Linköping's Children's Hospital

Mom with a row of babies

After that I took a job in Linköping's Children's Hospital which was one of the best in the country at that time. It was a big building that was part of a bigger hospital. The Children's Hospital building had separate floors for different specialities. On the bottom floor was where women came in and had their babies. There were a few private rooms but most of it was one big room. The second floor was for the smallest children, babies to 18 months of age. Then the third floor was for older children, from one and a half through 14 to 15 years old.  And there was a small sort of story up above that even where mothers could stay when they were nursing babies, but that wasn't a full floor, just a few rooms and a little kitchen. I liked the work here. At first, I was on the floor where babies were born. Mothers stayed in the hospital at least ten days then so we had a roomful of babies to take care of. We weighed them every day when we bathed them along with checking their temperatures and everything else. As part of our continuing education, we were required to go down and watch at least two babies being born. After witnessing that a couple times, I almost decided that I didn't want any children.

I think Mom is kneeling down on the balcony here. The
original is such a tiny photo that it's hard to tell.

This was the first time that I worked in a large organization and that was a bit of a lesson for me. There were so many nurses and doctors and it took quite a bit to all get along. The nurse who was in charge of one of the floors there, Sister Deece, didn't get along well with the personnel, and I didn't like her much either. There was a bit of a well not a disagreement exactly but sometimes the nurses with more education (they'd be RNs here) they looked down on us barnsköterska because we didn't have as much training as they did. Well, one time one of the doctors' wives was in having a baby and she was in one of the private rooms. She was given the wrong thing at one point and one of the other nurses told Sister Deece that I had done it, so Sister Deece came and chewed me out. I told her I wasn't on duty in those rooms that day and I hadn't even been in there. I suggested she ask the mother if it was me, so we went in there together and the lady said she had never seen me before. So it wasn't all happy times but I always learned a lot.

This hospital is also where I met Anna Pettersson! I was working at night

Anna Pettersson

one time and I sat there kind of glum for some reason. Anna worked on another floor but she came to where I was working and wanted me to go with to the dining room. We were not allowed to go alone to the dining room, especially in winter, because we had to go along all through the basement to get there and it was a little scary. Well, I agreed and off we went. Anna told me later that when she first saw me she wished she hadn't come to ask me because I looked like

such a sour puss! As we walked, Anna was telling me how nice it was to work on that other floor so I asked for a transfer. The manager on the other floor was a Sister Anna. She was very strict and ran a tight ship but that was ok with me. She was always fair and we all got along well.

One time there was a child there who needed to see an ear specialist.

This is a photo from one of Mom's albums, showing

the kind of equipment they used when she worked there.

They used to have some kind of mini-ambulances to take patients to these kind of appointments but there was none to be found this time. This ear doctor was right across the street from the Children's Hospital, so it was decided that I and one of these girls who worked to become an RN that we would carry him to the appointment. We had to walk around back through a gate there. The sister had given the gate key to the other girl and I was carrying the baby. It happened that this gate was right next to a little chapel where families would have the 

"singing out" ceremony after someone died. I've told you about that before. Well, we made it to the ear doctor and then were ready to head back to the hospital and there still was no ambulance to take us back, so we set out to walk back the same way we had come.

Later that evening, I was sitting and feeding a baby in the same room where a mother was feeding her baby when Sister Anna came in and scolded me for not returning the gate key. I reminded her that she had given the key to the other girl and that I was carrying the baby. I said I did not know where the key was but I could go look for it. After I was done feeding the baby, I was ready to set off and some of the other girls tried to tell me that I shouldn't go out by that funeral chapel in the dark alone. I said I wasn't afraid of that and set off. When I got to the gate, sure enough there was the key in the lock, so I took it back to Sister Anna.

Birgitta and Sören

Well, I didn't like that too much. I didn't like being blamed for things that I had not done. But years later, when Birgitta, Brita's oldest daughter was going to be a nurse, she had to work on different floors to learn how to care for the different age groups and it happened that Sister Anna was still working there and Birgitta got acquainted with her. Sister Anna told her how well she and I had gotten along and said that if Birgitta became as good a nurse I was and she was doing well. I thought that was pretty nice when Birgitta told me that.

