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Show YVONNE (BONNIE) CAMPBELL VANROOSENDAAL Salt Lake City, Utah An Interview By Becky B. Lloyd August 30,2009 EVERETT L. COOLEY COLLECTION Polio Oral History Project u-2019 American West Center, Utah Medical Association Foundation and Marriott Library Special Collections Department University of Utah THIS IS AN INTERVIEW WITH BONNIE VANROOSENDAAL ON AUGUST 30, 2009. THE INTERVIEWER IS BECKY B. LLOYD. THIS IS THE POLIO ORAL HISTORY PROJECT. TAPE No. u-2019. BBL: This is an interview with Bonnie VanRoosendaal at her home in Salt Lake City, Utah. Today’s date is August 30, 2009. This is part of our Polio Oral History project, which is supported by the Utah Medical Association. Bonnie, let’s start with when and where you were born. BCV: [ was born in a little mining town of Eureka, Utah, in 1935, October 1935. BBL: Who are your parents? BCV: Glen P. Campbell and Rachel Millicent Litchfield Campbell. BBL: How many children did your parents have? BCV: Five. BBL: They all survived? BCV: I had another little sister, when I was ten, that died at birth. BBL: So you were ten years old when she was born and died? BCV: Yes. BBL: So that would have been six children had she lived? BEYV RYEs: BBL: Where do you fit in that line up? BCV: I was the baby that lived (laughs). BBL: So you were the youngest of the five? BCV: Yes. BBL: What did your father do for employment? BONNIE VANROOSENDAAL BCV: 30 AUGUST 2009 At that time, I believe he worked for Utah State Roads. He was a welder and just any kind of laborer or any kind of work he could find. He’s also been a sheepherder during the Depression, he worked as a sheepherder when they lived in Goshen, Utah. BBL: You were born right in the middle of the Great Depression? BGEViiaYes? BBL: So your family was affected by that? [ know you were too young to remember, but have you heard about those stories? BCV: Yes, Mom and Dad moved according to what work they could find. However, we did live in Eureka quite a long time. But they were married in Heber City where my dad is from. Mother was from Goshen, Utah. They lived in Provo for a while, then they lived in Goshen. I had a sister born in Provo and a sister born in Goshen. I don’t remember where my brother was. My brother might have been born in Goshen also. He’s four years older than I am. [ know when Dad lived in Goshen he was a sheepherder somewhere and was gone a lot. And then he got the job with the State roads and we lived in Eureka. BBL: And was able to hang onto that for a while? BE@V: Yes: BBL: Did your mother have a paying job outside the home? BCYV: Not until we moved up to Salt Lake. BBL: Your father didn’t work in the mines? BCV: No. My older sister’s husband did, they lived in Eureka, and she was there the rest of her life. But Dad never worked in the mines. BBL: Do you have any memories of your life before you contracted polio? BCV: Very little. BONNIE VANROOSENDAAL 30 AUGUST 2009 BBL: You were so little. You were four? BCV: Yes. I was four when I got polio and moved to Salt Lake then. And then right after that, Mom and Dad moved up to Salt Lake. BBL: So then at four years old you contracted polio. Tell me that story. Do you remember what happened? Or have you been told what happened? BCV: I believe I was at my grandmother’s in Heber and not feeling well, whiney and sickly acting. Then Mother said we came on home and I just didn’t ever seem to get better. I was weak and feverish and didn’t feel good. I don’t know if they called the local doctor or not but somehow they found out that they thought I had infantile paralysis. My father had a friend that was a Shriner and he said, “Let’s take her up to Shriner’s Hospital and they’ll take care of her” because Mom and Dad, of course, didn’t have any money. That’s what happened. They took me up there. I remember holding onto my...my mom had oblong buttons on her coat, kind of a yellowish-green coat, and I held onto those buttons and cried and cried as they put me in that big iron crib. BBL: An interesting memory. BCV: Yes, I remember just crying and crying and crying. And Mother left me there. That’s the first memory I have of the hospital or doctors or anything like that. BBL: Is being left at the hospital? BCV: Being left at the hospital. And I was there for at least eleven months, between eleven and twelve months. BBL: I think you told me on the phone when we were talking before that this was at Thanksgiving you were visiting your grandparents. BCV: I think so. BONNIE VANROOSENDAAL 30 AUGUST 2009 BBL: And do you remember yourself feeling sick? BCV: No. I don’t remember that at all. BBL: You just remember trying to hang onto your mother’s buttons as they tried to peel you off and put you in that crib. BCV: Yes. The nurse was there trying to soothe me. I was just screaming. I think they put you in quarantine at first, too. You’re in a room by yourself; you weren’t out in the other room, like this ward. You were in a partitioned off area. BBL: In a separate room? BCV: Yes. They were good to me there, but I didn’t know what was going on. I don’t really remember much about that. BBL: Right. We’ve