Interviewed by Kristin Huber.
Raw, uncleaned transcript
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OK.
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And we’ll start. When did you come to Marceline?
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1946.
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56 years.
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46 years ago.
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Where did you originally come from?
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Before you moved here.
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We come from Savannah.
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You know our communities in Savannah.
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Yeah, that’s our community.
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OK.
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OK. And how long were?
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You there.
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Did you grow up there?
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When did you move?
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When did you move to?
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The United States.
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Thank you.
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OK, so you’ve been pretty much everywhere when when you came to Marceline, at first, what ,tice that was different from the places you had been before as far as community and?
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We came here At the request of Father McCarthy Mancini McCarthy.
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This old hospital was closed for four years.
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And the lady that owned it wanted to turn it into an apartment house and and said no.
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We need a hospital.
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And she said, well, you would have to get somebody to run.
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And she, he said, we’ll get some sisters.
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And so he wondered that the hospital to be carried on by the sisters.
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And that there was two old ladies.
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Robinsons and they donated the hospital they bought the building and donated it to us.
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Deeded it over to us.
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So you’ve been running it ever since then?
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OK, what did you notice about the people in Muslim?
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Well, at first the people.
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And welcomed us wholeheartedly because we were going to.
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Make a hospital go.
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And so they were very glad to see us and also the Catholic Church was glad to have sisters.
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But there were some there were prejudices and interests.
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Do you think that’s changed?
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Oh yes, that has changed.
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So you believe most people Marceline accept.
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Oh yes, anybody.
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OK.
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How have things as far as medicine changed, I mean?
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Do you think it helps more people now?
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The whole the whole.
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Healthcare has changed.
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You know, they do things differently.
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But when I first started over here, the hard patients had to stay in bed and rest.
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They were not eating, allowed to feed themselves.
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Well, now they get them up right away.
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They have to walk.
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So you see how different it is now?
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Do you think that’s?
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I mean, does it do you think it helps?
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More people or?
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Yeah, they could help.
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You know, just lying in bed.
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You just deteriorate.
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Yeah, yeah.
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Do you think the community?
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Because the hospital doesn’t function as a hospital anymore, my friend, it just the long term care and the doctor’s offices.
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Do you think the community needs a hospital?
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It’s see Brooklyn was too close and the two hospitals couldn’t keep up, you know, didn’t have enough business.
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Do you want to call?
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It that yeah.
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The two hospitals they were too close to each other and.
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They kind of.
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Competed too much.
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And there was one room that had to close.
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Brookfield absolutely refused to close.
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And you just keep it.
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Do you still think that the sisters do a lot in the community?
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Ministrator can go ask them to stay.
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See, we were going to leave and ask him folks, but he asked us to stay because we are influential to the people, for the people like to see the systems.
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So we’re still here, just three of.
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Us do you think that the people trust the sisters more as far as as opposed to the administrator coming in and saying?
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We hear that all.
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The time over that long term care, you know, we go over there.
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To see the patients there.
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And they always say it’s not like when the sisters have it.
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Does not let the sisters.
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Do you think being Catholic?
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Do you think people are more religious now?
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Than they were.
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In the past.
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You have you have people, you know that fall away.
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From the church and join other churches.
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You know, when people when they’re trials, like when we had that war last year, people prayed more.
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But then that.
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Hurl is over with and forget about the limit.
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So only in times of.
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Times of trial Peter Primo.
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Do you think that’s so to speak bad that people just come to the Lord when they need?
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Him that this truth, they should go to the Lord all the time, not just when telling me.
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How have?
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The attitudes of people in the community changed on certain issues, like probably when you came, there wasn’t any any divorce.
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If you know much, if any at all.
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And now it seems like divorce is a commonplace.
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That’s true.
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Do you hate people or losing their morals?
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Because you see the teen teenage pregnancies you see, there’s lots of more help.
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To you going.
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Do you think that?
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Children are growing up faster, so to speak.
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I mean, because she was asleep.
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Do you think so much on TV?
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We see all those things and.
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So I think that’s part of the problem that.
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That’s good.
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The things that are on TV.
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Greatly more.
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And what people see they do.
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Especially the children, they like to imitate.
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Young people are doing it too.
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How does it feel for you?
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Because you’ve been here long enough that you have seen, like, generations of families come about.
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Do you family screw up here?
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Is that a good feeling for?
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Yes, I just a few days ago and it was.
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Golden Wedding Anniversary celebration here and that young man, he was.
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More way above there and such a beautiful when he was a baby, I could.
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Hardly believe it.
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Like you, I took care of you.
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We’re taking care of most people around here.
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Took care of you, great brain.
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Yes, yes.