Svenskabarnsköterskaföreningen and Tista Nun

A summer meal at Kjettestorp! Left to right: Lennart, Mormor Elin, 
Bengt Bengtson, Mom with PerMagnus Bengtson on her lap, and Brita.

Now that I had this certificate, I was eligible to be a member of Svenskabarnsköterskaföreningen. This was the Association of Swedish Pediatric Nurses. It takes four words in English to say what we put together in one word

in Swedish! Well, this meant that I was allowed to wear their uniform. We had a grey dress with long cuffs on the sleeves. On top of that we had a white apron with a bib and then we had a little nurse hat. The dress had a white collar on it and that's where we pinned our broach. We also had a coat for outdoors that was part of the uniform. It was a deep dark blue and the outdoor hat was a sort of a bonnet hat with a ribbon under the chin. My brother Lennart, of course, said, "Now if you only had a guitar, we would know that you were a member of the Salvation Army!" He thought my coat and bonnet looked just like what the Salvation Army wore.

So now I was ready to go out and work as a child nurse. I was certified to work in a children's hospital or in a home as a governess. All nurses in Sweden then were called Sister so I was now Sister Gun. I wanted to be a little close to home so I got a job at a home in Linköping. The man was a dentist and they had several children. I was a substitute there because their regular nurse had time off for some reason. Before I went there, I was home for a couple of weeks, and Thorbjörn was sick, so I went over to Sara's. He insisted that he wouldn't let anyone help him but me. I had to check his temperature and feed him and everything. He was pretty much well by the time I had to leave. Even so, he cried and said, "Why does she have to go somewhere else to take care of a little boy when she has me right here?"

Later I had a job in Linköping. It was agreed upon when I started there

Mom and PerMagnus

that I would stay for one year. This was a family named Bengtson. The man's name was Folke; he owned a women's clothing store in town. His wife was a fancy lady. They had three kids. Ulla was 12, Bengt was 10 and then they had a little boy who was not quite two years old when I came. His name was PerMagnus. He used to call me "Tista Nun" because he couldn't quite say Sister Gun. They all called me that, even after he could talk.

Supposedly I was hired to potty train him and get him through the terrible twos. But I was also sort of like a status symbol. It was the really wealthy who had a member of the Svenskabarnsköterskaföreningen to take care of their kids, instead of a regular baby sitter. This lady would take me

and the baby with her whenever she went into town to shop or to do anything. She wanted me to walk just behind her and carry him or push him in the stroller. It was like she wanted to show off that she could afford to pay a nurse to take care of her children. Well, these people didn't have a summer home, so when summer came, it was agreed that the kids could come home with me to Kjettestorp for two weeks. Ulla was a little bit uppity like her mother; she was a fat little girl. Bengt had an awfully hard time in school but the mother

Ulla, PerMagnus and Bengt on the lawn at Kjettestorp.

would not allow him to get any special help or go to any special classes whatsoever. That was degrading to her. So there was always this tension between the two kids that Bengt was the stupid one and Ulla was the smart one. Well, when we were going home that summer, we took a train to Kisa and then a taxicab from Kisa. As we came by Gräsvederna, Dad had tethered a bull outside the barn there eating grass. Ulla said, "Just look at that funny cow! She only has one tit!" This was Bengt's chance to be smart so he said, "Are you so stupid that you can't see that it is a bull?" 

Later, this family bought themselves a summer house in Bestorp. They invited me out there one day, even though I no longer worked for them.

Stuverums Barnhem

These are some of the kids Mom helped take care of and at least one nurse in the back :)

This is Mom's copy of the book
she was taught from. 

