Oral history interview with Doris Lasley

Little Thunder: This is Julie Pearson-Little Thunder with the Oklahoma Oral History Research Program at Oklahoma State University. Today is Friday, September 27, 2019, and I'm interviewing Doris Lasley for the Chilocco Alumni Association here at her home in Okmulgee, Oklahoma. Doris, you're Muscogee Creek, a Chilocco graduate from the class of 1955, and you served in the Air Force as a nurse from 1964 to 1966. We'll be talking about your time at Chilocco, your service as a nurse, and some of your career highlights after you got back. Where were you born, and where did you grow up?

Lasley: I was born in Boynton, Oklahoma, and that's where I grew up. Stayed all my life there until I went to Chilocco.

Little Thunder: What did your folks do for a living?

Lasley: My mother took care of her children (I'm the youngest) and did all the housework and stuff. My dad worked in the fields there as a farmer, working for other farmers.

Little Thunder: What was it like growing up in Boynton?

Lasley: Well, I was small, so really for me it was fine. I enjoyed it. Went to school.

Little Thunder: Came to Okmulgee once in a while.

Lasley: Once in a while because if we went anywhere, we had to go by the bus. They used to have these huge buses that would stop on the road and take you. We'd go to Muskogee, or we'd come to Okmulgee. Usually that was during the time that we would be getting school clothes. There's two times a year we'd go for 2:00school clothes. That was the beginning of school and the end of school.

Little Thunder: What was your exposure to Creek language and culture growing up?

Lasley: We attended a church at Grave Creek, which is located at Hitchita. That was Native culture. My dad also spoke Creek. He was very good at Creek. My mom did not, so we never learned the Creek language.

Little Thunder: What was it like going to school in Boynton? Do you have any memories of--.

Lasley: Yeah, I made friends and kept them for years. In fact, we had a reunion probably several years ago. Now a lot of them have passed away. In fact, my best girlfriend passed away probably two years ago that I had kept in contact with. I 3:00don't know. There wasn't much to do in Boynton except go to school. Get on the school bus and go back home.

Little Thunder: How many students in the school? Any idea when you were coming up through it?

Lasley: I have no idea. Just looking back on it, I'd say there was probably maybe fifteen people in my class or something like that. They were small.

Little Thunder: So you had two sisters who went to Chilocco. Were there more than that? Marjorie and Frances went to Chilocco before you did. Did you have any other siblings that went to Chilocco?

Lasley: Yeah, there was five girls in my family. All four of them went to Chilocco. They seemed to enjoy it, and then I wanted to go after. Mom 4:00didn't--maybe it wasn't my mother. It might've been because I was located near a school and I think they--. I don't know what you would call the people that didn't want me to go to Chilocco because I had a school so near that I could go there instead of going on to Chilocco. Somehow she worked on that until I got to go, but it was my junior year.

Little Thunder: Okay, so your junior year of high school before you went. What was it like when you got there?

Lasley: Oh, I loved it! I really did. I'll tell you, that was the best thing I felt like ever happened to me because it sort of gave you maybe a direction in life which I didn't feel at Boynton. You just went to school and went home. When you got there, you had vocations, and people talked to you about that. I took cosmetology there. I never worked at it, but it was something I did.

Little Thunder: You got that skill. What impressions did the campus make on you?

Lasley: I was really impressed with it. It was so nice. When I go back now and see it and it's so deteriorating, it's really not good. I really enjoyed and felt the campus was so pretty.

Little Thunder: Do you remember any of the National Guard activities at the school?

Lasley: I really think that Army company they had there, (it was called the Charlie Company) a lot of the boys were in that.

Little Thunder: Right, in the Korean Conflict, as a matter of fact. So you remember--.

Lasley: I just remember that was there, but I really don't know what happened. You just, I guess, kind of hear about it. I knew my brother-in-law had been in 6:00that and was sent to wherever he went. Was it Korea? (Addressing Marjorie) I think somewhere around there.

Little Thunder: What teachers stand out in your memory?

