Tag / Green Bay Press-Gazette

by annegallagher

The Press-Gazette Publishes its Maggie Follow-Up Story

 

St. Vincent Hospital Green Bay

“There was a great deal of interest in the story I published on Maggie,” Green Bay Press-Gazette reporter Dian Page told me after her initial column on my search for the nurse named Maggie, which was published last month.  “I’d like to do a follow-up story.  Could you pass along some information on what you found?”

It took me about a week to return calls and emails from the many people who responded.  It took an equal amount of time to process the thoughts and feelings it brought to me.  It was incredibly touching that so many people were interested in my story and my search.

Today Dian published her follow-up story, Pediatrics Nurse Remembered Fondly By Many.

Have you ever searched for someone from your past?  I’d like to hear about it.

In my Anne on Fire research, finding this much information on a “Maggie” — someone remembered but long-lost from contact — is unique.  Talking to friends, relatives, siblings, doctors and others associated with my burn experience, their memories have varied widely.   Just because the memories are vivid for me doesn’t mean they leave memorable impressions on others.  One person’s crisis is not necessarily another’s.  One person’s joy may be their own.  It’s remarkable to have the perfect shared experience as I found in my search for Maggie.

For example, when I called the doctor listed as my pediatrician, he was receptive to my call.  He had known my parents for many years and I had gone to high school with his son.  As much as he remembered our family, he had to scratch his head about me.  He certainly remember me but not the story of the burn even though it was 99% certain that he was there during the initial stages.  When I talked to my father-in-law (a retired surgeon) about his, he reminded me about the volume of work and the many sleepless night he spent doing surgery after surgery.  Of course, he remembered many of his patients and their specific stories but helped me understand how impossible it would be to remember every detail as a patient would.

All of this is what makes the Maggie story so remarkable.  From everyone I talked to and everything I learned, I know Maggie always remembered me.  As a nurse’s aid, I was told, Maggie would have had the time to spend with her little patients — unlike the duties calling the regular nurses and doctors.   And that is what people remembered about Maggie:  The time she gave to those she loved.

It’s something to know and remember about life.  The time we spend with others is the most lasting gift of all.

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by annegallagher

Finding Maggie and So Much More

Maggie Ready for Work

When I called Dian Page at the Green Bay Press Gazette a couple of weeks ago, my hope was to connect the memories in my mind.  For so many years, I have had pictures of my little self at the time of my burn accident but I’ve never been sure if these are real or “created” memories.  It can be-devil anyone to wonder about these things — did this really happen to me or have I made it up?  In my case, I need only look at the scars on my leg to know it did indeed happen.  But how and why do I remember (or think I remember) certain pieces of the experience.

That was my motivation for searching for Maggie, the Nurse.  I had no idea what I would find.  I was ready for anything.

Except perhaps for the fact that I found Maggie and a great deal more.

I didn’t set out to find someone’s Nana, someone’s mother, someone’s son, someone’s sister, someone’s friend.  And yet all these people found me and there was a quite a story to tell.

Maggie Glaser Conard was a pediatrics nurse at St. Vincent Hospital in Green Bay for some 30 years until her retirement in 1987.  She did not recover from the massive stroke she suffered in 1988 and died at just 60.  “I just wanted to let tell you that your vivid description of her (Maggie) brought her back to life for me.  She was exactly as you described in everyday life; not just in work.  She was crazy about her grandchildren and she made each and every one of us feel the way you felt.  I thank you for this.  You have made my night, my week, my year,” Maggie’s granddaughter Jessi Guenther wrote me from Seattle, Washington.  Something amazing was happening.

Maggie Conard Memory CardIt continued when I spoke to Maggie’s sister, Shirley Warpinski, a retired nurse who still lives in Green Bay.  “Maggie had a gift.  Everybody loved her.  She was happy-go-lucky and always optimistic.  She was just the sweetest person,” Shirley said, telling me that Maggie was valedictorian of her high school in Luxemburg.  “Whenever she had free time at the hospital, she would go playroom and be with the children.  And oh, did she love to read.  She read to the children all time.”

There is was.  During my three-month hospitalization, I learned to read and at 3 years old, became something of a freaky genius for that day and age.  It came back to me now that Maggie had been the one by my bedside, reading to me, teaching me the letters, encouraging me on during those long days when I was confined to a crib, secured with netting so I couldn’t get out and harm my recovery.  Whether it was 15 surgeries or 20, I knew my treatment was painful and grueling.