     The nursing school I went to was called Stuverums Barnhem, and it was run by the Red Cross. I started there in May of 1945 and ended my course there that November. There were about eight to ten of us girls who worked and studied. We were working toward a degree or certificate to be a barnsköterska, a child's nurse, a pediatric nurse. The same teacher taught the kids there who were school age and she taught us girls who worked there. We studied in a book called Barnavård (Childcare) and we got hands on experience taking care of the kids. We studied health and children's diseases. Every so often a doctor came out and gave us lectures.
     I don't remember how many kids there were altogether, but there were two floors. The littlest kids all slept in one big room and we took turns to sleep in that room at night. The bigger kids were spread across several rooms downstairs with a few in each. I remember when I

first got there. I took a taxicab from Västervik out there and in every window there were people peaking out, not just kids but grown-ups too, and I thought, "How funny they are! Haven't they seen a car before?" It didn't take very many weeks though, out there in that isolated, lonely environment, before I was at the window too when a car drove in.

Maj's graduation photo

          In six months, I only went into Västervik two times. The head nurse who managed this home was Pentecostal and they had some big meetings, revivals you might say. She would take two girls with her each night she went. We rode bikes into Västervik, 7 kilometers. One time, my best friend there Maj Sjöblom and I were chosen to go with her. The only other time we got leave while we were there, Maj Sjöblom and I got half a day off. We borrowed bicycles from the home and rode into Västervik and saw two movies. We hadn't seen anything but that home and those kids and nurses for months so it was exciting to see something different. I remember one movie had David Niven in it. (Note: I think this might be the film released in 1944 in England under the name The Way Ahead and in the US as The Immortal Battalion).

Well, anyway, all of our tests and test scores were examined by the board who ran this home. When it came time to take our final exam, we went to take it one or two at a time, so the home wasn't short on nurses. I was set to take the exam by myself. Brita and Rut i Herrefall came out. They took a train and a taxi out to the home. They stayed over night. There was a room where family could stay sometimes and they stayed there that night. I took the test during the day and then there was a special dinner that night and a little program when I was given my diploma. Sister Maja, the woman who managed the home, she wanted me to stay on there and be sort of in charge of some of the girls but I just couldn't. I was so lonely for people and for home that I declined.

Mom always had an interest in photography. She calls this one, "Moonlight over Gamleby Bay"

Thor starts a bank and Mom goes off to school

This is Thor Boberg and a granddaughter;
I think this is AnnCathrine. The full photo
comes at the end of this post :)

In Linköpking they had opened a bank called Jordbrukskassan. Loosely translated, that's Agriculture Credit. Dad was very interested in this and he had gone to several meetings promoting this. He wanted to start a branch in Kisa. He rented a meeting room at Centralförenginen where I worked at the time. This is a meeting room that was usually used for my boss to meet with customers and such. But instead, every Friday, Dad was in there with his bank and farmers came in to borrow money. They got loans for less interest than what any other bank would do. The only thing was that Dad was not really good with bookkeeping and so forth, so when my office closed at 5, I would go into Dad and help him with the bookkeeping and balancing his books. This went on for quite a while. Dad was really successful with this, and they were so proud of him at Jordbrukskassa in Linköping that they wanted to make it a daily bank. Of course, then they needed a new location, and Dad couldn't run it all, but he was determined that I was going to go there and work in that bank, and I did not

Jordbrukskassan handed out 

elephant-shaped piggy banks.

want to. I had decided that I really wanted to have a career working with children. Dad was disappointed that I didn't want to go into the banking business, but he had made up his mind long before that he was never going to make his kids do something with their lives that they didn't want to. When he was young, he hadn't gotten to choose, and so he didn't get to do what he wanted to do in life.

The tagged spot here is Västervik.

Well, I had found a nursing school in Västervik. The Red Cross had a home for children whose parents, one or both, had TB. It was about 7 kilometers outside of Västervik, along the water of Gamlabyviken which is an inlet from the Baltic Sea. There was a pine forest up near this home and it was supposedly really healthy air right there. I wanted to go there and work. Then our pastor had told Dad that our church had scholarships for kids who wanted to go to advanced kinds of schools and he thought I should apply. Dad told me this so I applied and I got a scholarship.

So, I went off to this school.

Sitting on the floor, left to right: Birgitta, Gunilla, Thorbjörn and Ingalena
Sitting on the couch: Sara, Gun, Elin holding Christina (I think), Thor holding AnnCathrine (I think), Margaretha, and Brita.
Standing: Ingemar, Lennart's girlfriend at the time (?), Lennart, Astor, and Henrik.