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Took care of them.
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And all aunts and uncles and Pittsburgh.
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That’s great.
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Do you think that Marcelene is still a family oriented community?
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I like this golden anniversary.
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You know, everybody came back.
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Do you?
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Think that is still around.
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Yes, it’s a small town and people’s.
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Claim to each other will mostly continue to survive.
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I mean, if people continue to come back and you know, locate themselves here.
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You see, our our industry is very low.
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I haven’t got much.
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Business, you know, evolving is the biggest company.
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And then they have a couple of smaller ones, but see young.
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People, they’re looking for jobs.
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You know the small town.
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It’s hard for them to breathe.
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Do you think that will eventually make Marceline kind of die as a town, so to speak?
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It’ll it’ll still keep up, but if it’s not a flourishing.
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It won’t become Kansas City in the.
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Next 10 years.
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What is the one thing you like best about?
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Well, I like the friendliness of people like son to be had Saint Patrick’s dinner.
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And we went down.
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There and our cracked, you know, all those people.
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From Salisbury Green and all around those people that.
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That’s the part that I enjoy, to see people from way back.
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I thought of something.
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The diocese at Jefferson City is trying.
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To come up.
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With ways to make sure that the smaller parishes we.
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For example, don’t die out.
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Do you have an idea for like how to?
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Curtail the shortage of priests.
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I mean other than just.
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Getting more priests to or more people to come in.
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That’s what we need.
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We need sisters.
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We need priests.
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Do young people have to think of that?
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Do you think that if they would to you yourself, do you think it would be?
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For like deacons or.
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You know, kind of lay people to be married.
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Would that?
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You mean to take part in the parish activity?
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No, that’s what the Holy Father wants.
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The, the, the.
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Lay people to take part.
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OK.
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But still you have to have a priest for the sacraments.
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Do you think that priests have names to be?
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Able to marry.
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Is there a reason?
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Because we make vows of celibacy, it’s so discreet.
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And the poor Wonder Law married priests.
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Do you think that there would be more vocations?
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If you had that.
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If you really give yourself to God.
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You cannot be married because there you divide your love between God and you.
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That is it.
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Let’s see.
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Well, I talked.
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To people.
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To her men that go.
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To Saint Thomas.
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And the man in Hannibal.
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Yes, yes.
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And they grow up with the idea of being.
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Priests and folks.
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And then they say when it finally comes.
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Down to it.
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That like they want children or somebody to carry on their family name.
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That doesn’t that kind of contradict with, you know, God wanting Family Ness and.
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Well, let’s.
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Togetherness in a unit but.
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Not allowing people to marry better.
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In the church.
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That’s the regulation of the church.
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Jesus wasn’t Mary.
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When Jesus didn’t live that long either.
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He could have found somebody.
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There were nice.
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Jerusalem well, married with.
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Married to Saint Joseph but just the same.
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All that she had.
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Was the child that God gave her.
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Do you think?
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What do you think of them?
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Religious life.
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Not exactly.
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I think I strayed from the Lord too much.
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I think you would probably be angry with.
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Me as much as I.
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Do things of a very.
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You go to church?
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You practice your religion.
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Let’s give you.
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You just.
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Have boyfriends 1/2?
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The enjoyment.
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I don’t know.
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I would find it hard, I think.
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I mean, ain’t men are evil.
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Men are the source of evil in the world.
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They kind of mess things up for women.
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I’m a job oriented person.
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I want to.
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Be a lawyer.
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And I don’t think.
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That my outspokenness because I don’t believe in some.
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Of the things.
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Catholic Church teaches.
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I think some of their.
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Ideas and basis for religion are wrong.
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That I believe the majority of it, but I think to be in the religious life, you should.
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Believe all of it.
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And I.
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Don’t think that that.
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I don’t.
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Some of the things I see are.
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Unnecessary that they do.
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Do you have anything else you wanna say?
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You go to the sacraments.
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Received the 2nd.
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There’s one of them I have a problem with.
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Yes, I don’t understand.
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If when you pray.
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The Lord listens to.
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You am I correct?
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OK.
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If you pray to him for forgiveness of your sins, you know and truly repent.
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What is the?
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Difference between doing that and going to a priest?
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Who does the same thing?
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That’s what the church.
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Ask us to do to have swedishness to go to Greece.
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Well, I have trouble trusting priests though.
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I have enough trouble with people talking about me that I know priests aren’t supposed to.
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Tell your sins you.
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Know, but I think that like if you tell somebody that.
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Then maybe they will kind of get a different opinion than you.
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In their head.
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And I think.
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If you just talk to.
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Them talk to God himself.
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And get that forgiveness then.