got a photo here that we’re looking at. It’s a picture of what they called a ward in Shriner’s Hospital. The picture is dated 1940. But Bonnie was saying earlier that it looks very much like the room that she was in. BCV: That would have been the time [ was there. I think I left there in 1940. BBL: Right. If you were born in 35 and you were four when you contracted polio. .. BCV: It would have been ’39. BBL: Did you tell me what day you were born? BCV: October 7" BBL: Okay. So you were just barely four if it was Thanksgiving when you were there. Do you have any recollection of about how long you might have been in quarantine when you were separated? BCV: No. BBL: Was it a long time? BONNIE VANROOSENDAAL BCV: 30 AUGUST 2009 No, I don’t remember. I don’t remember how long. I know I was separate, but then by the time I went into the ward, I was in a cast. They casted me from under my arms. At first Mother told me down both legs and I just had to lay on my back or my stomach all the time, but it wasn’t very long before they took it off my left leg and they began to lower the cast down my back and they gradually bent the cast, so it wasn’t just straight legs. It was gradually with the knee bent. But this was over the eleven months. BBL: That you were there. So every couple of weeks or so they’d lower the cast? BCV: Yes. And they would change the cast about twice a month probably, I don’t know, because this leg isn’t much shorter. It is just like three-quarters of an inch shorter. So they had to change it often or else it would have stunted the growth of that leg I think. BBL: So the polio affected your right leg? BCV: Yes. BBL: Was it in your hip? Or your whole leg? BCV: My whole leg and up my back. My back was very weak, but it didn’t affect my lungs and from what I understand is the polio that affected the lungs was the children in the iron lungs. It never affected my lungs. BBL: Right. You were never in an iron lung? BCV: No. BBL: Dixie was telling me that she was in one, she thought, for about a day or so. BCV: In an iron lung? BBL: Yes, they put her in an iron lung. I guess then they realized she didn’t need it or whatever, then they took her back out. But she remembers being in that. She was about the same age as you, so she doesn’t remember. BONNIE VANROOSENDAAL 30 AUGUST 2009 BCV: She’s a little younger than me, isn’t she? BBL: Yes. In fact I think she contracted polio when she was three years old. So she was three when she had polio, but she does remember they put her in an iron lung for, she can’t remember if it was a day or a week, but she remembers it was for a short period of time. But interminable. When you’re that little and locked in a thing. BCV: Was she in Primary Children’s? BBL: She was in a hospital in California. Her family was living in California at the time. At White Memorial Hospital. But she was also in a cast iron crib that was painted white. BCV: Yes. BBL: Was yours painted white? BCV: Yes. BBL: Were you in a crib the whole time? Because you were still... BCV: No, I was in a crib until my cast got lowered. As I gradually grew out of the cast, they started having me walk around and put braces on my legs. The brace came up around my waist and when I got in my brace, then I could walk around pushing a little chair. Then I got crutches. By the time I went home, I was walking with crutches and my braces. So I wasn’t confined and I had a bed like this. This was like the crib [ was in when I first got there. Then I had an iron bed like this. BBL: So it has a headboard, a footboard, a frame and mattress and wheels, it looks like, on the bottom. BCV: Yes. BONNIE VANROOSENDAAL BBL: 30 AUGUST 2009 So we were talking before this started about this room and how the parents would come and visit you. Maybe they’d move the bed around. Tell us a little about that, about the parents visiting. BCV: I think they could just come on weekends and Mom and Dad had to drive up from Eureka, which was quite a little drive for a day. You could do it in a day, but quite a drive. So they started looking for a home up here and they would come and visit me every week and it got so [ just thought that’s what everybody did. You know, they saw their parents on weekends (laughs) and stayed in the hospital. At first I was upset when they’d leave, I imagine. I don’t remember being upset when they’d leave, so I think it wasn’t very long before I just accepted it for what it was. Mom and Dad would be there on the weekends. BBL: Tell about the windows here. BCV: They saw us through the windows. BBL: So when your parents came, they would roll your bed or crib over to the window and the parents would look at you through a window. BCV: Yes. My bed was on that side of the room. There was another room the full length of the ward on the other side of these windows and that was the school room and the parents would come in there and visit through the windows. They could pass us toys or little gifts or whatever and we could talk through the windows. They were open. I don’t remember a screen or anything. But that was the school room. I think they had school about three days a week. Back when I was