Lasley: I had a teacher named Miss Hayman, and she taught civics. I really liked her. Then I had a male teacher, Mr. [Leonard] Hathcoat. I think he was maybe history. Then there was an assistant, I think, in the principal's office named Mr. Jack [McCarty]. He was the one that kind of helped me decide a vocation when I was getting ready to graduate. Those were the three. He really influenced me. You'd go to school for being a teacher or a nurse back then.

Little Thunder: One of those two tracks if you were a woman.

Lasley: That's what they gave us, those two.

Little Thunder: Any other classes that you especially enjoyed?

Lasley: I liked the English class. Her name was Ms. [Kay] Ahrnken. I enjoyed that.

Little Thunder: How about buildings? Are there any buildings that hold strong memories for you?

Lasley: Probably where I lived in a place called Home 5. It was our home. After school, that's where you went. Like Marge said, we kept that clean. You had an assignment. I guess it was every day you cleaned one thing in that building.

Little Thunder: What kinds of intertribal friendships did you have over there?

Lasley: Most of the friendships I had weren't all Creek. I can't remember what 8:00they were, though.

Little Thunder: What was one of the more funny moments you had at the school?

Lasley: I guess working in the kitchen because as we worked in there, it was always students with, maybe, Mr. [Everette] Werneke. We would always be eating the food while we were supposed to be cooking it and helping him. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: How about maybe a difficult or tough moment you experienced at the school?

Lasley: I guess it's probably mostly when I first got there and was getting used to the routine they had because we had to get up at a certain time. The house 9:00mother made you get up every morning. We had to go to breakfast and then go back and do your cleaning, and then it was time to go to school. That was probably hard because when I was at home it was just get up, eat, catch a school bus. There was a lot of difference there.

Little Thunder: Did you have any sisters still at Chilocco by the time you arrived?

Lasley: No, I was the only one there.

Little Thunder: How often did you go home?

Lasley: We went to school, I guess, probably in August. It was just at Christmastime that we went home, and at the end of school, the summer.

Little Thunder: What did you do after you left Chilocco?

Lasley: After I left Chilocco, I spent the summer with my sister because I had my cosmetology [degree]. I tried to find a job in that, and I couldn't do it. This Mr. McCarty had also helped me enroll in nursing school before I left 10:00Chilocco, so I went up there and took the--. They gave you tests to see if you could go to nursing school, so I went to Tulsa and did that. After I got accepted, I just decided to go on and be a nurse.

Little Thunder: Were you staying with Marjorie?

Lasley: No, I lived with my sister Frances in Muskogee. They took me up to Tulsa to do this nursing thing, and then when nursing school opened in August, I went there for thirty-six months, for three years.

Little Thunder: Was it also at Hillcrest Nursing School?

Lasley: No, I went to St. John's. I went to a Catholic school.

Little Thunder: The rivals! (Laughter) It's interesting because, of course, you already have a sister who was a nurse and had taken that training. Was that an influence on you?

Lasley: Yeah, it was. I always saw what she was doing, so I thought, "I think I really want to do that, too." Growing up, we didn't have a lot. Then I'd see 11:00Marge doing a lot of things, and I thought, "I want to do that." Yeah, it did.

Little Thunder: What was one of the hardest things about nursing school?

Lasley: I guess just the school itself. Learning all the things about anatomy and chemistry and those things was hard for me.

Little Thunder: Right, right. Where did you go to work after you graduated from nursing school?

Lasley: St. John's was like home to me, so a lot of us just stayed there. I stayed there for several years. Finally, I went over to St. Francis and, I guess, stayed there for probably a year before I joined the service.

Little Thunder: You haven't married yet or anything?

Lasley: No.

Little Thunder: You're still single. Which branch did you enlist in and why?

Lasley: I kept getting these things from the Air Force through the mail. You always have a good girlfriend or several girlfriends. I called my girlfriend over and told her, "Look at all this stuff I'm getting from the Air Force." She said, "Well, let's join."

Little Thunder: Oh, she--.

Lasley: Yeah, we joined on what they called the buddy system back then.

Little Thunder: Right, that happened quite a bit. Where did they send you after you signed up?

Lasley: She went probably a month before I did. We went to Montgomery, Alabama, and had our basic training there. Then we both went to Blytheville, Arkansas, which is pretty near Memphis.