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The priest is kind of the unnecessary part in that.
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I hope.
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Any mortal saying you have to go to confession?
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To a priest.
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Not to get execution.
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Well, I don’t.
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I don’t commit mortal things.
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I don’t think.
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I hope not.
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Because I’m in trouble if I do.
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I thoroughly believe in all the other statements because I made a confirmation program now.
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And I believe in it.
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Just not for me.
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I don’t know.
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I just don’t think I tell everything I have.
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But you don’t have to tell everything.
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It’s true.
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You have to tell.
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Serious and moral.
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Oh, is there anything else?
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Get off this subject here.
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You want to talk about something else.
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I don’t have anything else to say anything else.
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Because I ran out of questions on my sheet.
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Do you think?
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This nurses.
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Has improved since you’ve seen generations of nurses.
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It has improved as far as knowledge is concerned because the nurse has a lot more to study now than what we did.
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And the book knowledge they have to go very deep.
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OK.
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But that feeling?
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Towards the patient is.
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A bedside manner.
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Yeah, that that feeling towards the patients that they do.
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What you do to the least of them, you did it to me.
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That was always my philosophy.
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What I did to the human beings I was felt I did it for the moment.
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That personal.
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Feeling towards other people.
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Do you think that’s because like in your classes that you take the philosophy there?
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Is don’t get attached.
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To your patient.
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Now you don’t have to get attached to your patient, as long as you’re kind to them and good to them.
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Do what you feel that you wanted to have done to yourself.
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I used to tell my nurses when I was supervisor, I said due to the patients like it was your mom.
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Or your father.
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The way you would want to treat your parents.
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That’s the way you.
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Treat your patients.
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And sometimes I know patients were.
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Ugly and hard to take care of.
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But still you have to forgive, like you say in the our family, forgive us.
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I just had a question just left.
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The book learning you were talking.
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About that has increased.
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Do you think nurses?
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Now know.
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On the same level as doctors.
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Pretty close.
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Because they have to study.
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Much more deep than than what we had.
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Where’s the Patricia is studying to be a nurse?
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Is she?
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Yes, she’s gonna graduate now.
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You go for her and.
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She in the ninth.
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And then she’ll graduate.
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And and I’ve seen some of her books and they look just as detailed, if not more so, than doctors.
00:21:10 Speaker 1
I’m glad to hear that.
00:21:20 Speaker 2
Do you think it would just be?
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Easier since the nurses have all that trained.
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To just go ahead through medical school and be a doctor.
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You have the desire to do that.
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Because the responsibility for that is much greater.
00:21:40 Speaker 2
Even now, with nurses being or being responsible for prescribing drugs and.
00:21:49 Speaker 1
This is a lot to do that.
00:21:52 Speaker 2
Well, Trisha had that.
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A lot to describe.
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She had to learn.
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So many drugs and no good.
00:22:00 Speaker 2
Side effects when things so she could.
00:22:03 Speaker 2
Prescribe them in certain cases.
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As a.
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The floor nurse, which I’m not sure what that is, but.
00:22:12 Speaker 1
It was never allowed that the nurse prescribed, but then you always have to have doctor backing you up.
00:22:25 Speaker 2
What do you like?
00:22:26 Speaker 2
What do you like about working at the hospital rooms?
00:22:31 Speaker 1
The contact with the patient.
00:22:34 Speaker 2
Even now that there’s.
00:22:36 Speaker 1
Well, now I don’t have any contact.
00:22:40 Speaker 2
Other than just going in and visiting.
00:22:41 Speaker 1
I I’m done showing you when I go up with the other boys.
00:22:47 Speaker 2
What do you do?
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What is your job path?
00:22:51 Speaker 1
I do.
00:22:53 Speaker 1
See, there’s things that are torn in the laundry from those patients they bring to me and.
00:23:02 Speaker 1
I do.
00:23:06 Speaker 1
My alright, went, went to sleep.
00:23:09 Speaker 1
I put get to sleep.
00:23:11 Speaker 2
It’s dormant for a while until I need it later.
00:23:18 Speaker 1
Could you see?
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I could we have two nursing homes in Savannah?
00:23:24 Speaker 1
If I want to go in nursing, I could just go to swim.
00:23:30 Speaker 2
Schedule is part of the reason you don’t because it’s the marshaling community.
00:23:35 Speaker 2
People ask us to be here.
00:23:41 Speaker 3
Who else is here besides yourself?
00:23:42 Speaker 1
Just to freedance it just to me.
00:23:45 Speaker 3
And you’re the sister, she said.
00:23:54 Speaker 2
That’s all I have.
00:23:56 Speaker 2
My inquisitive nature is depleted.