Books From My Younger Years: Cherry Ames

Early in my blogging, I wrote about an experience of losing the books I had treasured as a child (Loss in an Army Brat’s Life).  It occurred to me at that time that it would be fun to re-read some of those books.  I recently realized I could create an interesting blog series from that endeavor.  I decided I would start with a book from the Cherry Ames series since it was those books that led me to choose nursing as a career.  I was very curious to discover my reaction to them as an adult.

I downloaded the first book in the series onto my Kindle but when I finished reading it, I discovered there was another, and then another.  I had unknowingly purchased a set of four books!  Each one was so engrossing that I eagerly moved on to the next.  When I finished the fourth, I felt a pull to continue reading the series.  However, I also wanted to read some of the other books from my younger years, so decided to stop and write this post.

Wikipedia states:

Cherry Ames is the central character in a series of 27 mystery novels with hospital settings published by Grosset and Dunlap between 1943 and 1968. Helen Wells (1910-1986) wrote volumes #1-7 and 17-27, and Julie Campbell Tatham (1908-1999), the creator of Trixie Belden, wrote volumes #8-16.

Through Cherry’s experiences, readers are introduced to nursing in so many different settings.  The books I read recently were about her student and army nurse years.

Cherry attended a hospital school of nursing. Those schools still existed when I trained to be a nurse, so I know that the hospital based nursing students graduated with much more patient care experience than the students in a baccalaureate program like the one where I received my education.  Also nursing in the 1940’s would likely have been very different from nursing in the last half of the 1960’s.

Still, I was surprised and skeptical about some of the things I read.  For example, after only five or six months of training, Cherry was placed in charge of an entire unit during the night shift.  In those days, patients stayed in the hospital for much longer periods of time so many of the patients she would have been caring for may not have been as ill as those who are hospitalized today, but that scenario still seemed pretty far-fetched.  It was definitely important for me to remember that these books were fiction!

Cherry received her training during World War 2.  At that time, there was a very strong push for nurses and doctors to join the the army so they could work overseas with our wounded soldiers. In fact, the Cherry Ames series was created as a way to entice girls into nursing, and into joining the war effort after graduation.

At the end of her training, largely due to Cherry’s influence, her entire class of student nurses enlisted. Many of the hospital’s doctors did as well. I received my nurses training during the Vietnam War. I remember one of my classmates traveling overseas to visit her boyfriend when he was on leave from Vietnam.  He was killed soon thereafter.  It was such a sad time for her and for the rest of us as well. Our class was certainly impacted by the Vietnam War, but I don’t remember anyone even thinking about joining the army, and we certainly weren’t being pushed in that direction.

Once Cherry enlisted, she, along with her classmates and the doctors, went through basic training together.  They were also sent overseas together. Within four months of becoming an army nurse, Cherry was made acting Chief Nurse and given the task of going to a jungle area on the edge of a combat zone, with her 60 classmates and 200 corpsmen who were there to support the nurses.  They were tasked with creating an evacuation hospital that would serve up to 1000 patients. A group of 50 doctors and technicians would be working with the nurses and corpsmen.  Chief Nurse with an assignment like that after only four months of experience as a graduate nurse makes for a really good story, but is certainly one that defies belief!

Reading these books brought back even more memories of my own nursing experiences. In Cherry’s day, nurses received their caps after finishing a probationary period.  The day they received their caps was a great day.  I have no memory of receiving my own cap. I believe it was just part of my student uniform, although I could be wrong.

Early in my career, nurses stopped wearing caps altogether, but they still wore white nurse’s uniforms. I believe I was wearing a traditional nurses uniform when I became a Maternal-Newborn Clinical Nurse Specialist in 1979.  Soon thereafter the hospital’s Clinical Nurse Specialists were granted the “privilege” of wearing a white lab coat instead.

Years later, our Assistant Director of Nursing informed us that we were to resume wearing the white uniforms. That change felt like a demotion and I don’t think any of us were happy about it.  We staged a mock protest, mostly in fun, by showing up at her office at some point before the new policy went into effect, most of us wearing our white uniforms AND our old nursing caps!  (I blurred the faces of my colleagues because I have no way to contact the others for permission to post this picture!)

When I read the Cherry Ames books as a young teenager, I realized that no one person could do everything that Cherry did. After all, she solved mystery after mystery and accomplished amazing feats.  She was quite a heroine.  Having a young woman repeatedly “Save the Day” was very inspirational though, and provided a powerful role model in an era when men held so much power. The books also introduced me to a profession that had endless possibilities.

Nursing has served me well and has allowed me to have such a diversity of experiences. I have worked as a Labor and Delivery Room nurse, Postpartum nurse,  Instructor and Assistant Professor of Nursing, and as a Maternal-Newborn Nurse Clinical Specialist.  I helped set up and run a satellite Baccalaureate program for hospital nurses and for the last 27 years I have been an Adult Psychiatric and Mental Health  Clinical Nurse Specialist with a private psychotherapy practice. What more could I ask for in a career?

Thank you Helen Wells and Julie Campbell Tatham for writing the Cherry Ames series!