then we developed a position known as a Preceptor for the staff and this is an experienced nurse who works with the novice nurse during her orientation. It is usually a one on one that she has during her orientation so that she gets very in-depth training and this type of thing. That has worked wonderfully well and I think the Preceptor is one of the most important positions that our hospital has. Those persons who are in the role as Preceptor really enjoy it. It gives them the opportunity to teach something to someone and also by teaching you learn and that has been just a very positive thing.

Another thing that I recall that we were so excited about was our flight program. When the helicopter and the flight team came into being we just stood in awe of those nurses who walked down the halls in their uniforms. We thought that was just great and we just kind of wanted to applaud them and they were just a great group. They still are a great group. The person that came from Chapel Hill to develop our program, Mike McGinnis, was just a super person, very fine, and he developed a program and we were certainly up and flying and it gave you a sense of awe and a sense of well being when you heard that chopper take off and then come back in. Then, of course, the very tragic thing that happened was the crash of the helicopter. That was just an awesome night. We had media calls from all over everywhere.

Beth Nelson: Let's talk about some of the disasters. Lets talk about the night the tornadoes came through. Did you happen to be working that night?

Betty Bailey: Yes, I was working that night and was working the night shift from 7:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. I remember I was off that night and got called back in because of the disaster being the tornado and we had just come from New Bern from my neighbor's father in law who had died and when I got home I got the call that there was a disaster and that I needed to come in and we all came in and it was truly just a devastating thing because there were several lives lost.

Beth Nelson: How were you able to get in? I know a lot of roads were blocked by trees and everything.

Betty Bailey: My husband brought me. He had a four-wheel drive and that is how I got in. It was just amazing how people worked together because there were families, there were people who were disturbed mentally because of this and then the physical disaster to people and it was just an awesome night and to have gotten through that night with everybody working as hard as they could.

Beth Nelson: Where did you report when you came in?

Betty Bailey: I reported to the Disaster Center in the Emergency Department, I guess it was called the Command Center.

Beth Nelson: Is that where you worked that evening?

Betty Bailey: I stayed mostly in the Emergency Room and then this was an awful experience. We were trying to help families locate lost loved ones and I know that night that I personally made three trips to that Morgue and it was just awful in the Morgue because there was not enough space to place everybody. We had just kind of a makeshift Morgue.

Beth Nelson: What do you mean, that there was not enough space to accommodate the deceased peoples' bodies because it was something like nine people who were killed that night?

Betty Bailey: That's right.

Beth Nelson: So you made three trips down to the Morgue with family to identify their loved ones?

Betty Bailey: No, I did not take families with me. When I went to the Morgue, most of the bodies had been labeled, and the families were asking if their family member was there and had they been killed and that type of thing.

Beth Nelson: So you went there to determine if any of those names were among those?

Betty Bailey: That's right.

Beth Nelson: How many bodies would have been down there at the point you would have gone down there?

Beth Nelson: When you say the Morgue was full, typically we would not have had eight bodies in there?

Betty Bailey: No, there were usually no more than three. I'm sure there were probably other bodies in that Morgue from just deaths in the hospital and that would have made less room for the tornado victims.

Beth Nelson: Are there other things you remember from that night? You were down in the Emergency Department-there have been different stories about what happened down there. I have heard it said that because they didn't have enough operating rooms and enough treatment rooms for all those people coming through that they had performed emergency procedures right out in the hallway and in cases it would have been procedures that would have been done with some type of anesthetic but they were doing it without anesthetic because something had to be done immediately. Do you remember that being the case?

Betty Bailey: I don't think I was down there at that time if they were doing that. I was not there all the time, that might well have been true but I do know that it was extremely busy and it was just trying to get everybody in and trying to get their families in the place and the true emergencies taken care of.

Beth Nelson: I remember looking out the door there of the Emergency Department, the one where the rescue squads brought people up and almost as far as you could see were rescue squads. That was all that you could see.

Betty Bailey: That was a terrible thing and if I recall correctly, there were not a lot of hospital family involved in that tragedy, I mean employees, whereas you turn around in the other disaster of Floyd we had so many employees, hospital family, that were directly involved with that who lost everything they had and there again I think it says something for a sense of community and family that came from that old hospital to this new hospital because people certainly rallied around.

Beth Nelson: Tell us something about that. Of course that occurred over a longer period of time. It wasn't like a tornado that struck and is gone, I know there were a lot of preparations. Unlike the tornado, which we couldn't prepare for that, we were able to make significant preparations, tell me about some of the preparations. I know in the years that I was here there would be a number of meetings and a lot of coordination would take place. Talk about that.

Betty Bailey: That is true. Of course they had the Disaster Center set up for Floyd and that was manned twenty-four hours a day for a couple of days before the disaster and everything was in place and we knew what was going to happen and certainly we were ready and able. Of course you critique everything-you go back and look and see how we can do it better next time. Staff were asked when they came to bring clothing for twenty-four to forty-eight hours and I think staff responded extremely well to all of this. Some people worked more hours than they should have worked. Everybody rallied together. I did not have to ride that Black Hawk helicopter and I think if I had I wouldn't be here today.

Beth Nelson: Who were some of the people who did, do you recall?

