Kathy Schmitt: school days
What did you like the most about being in school? Were you a good student, or do you remember any of your teachers?
I did like school and I liked hanging out with my friends. I really did. I was an okay student, you know, I did my work. I was a little bit of a goody two-shoes in school. I would always want to follow the rules. So of course, I’d want to hang out with especially the girls that wanted to flaunt the rules, because that would sort of protect me.
I thought school was fun. I did go to an all-girls high school, which I also found to be very fun. And, we rode a school bus there, believe it or not, it was Gwynedd Mercy. We were picked up in the Northeast and rode the whole bus ride to school these days. They don’t have that bus service now. You don’t have students from that far out. My sister protested for 2 years. She did not want to go to Gwynedd Mercy. And she did not want to go to this school up in the country. But anyway, my father and mother, they said you have 2 choices. Mount St. Joes or Gwynedd Mercy. That was her choice. So, she finally settled on Gwynedd Mercy because my mother had an aunt whose daughter, her cousin, who went there when they were in the city. They were down by Temple for a long time.
Then they made the old Mercy into a tech school, but now it has all been torn down for fast food. But anyway, I did like hanging out. I loved to go to all-girl hockey games. I would have movie night at my house and the girls would come over, especially when they could drive, and we would watch movies.
Did you use like the projectors and the filmstrips from your father’s store?
Yeah. They would pick a movie and the screen went up in the living room. Our dining room connected, and the projector went back there.
We could all sit around on the chairs and couches and everything and eat snacks. My parents never minded that if we brought people in for a movie, but they weren’t crazy about having people running through the house.
Cause I guess they had 7 kids, but they didn’t mind if you wanted to bring them for a movie. Just having friends over to watch film strips, I guess that might be my favorite memory.
I never liked working in the store. I did not have the technical knowledge to even help people load their camera. And we sold cameras and film supplies. And then we had a rental business. I was fine on the phone setting up a rental because we had a little calendar system, and my mother had that all organized. But if you came in and said, can you load this camera for me? I was really stuck. And so it never appealed to me working in the store, working in that business. It was more the social aspect.
Do you have a favorite memory of nursing school?
I went to Gwynedd Mercy. I actually went to Fitzgerald Mercy hospital for a 3-year program. When I finished that program, I interviewed and got a job at Jefferson, and they wanted me in the ICU.
Now you have to have a little bit more training than that, but I guess the shortage was there. It was downtown. I remember my brother’s wife, Anita, we used to hang out, and her mother was a nurse. She worked private duty at Jeff, that’s how far back it goes. They don’t do that anymore. But she said “go to Jeff, go to Jeff. That’ll be good for you. You’re young.” She was really great. I worked in intensive care for several years.
I loved boarding. We boarded out there. I had a roommate. We hung out at night and we just really, everybody just became friendlier that way because they were living together. And I really did like that. I thought the program was pretty strenuous, considering that they had student nurses working all the floors with maybe one registered nurse supervisor that would make rounds.
It was kind of scary now that I think about it. We didn’t think anything of it when we were there, but they used 3-year schools, pretty much for their student labor. So that was the downside, in a way, but it was also fun when we went to psych. We went to Norristown State Hospital, and we were there for 3 months–12 weeks. And 4 other schools were there. We had a great time; we boarded there, and went home on weekends. So, we really had a good time, and it really opened my eyes to mental health and those needs. Of course, when I was there, we didn’t have too much in the way of medication. I found it to be a very rewarding, I guess maybe that’s why I went back to it later. And I love talking with the people, listening. So nursing school was kind of fun that way.
Did you have a favorite milestone birthday party?
Well, my mother with 8 kids – this is what you got on your birthday. You really didn’t get a present, because my mother bought for you all year, so we never even considered that. But we always wanted a cake from the bakery and it’s been closed for years, Hanscom’s. They made a cake with buttercream icing was so good that every sibling I had always wanted that. My mother was a pretty good cook and a baker and everything, but she would get the birthday cake and we just had, after dinner, we’d have cake and ice cream. I never had really a separate birthday party with like just friends or anything like that.
I never really missed it, to be honest with you. I went to lots of friends’ birthday parties, sometime in the younger grades, it was all girls. Sometimes we did have some, but not a lot in high school.
I did arrive at age 65. And my children gave me a surprise. Carolyn was in California at the time, but she came up. She gave some excuse for coming. I never had a clue because my birthday had come and gone. So it was after my birthday, and I didn’t even think twice about it.
I had a special girlfriend, Marie, and we had been friends since I met her when I first started at Jefferson when she came on board and worked in the ICU with me. Marie was just probably my best friend all through having a family and getting married and everything. I kind of introduced her to her husband. So they were married until they both passed away. Marie died first about 12 years ago, the year that Darby was born. She had breast cancer. Her husband died a few years later of all kinds of heart-condition complications and things like that. His name was Tom.
Oh, this was the funny part. They all got it together and didn’t tell me. Marie had been bugging me for months to go out to a dinner when this other girlfriend, Margie, who had worked at Jefferson for a while, who lived down south, now was coming up. Would I go to dinner with them? And I said, I’d love to, so the first dinner was canceled because either Margie didn’t come or something. And then she said, oh, well, she’s coming now. Can you go with this to the dinner? And I said, sure. And she said, Tom and I will pick you up. I said, great. So they came and she came in and had a birthday present for me, belated, I guess it wasn’t that long before.
Marie was the appointed person to get me there. Of course, when Marie gets talking, she just sits in lounge around, like she has nothing else to do. And I think she was, she was pretending she was getting phone calls from her daughter, but I think she was getting phone calls from MY daughter. “Where are you? Where’s my mom? We’re all here in the restaurant”, you know? And they were a little nervous because it was called for like, I don’t know, 6 or 6:30. And then we only had the room till 9, which I didn’t know, but I didn’t know about the whole thing. So Marie says, “oh, well, let’s go.” And then we got in the car and went and I got there, but they had plenty of time to get to know each other.
She invited all my nieces and nephews. There’s like 30-plus, although they don’t all come because they don’t live in town, but that was a thrill. Having them, all their brothers and sisters, old friends, people from work that I used to hang out with. And, yeah, it was just a nice time.