“Yes, I remember those nets.  We had to cover the cribs for safety reasons,” shared retired Green Bay nurse Carol Mangin, who worked with Maggie for a “long, long time” at St. Vincent’s.  We talked about my third-degree burns.  “Burns are so painful.  You were lucky yours were third-degree because the nerve endings died and it would not have been as painful as first- or second-degree burns.”

“My mother cared for people for the better part of her working life,” her son Ted Conard told me.  “Caring was in our gene pool I guess since I went into that field and others in our family did too.”  After 35 years of working at Green Bay’s Curative Workshop, Ted recently retired and still lives in Green Bay.  After my discharge from St. Vincent’s, I attended therapy at the Curative Workshop for many long months, regaining flexibility in both my legs after months of inactivity and re-learning how to walk.  “You probably worked with Gloria, a therapist there,” Ted said.  “She was there forever.”

Suddenly, my memories were expanding, connecting.  They were real.

“My mom Maggie had crazy love for children.  She would come home and talk about her patients especially the ones she became close to and I’m sure she talked about you.  She would have grown really attached and her heart would have been breaking for what you were going through,” Maggie’s daughter Julie said.  “She would have thought of you like you were one of her children.”

“Maggie would be so pleased to know that you are pursuing this,” retired Green Bay nurse Mary Thomas explained when I spoke with her.  “As nurses, you touch people’s lives and then they go their own ways.  To know that you remembered, that she touched you and it meant something to you, well, that means something to all of us.”

My sister Susie, a nurse herself and professor of nursing at UWGB elaborated on that thought.  “Nurses do so many things but the human caring is what makes the difference.  This nurse cared for you, she transformed a difficult experience for a child.  In her caring for you, you were no longer alone in that room.”

Once again, what I set out to find wasn’t at all what was there.  Instead I found something deeper and richer.  Yes, I found Maggie and the memories the beautiful memories she gave me.  But now I understand the life she brought to so many people — her patients, her colleagues and friends, and her family.

Her granddaughter Jessi told me about her brother’s reaction to this unfolding story and she included it on her blog as well:

“The first thing that came to mind…is how loved ones have a way of letting us know that they’re still there, they never left to begin with.  What an awesome gift”  ~Nathan Kofler

There’s also a comment from “Carrie” following Jessi’s blog post that makes a great deal of sense to me:

“…..We have named those, God-incidences because its too perfect just to be a coincidence…..” – Carrie

These “God-incidences”/coincidences have brought me this far and at every turn of this journey I’ve found something immensely beautiful.  For anyone who has gone through a fire of any kind, be it physical or psychological, we know we would never want to go through it again.  And still there are great lessons and great love to be found.  “It meant the world to me and my family to know that Maggie was loved by so many people,” her daughter Julie told me.  “What a legacy she has left.”

A legacy indeed.

Thank you Maggie Conard.  You have left behind an incredible legacy of healing and helping for so many of us.  I am grateful to be a part of it.

by annegallagher

Drumroll Please……It’s Published

Jumping off a cliff

True to her word, reporter Dian Page published an Article in the Green Bay Press-Gazette today that has my palms sweating. “Daughters Take the Literary World by Storm,” reads the headline.

It’s a cliffhanger.

Will anyone read it?  Will anyone have information?  Will the daughters really take the literary world by storm?

Stay tuned.

by annegallagher

“It’ll Run on Tuesday.”

Coffee as Fortification

One of the great ideas I received after writing about my search to find Maggie— the nurse who cared for me when I was in the hospital after burning my leg — was to contact the local newspaper and have them link to the blog posts.  Honestly, I hadn’t thought of that. instead I was working on the copy for a call-out in the personal ads.  But the more I thought about it, the smarter it seemed.  Armed with a cup of coffee for both caffeine and courage, I called a long-time columnist at the Green Bay Press-Gazette and spilled out the story of my search.

“Now, that’s kind of interesting,” reporter Dian Page said.  “Tell me about your ties to Green Bay.”  My ties of course are many, including having a brother and a sister who still work and live in the area.  “Well, send me an email summarizing what we talked about and I’ll see what I can do.”  Quickly, I pounded out the story summary on my keyboard, hit the send button and that was that.

Only if you have ever pitched the press, you can never be sure what happens next other than the fact that you usually wait.  Your story, your idea, your pitch if you will is no longer so much yours as someone else’s.  The media had just become the filter between me and my target audience — anyone who might have information about Maggie-the-Nurse or my story for that matter.