there, I don’t really remember going to school in that room, but they probably had some kind of little classes for the little kids too. Of course, the younger babies, I think they were in another room, but they may have been on BONNIE VANROOSENDAAL 30 AUGUST 2009 the other side of the room, it looks like in that picture, although this looks like a bed. But I don’t really remember too much about it. I was free to get off the bed and run around and play with the other kids if [ wanted to. We were encouraged to stay in our area and, like I say, in the morning they’d come around and give us a hot sponge bath and they’d give us a teaspoon of chocolate syrup with a yeast cake broken in four, I think, on the top of it. We looked forward to that. That was a treat. It was supposed to be just like a tonic, the chocolate syrup, I think, was a tonic to improve our appetite. The yeast was to keep us healthy or something (laughs). BBL: Is that right? BCV: Yes, [ remember that because we didn’t get a lot of candy and things and that was a treat when they gave us that every day. They’d come in, give us that spoonful. We’d take the whole spoon of chocolate syrup and that yeast cake, and chew that yeast cake (laughs). BBL: That is interesting. [’ve not heard that. BCV: Oh, | remember that yeast cake. There was one little girl that used to come around, like we had a little bed stand. I don’t see them here. Seems like we had little bed stands by our beds and we could keep our toothbrush and toothpaste in there and stuff. And she would come around and take our toothpaste and eat it. I was always asking Mom, “I need more toothpaste.” And they used to have a toothpaste called Teel, I think, that was a red liquid toothpaste, and she really liked that (laughs). BBL: The girl did? BCV: Yes. So I was always asking, “Bring me some more toothpaste.” And they’d say, “My goodness, we just brought you toothpaste.” So then I told them that this little girl BONNIE VANROOSENDAAL 30 AUGUST 2009 comes around and takes our toothpaste and eats it, and they thought that was funny (laughs). BBL: You had to provide your own toothpaste? BCV: I think we did, because I asked them for toothpaste all the time. BBL: I have such a sweet tooth, maybe I’d be swiping toothpaste too. BCV: Yes. And we didn’t get a lot of sweets in the hospital that [ can remember. There may have been a cookie and things on the tray, but I don’t remember. Kids nowadays have a lot of candy and stuff. We didn’t have candy. That chocolate syrup with that yeast cake was really good. BBL: Interesting. BCV: Idon’t really remember too much when I was there then. I do remember walking around pushing the little chair. And I remember being afraid of the cast saw; I was afraid that might cut me. BBL: Oh, the cast saw. BCV: But I soon got over that because I soon realized, oh, it’s littler, it’s littler and I’m growing out of it and pretty soon I won’t have to have it. I kept remembering that. When I did go home I had a cast that Mother put on my leg, but I think it just went to my knee. Then it was just the back half of my leg and then she would wrap a bandage around it to hold it on through the night. BBL: It was a removable cast that you wore only at night? BCV: And she would massage my leg every night with, like I said, the cocoa butter, and massage my leg and then wrap it up in the cast as [ went to bed. I’d have to wear high top shoes, like in that little picture I've got on my high top shoes with my brace. Of course, 10 BONNIE VANROOSENDAAL 30 AUGUST 2009 the brace went right into the little high top shoes. Even after I got rid of the braces I still wore those high top shoes for a while. I needed them. BBL: You were telling me the style was cute little Mary Jane’s. BCV: Yes, cute little Mary Jane’s when [ went to school and there I was in brown high tops. I didn’t like that at all. But my back was weak and I had exercises to do every night to try and strengthen the back muscle. But no matter how many exercises I did with my leg, it atrophied. I didn’t have any muscle in it; I still don’t have much muscle in it. I have enough to get by. And my back is still weak. But I did exercise my back very faithfully every night. BBL: Do you think that made a difference for you? BCV: Yes, [ do. I think that Mother massaging my back and legs helped it from what it was. But my leg was too far gone to do too much good. BBL: So you say the muscles atrophied in your leg. Would you say from the hip down or just from your knee down? Or do you know? BCV: My hip is smaller on that side, so it atrophied some. My back, I don’t know, my back is just really tiring for me to sit for a long time and it’s hard for me to sit nice and straight in a chair. I usually sit with my legs lopped up over the arms and my back against the other arm. I lounge in a chair even if it’s not a lounge chair often because my back just isn’t comfortable unless I’m just kind of reclining in a lounge chair. BBL: Better support. BEVi: Yes: BBL: Let me go back and ask you the situation where the parents could just come on weekends and then it was just talking through the window. Was that how it was 18] |