Little Thunder: What was it like in Montgomery, Alabama? That's a big change 13:00over there probably.

Lasley: Yeah, it was. It was different for me. We had a lot of courses in protocol and things like that for the Air Force.

Little Thunder: But you had your friend doing the same, or was she--.

Lasley: She went a month ahead of me, so no, she wasn't there. She went on.

Little Thunder: She had gone on to a different place. When you had leave time and you could leave the base, what did you do when you were in boot camp?

Lasley: Well, a lot of the nurses was always going to the shore, which was pretty close to Montgomery. I'd never been to the beach, a shore, anything else. It never impressed me. I did not go with them, but I did go into Montgomery, 14:00Alabama, and just go to stores. I didn't go to the shore with them which now, I look back because I've done that a lot since then. I didn't have any interest. Didn't know anything about it. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: How are medical personnel treated in boot camp?

Lasley: It was very good. I don't know. I always felt it was because we were officers; we didn't do a lot of the things that the enlisted people did. We learned marching, but we didn't have a lot of activities to get up, like, five o'clock in the morning for. (Laughs)

Little Thunder: Where were you assigned after you left boot camp?

Lasley: We went to Blytheville, Arkansas, and that's where we spent the rest of 15:00our time.

Little Thunder: Okay, and how big is that facility there?

Lasley: It was pretty big, yeah.

Little Thunder: What kinds of patients did you see?

Lasley: We had pediatrics for children of people on the base. We had OB, having babies. We had medical ward, just general sickness of wives, doctors. Anybody that got sick was there. Surgery, we had everything. We had emergency room and clinics for colds and things like that.

Little Thunder: Where did you work the most over there? Did you work on one area or another?

Lasley: One area was just like, it had medical and pediatrics because the 16:00hospital wasn't huge. That was sort of combined. If you worked there, you took care of both of those. Then OB was different, and surgery was different like that. We could be assigned to OB, or we could just be assigned to a medical ward which encompassed general illnesses and the pediatric patients.

Little Thunder: After you did your two years, (right, you did two years) what happened?

Lasley: I got out, and I came and worked in Tulsa for several months. I worked at osteopathic hospital there.

Little Thunder: Okay, down by the river. And then--.

Lasley: Then I eventually got married and had three girls. After that, I just worked different places.

Little Thunder: Sort of like a substitute teacher?

Lasley: Oh, no, no, no, I never did anything outside of nursing.

Little Thunder: I mean you could go work for one hospital for a while--while you're raising your kids. How did you meet your husband?

Lasley: I had actually met him in the Air Force before I left there.

Little Thunder: And he was from Oklahoma?

Lasley: No, he's from New Jersey. (Laughs)

Little Thunder: That's the New Jersey connection. (Laughs) I know you have a granddaughter and a daughter up there, I guess. What was the hospital you most enjoyed working in once you were raising a family and you were kind of going here and there?

Lasley: I really didn't like working when my kids were small, although I did. I worked at VA in Muskogee for some time. They used to have what they call 18:00rotating shifts. You worked days, and you worked evenings, and you worked nights. I guess I probably liked that because if you lived in Muskogee, Oklahoma, there's not many places to work there. After that, which was later in my nursing career, I worked for the Department of Human Services, and that's where I retired from, as a nurse for them. That was probably the best and the easiest job. Wasn't like a lot of nursing that you did on wards and things like that.

Little Thunder: Right. Was it more kind of social services combined?

Lasley: Yes.

Little Thunder: What was one of your maybe more memorable nursing moments, or a moment that was particularly rewarding? There probably were a lot.

Lasley: I think my DHS job. I liked that a lot, which is strange. It was working 19:00with the elderly, going to their home, seeing that they were taking their medication, make sure that they kept their houses safe for them. Now I take care of myself in that way. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: Since you were married to a man from New Jersey, did you start making trips to New Jersey occasionally, too?

Lasley: I did.

Little Thunder: What were your impressions of that part of the country?

Lasley: I really didn't like it. I wanted to live in Oklahoma. I guess my kids did. Two of them ended up there. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: Right, right. What was the most difficult thing about being a 20:00nurse when you were in the Air Force?

