My personal memory of the hospital's history
"Legacy of a tunnel"
Grace-New Haven Community Hospital, 1947-1952

As I nurse my memories back to life, they become vivid and real, and I am reminded of one passageway: a tunnel, linking the basement of Sterling Dormitory and the basement of the hospital known to me in the late 40s and early 50s as Grace-New Haven Hospital.

This rite of passage was the connection between two worlds, as we nurses began and ended each day walking swiftly on its snake-like path. Roommates, classmates, graduate nurses, passed each other hurriedly on their way to classes or to their assigned hospital duties. We shouldered great pride in our starched uniforms and caps... some days never setting foot outside these two worlds.

This tunnel's walls echoed the chronology of many patients' diseases, the life, treatment, healing, discharge and the families of those patients. We studied patients during their long stays, gaining a vast and diversified experience and becoming another appendage to families as we gave them courage and hope. As so, we exchanged our experiences as we walked this walk.

When I think of the tunnel, my memories are as vivid as a kaleidoscope's colorful palette. With a blink of an eye the scene changes and so well I remember: the corridor on Fitkin lined with wringer washing machines like metal soldiers ready with hot pack application treatments for Polio patients; the iron lungs; the striker frame; two young quadriplegic boys in saw dust and oscillating beds; a child with psychogenic vomiting; rooming-in; natural childbirth; Drs. Wiley, Ford, Grant, and yes, Dr. Emil Karlovsky who is still on the staff of Yale and who delivered two of my children. And who can forget our Mrs. Link, OB supervisor whose vast knowledge in this field was the saving grace for many of our medical students and nurses of that era.

We treated a little girl who lay quietly in a state of tetanus, sleep induced by rectal avertin and whose little body showed one tiny almost indiscernible entry of this dread disease, a fine scratch.

And way back then I do recall an exciting future called "genetic or embryonic farming", a term discussed in one of my notations on a lecture. Does anyone else remember?

One last glimpse on to the kaleidoscope's palette takes me back to colorful paintings of the Walt Disney characters I chose to create on the glass partitions between the cribs out on the solarium; the children delighted in their new surroundings.

This tunnel has its legacy. The tunnel embraced us as we walked through, spilling our strengths, courage, laughter and tears and our dedication to a world of compassionate care, of learning and of integrity. The history of the place echoes through its hallways.

Some of us remain to tell, lined by age and life's burdens, but possessing a glow of a golden age and a willingness to spread compassion still.

This tunnel has since been closed, and I have been told that it has been used for storage. Sterling Dorm at 350 Congress Avenue has since been demolished.

I thank you Yale-New Haven Hospital. The pursuit of research and knowledge has always stayed with me.

As a graduate of the University of Connecticut, School of Nursing student doing clinicals at Grace-New Haven Hospital, 1947 - 1952, class of 1952, I am deeply grateful for the greatest nursing education.

Aileen L. Meyer
Monroe, Conn.