Days passed and I sort of forgot I had even done this.

When the phone rang yesterday with an unknown 414 exchange, I let it go to voice mail.  Probably another one of those “you’ve won a vacation!” scams or something.  But when I listened to the voice mail, it was Dian from the Green Bay Press-Gazette, calling to fact-check a few things about the story.  “It’ll run on Tuesday,” she said.  “Good luck.  I hope it helps and you find some information.”

It’ll run on Tuesday, January 31st.  I don’t know what exactly is going to ‘run’ — what piece or part of the story — but I do know there’s power in the press and that everyone and their brother reads the local paper.  Now this, is going to get interesting.

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by annegallagher

Research: The Last Leg(s) of the Process

When I started my book project, the concept of research seemed counter-intuitive to me.  Why would I have to research my own story?  Didn’t I know my own story well enough to write it?

In short order, my pesky assumption unraveled.   Even though I know my own perspective, I wanted to interview relatives, find medical records, seek out old letters and documents and as the proverbial “last leg” of the research, investigate newspapers from back in the day to see if any empirical evidence of my accident on the stove existed.  That is, was there even a fire call listed in the paper that day? 

The need to fill in the lines brought me to micro film and an intra-library loan (https://annegallagher8.wordpress.com/2011/07/03/intra-library-loan-time/).  When I arrived at the Harold Washington Library and headed up to the intra-library loan department, I received eight small cardboard boxes, each held tight with a rubber band and each containing a month of the Green Bay Press-Gazette from 1964.  Microfilm readers are cumbersome boxes reminiscent of ancient technology.  For many years however they were the best way to preserve newspapers, rare books and other culturally irreplaceable material.

I hadn’t used a microfilm reader since high school and asked for help from the reading room librarian.  Pulling the roll of film out of the box, she showed me how to load it on to the reader like you would an old reel-to-reel movie on a projector.  Once the film loaded, she showed me the various controls to move from page to page and to size the film on the screen. 

As I hand-scrolled through the newspapers, I got lost in the details of the day.  High taxes were an issue.  St. Joseph Academy and Premontre were hosting a joint Catholic college night.  November weather was partly cloudy with a low near 28 and a high projected at 50 degrees.  The Green Bay Packers were playing the Dallas Cowboys on an upcoming Sunday (they won 45-21) and the comic pages contained Marmaduke, Ponytail, Kerry Drake, Beetle Bailey and Blondie.  President Kennedy had died the year before.  Johnson was President.

There was not a single fire call or news item that mentioned me or my accident.  I put the last roll of microfilm back its box and returned it to the desk. 

By now, I’d interviewed a number of relatives, received as many medical records as probably existed, found old letters and my baby book with my mother’s hand-inscribed account of the accident (https://annegallagher8.wordpress.com/2010/11/24/happy-burn-iversary/). That seemed enough to complete my research even if there was no record in the local newspaper.  Or was there? 

Since the stories said that I was variously 2 or 3 when the accident happened, maybe I searched the wrong year for the newspaper. 

I returned to the reference desk and ordered the Green Bay Press-Gazette on micro film for 1965 and 1966.  If this is the last leg of my research phase, I’ll need to be thorough.

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by annegallagher

Intra-Library Loan Time

9th level of the Harold Washington Library (Ch...

Image via Wikipedia

Most of my research for Anne on Fire is now complete.  I’ve spoken with willing relatives and friends who knew details from my burn accident years ago or who knew my parents at the time.  I’ve requested as many medical records as possible, learning that there are some that simply are gone.  I’ve contacted doctors who worked on my case.  All in all, it’s been a fabulous and enlightening process where I’ve tried to cover the proverbial waterfront of information for clues and insight.  I was going over my findings with my friend Gloria when she said, “Gallagher, have you looked in the newspapers from that time to see if anything was published?  You know, a fire call, a news item.”

I hadn’t.  It was a great idea and prompted my call to the Brown County library (pictured here as is the interior of the Harold Washington Library), where of course they have old editions of the Green Bay Press-Gazette.  In our techno-driven age, most newspapers before the mid-1990s are not searchable online but preserved on micro-film.  Another call to the Harold Washington Library to request an intra-library loan…..and a stash of micro-film is on its way to Chicago.

My gut tells me there will be nothing useful for me in these newspapers.  At the same time, I can’t wait to wade through them on the micro-film machine.  You never know what you might find unless you look.  The process also brings about a sweet sense of closure to my search for information.  It motivates me to get back to the business of writing up the story. 

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