Lasley: In the Air Force, we rotate shifts, which was sort of like the VA. You work days, evenings, and nights. That's just the way it went. I don't really like that. If I'm going to work days, I'm going to work days. I guess that was probably the worst thing about it. Otherwise you're just, you know, being a nurse.

Little Thunder: What was one of the best things about being a nurse in the service?

Lasley: We got to go a lot of briefings about what was going with the war, not that I remember them, some of the things like that, which was really nice. We'd 21:00go to this building. It was all, like, secret things that they would tell us about. Before that, we had to go in and sign some kind of forms to be able to even go to this kind of briefings. I liked that. I thought that was kind of impressive.

Little Thunder: So we are talking about the Vietnam War here. This was in Arkansas that you were going to the briefings?

Lasley: Yes.

Little Thunder: What are a couple of things that you've done since you retired that you're most happy about?

Lasley: Since I retired? I haven't really done too much since I retired. I've 22:00just done what I wanted to, which I enjoy. I enjoy doing sewing and doing flowers and things like that, gardening, I guess.

Little Thunder: How long did you end up nursing, overall? I know you had that period when your kids were growing up that you didn't weren't--.

Lasley: I graduated from nursing school in '58, and I retired in, like, 2002. I guess I worked for, like, fifty years.

Little Thunder: You do Tai Chi sometimes with your sister.

Lasley: Yeah, do. I do Tai Chi.

Little Thunder: Have you kept in touch with your fellow Chiloccoans over the years? How much have you kept in touch?

Lasley: No, I really haven't.

Little Thunder: Are you a member of any Native veterans groups?

Lasley: No, I don't know of any.

Little Thunder: But you are involved with the women veterans--.

Lasley: Oh, yeah, they have this women's recognition day [Oklahoma Women Veterans Recognition Day] for all veterans in Oklahoma, women veterans in Oklahoma and Oklahoma City. In fact, that's next weekend, October 4. Marge and I are going to that.

Little Thunder: You and Marge also went to the opening--.

Lasley: For the [Military] Women's Memorial.

Little Thunder: --for the Women's Memorial. Tell us a little about that.

Lasley: I don't know. It's very impressive because everything in there is about women. We saw one Native American nurse from here, and Marge knew her better than I did. We went in there and saw that. Then while we were there, we got to sign in some things. My daughter told me she went there this last year. She 24:00said, "Mom, you really need to go and rewrite your things that you did." (Laughs) Yeah, but we went there to see that.

Little Thunder: To see the opening of it. That's neat.

Lasley: We wanted to go back, but that hasn't happened.

Little Thunder: It may yet! When you do make the Chilocco reunions, what do you enjoy about them?

Lasley: Seeing people that I went to school with. The funny part is, you don't recognize anybody anymore until you just happen to maybe see their names. That's very interesting. My daughter came from New Jersey because Katie was doing this research. They came and took me last year. I had not been in five years. Marge and I would go all the time, but it's quite a distance to Chilocco. If you don't 25:00get a room where the reunion is held, then you're going to be driving at night to go someplace. I'm not doing that because at a certain point you don't want to be driving at night.

Little Thunder: Right. Well, I'm glad that she was able to go up there with you and talk you into doing this interview.

Lasley: She did. She was very good, too, because my daughter made us go to everything. She did not let us miss one thing. She said, "We're going to everything they're doing, so be ready." Then when I take Marge, we didn't do that. That's why we didn't go to the veteran's breakfast. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: I see. The truth comes out! (Laughter) What else would you like 26:00people to know or remember from your story, either about Chilocco or being a nurse in the service?

Lasley: I'd like people to know that even though you come from not a lot of money, and even though I never made a lot of money, you can improve your own life just by continuing to go to school and get your education. Actually, our mother really pushed that for us. She told us to continue our schooling because Dad and my mom only went to the eighth grade.

Little Thunder: That's neat. Is there anything else we should talk about that we haven't covered?

Lasley: No, that's about it for me. I don't have anything to add.

Little Thunder: Thank you for your service, and thank you for taking the time to talk with us today.

Lasley: You're welcome. I enjoyed it, and I'm glad we have this interview done now.

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