Betty Bailey: I'll tell you the cutest little story and the person that told it just laughed so and she said she was on that Black Hawk helicopter and there was a black care partner that rode it and she said when she got off she was so scared she turned white. I thought that was so funny she said she was so scared she turned white when she got off the helicopter. There were some management people who were picked up in that helicopter to get them in to work. It was like a war zone. They had camouflaged army trucks that were going and coming to bring people in.

Sally Lucido: I remember looking out the window from Administration and there were portajohns lined up every few feet because we were unable to flush the toilets because of a water problem. It was the funniest thing and nobody wanted to go out until they absolutely had to.

Betty Bailey: I remember seeing them also and in the doctors' parking lot were these army "Humvees" and it was almost a little frightening to see the National Guard. They were all over the place, in and out of the Cafeteria eating and that type of thing and then you would look to the sky and there was that Black Hawk helicopter and we had a couple of our helicopters that had come in. It was very much like a war zone. It was frightening and people were being brought in and that type of thing.

Beth Nelson: What about the tension of it all. You put people in a position where they have been prepared and ready for all of this big occurrence and you hope it won't be too bad but you feel if is going to be bad and then you work for days on end you would imagine that tension would be tough at that point. Were there instances where you felt like people just lost it? Did you see a lot of that or was it more that people put their own needs aside and just did their job?

Betty Bailey: I think you hit it right when you said people put their own needs aside and did the job. I think that we were geared up and that we knew this was going to happen and I think people were tense at that point but I think that when we actually had to get in there and do it, I think the tension went away and then when it was all over and we thought we were home free, I think that is when people just almost collapsed. People were very tired and a sense of what they had gone through and what they had actually done. Then the sense of loss with your coworkers that you know had lost everything they had. They had no place to go and not even clothes to wear and the response from within the hospital itself, I thought that was just a tremendous effort.

Beth Nelson: How long were you here when you came back that night?

Betty Bailey: I was here for two days because funny thing happened on the way to the forum. Lisa, another coordinator that I worked with, she and I had worked that night and we were supposed to have gone home and we couldn't get home so we were going to makeshift and find us someplace to sleep that day. So I got in an office off the West hall which was the worst thing in the world to do because the traffic and the noise was awful and you couldn't sleep and so I didn't sleep much but I got up and went in the office and called every motel in this town. I felt I had to go somewhere and sleep a couple of hours and the Marriott across the street called us back and she and I walked over to that place and I watched the 5:00 news and we were coming back at 7:00 and Lisa slept for a couple of hours. We got up and showered and came and worked all that night and hallway into the next day and then we were able to go home because two other coordinators got in.
There were some people who stayed longer than that. They would catch a nap whenever they could.

Beth Nelson: One thing I wondered about, in fact I was editing Wayne's manuscript over the weekend, and of course the Hurricane was the last thing he wrote about and one thing I don't remember him mentioning was the shortage of food and that kind of thing. Was there a point where we were in danger of being short supplies or short of blood? You just think of blood supplies, of course, you know in that case we knew it was coming and were probably geared up for it. Was that ever an issue?

Betty Bailey: I don't think it was. I know that water became somewhat an issue but then they brought bottled water in and there was bottled water everywhere. In the past we had the inclement weather plan for the snows that came and it seemed like the first major snow storm which we didn't think was small but when you look back it was small in comparison to how we migrated up the ladder and the tornado and the flooding. I thought Dr. Meredith, who was Chief of this disaster, did a wonderful job. There were meetings and he kept people informed and if there was nothing to tell you then he didn't tell you anything. I thought it just worked very well.

Beth Nelson: Lets talk about challenges for the future from your perspective.

Betty Bailey: As I see it, one of the major challenges for the institution is just keeping up and we certainly are advancing in many directions with this robotic surgery that Dr. Chitwood has done and we are certainly becoming nationally know and look where we came from. I think the challenge is to keep up and to keep abreast of what is going on and to branch out in new directions and seek new challenges daily. There is still a lot to be learned out there and we have come such a long way but there is still a long way to go. I can remember when in every major specialty we sent people away to Duke or to Chapel Hill and it is very seldom that a patient is ever referred from this hospital to Duke or Chapel Hill because we have it right here. I think it is real gratifying to the people in this community to know that the state of the art health care is right here in this town and they don't have to go elsewhere to seek it.

Beth Nelson: You have seen the place grow, when you would have come in 1961, how many employees would we have had then, do you have any idea?

Betty Bailey: I do not but I can tell you this it does not even compare to what we have now.

Sally Lucido: I believe when I came in 1976 there were under 800.

Betty Bailey: I do remember that too.

Betty Bailey: What about as you talk about life in the old hospital, I sort of detect a fondness for that life when things were a lot simpler when everybody knew everybody else and I sort of read between the lines of a sense of unity there and I guess a real sense of camaraderie that when you moved to a big spread out place like this that is growing by leaps and bounds, have you been able to replicate that as you moved to the bigger place as things have changed from your perspective? Have you been able to maintain that as we have grown?

Betty Bailey: I think the effort is there to maintain that. I really do, I think there is a sincere effort to maintain. I think it is harder to do so because of the vastness of this place and the number of employees. You are talking about over 4,000 employees in this medical center now. That's a lot of employees and it is certainly different in every department but it is gratifying I think even today that some people that were in the old hospital, like some of the lab people who have been here for such a long time, and that type thing, I think that has been good. I think Jack Richardson tried very, very hard and I think Dave McRae tries very hard to keep that concept of unity but it is awfully hard in a place this size to do it but I think the concept is still there.