January 14, 1944 Dinner at the Sullivan's, Registering for School, Volunteering and Painting

Dear Mother & Daddy,

"I just came home from a lecture by one of the music professors which was very interesting.  Mrs. Brubacher (wife of one of B's teachers) asked me and I went with three other Dames.  I've been on the go all week it seems.  Sully and his girl came early Saturday morning and we went to a play Saturday night.  Then we took them back to Norwich Sunday morning and had dinner at Sullivan's.  She is a good cook and we had a nice roast pork dinner.  They are lovely people.  I wish you could know them.

Monday afternoon I went to the Teachers College to see about starting to school.  I'm going to register this coming Monday and school begins the next Monday.  The way I understand it, I'm going to do Junior work this term, next summer I'll go back and do Sophomore work, next fall I'd do the rest of my Junior work and finish my Senior work the next spring and summer.  It means I would graduate the summer of 1945. They are giving me a half years work.  It sounds too good to be true but I'll know definitely on Monday.

I've been real busy every day.  The last two days I've been painting.  My kitchen looks so nice and clean I'm afraid I'll have to paint the other woodwork.  Ha!  The bathroom is next in line, but it is small and won't take long.  I had to go over the kitchen twice--walls, ceiling and woodwork.  It was quite a job, but so much fun.

The Dames met Wednesday.  We did some hospital work--threaded needles.  They are used to sew up people and have to be threaded with black silk thread and then stitched through a strip of gauze so they can be sterilized.  The hospital uses 600 a day and they just beg for volunteers to help thread them or roll bandages or just most anything.

The Springfield couple that was here was an army man and wife.  She worked with me at the studio until Christmas.  They both went home for New Years.  He had to come back here, but she is staying with her mother because she is expecting a baby and they couldn't live here on his army pay.

Thanks for the points.  We're going shopping tonight and stock up."

           Worlds of love,

                 B & Bonnie

Grace-New Haven Community Hospital and Hospital of Saint Raphael, 1940-1950

Volunteers, a Vital Part of New Haven Hospital
The tradition of volunteering at Yale-New Haven Hospital dates back to the opening of the Hospital in 1833 when the Board of Lady Visitors was formed as the Hospital’s first volunteers. One hundred years later in 1933, the Volunteer Department began as one of the first organized programs in the country. In 1942, the Hospital hired its first full-time paid director of volunteers, Bettina Jones who, in her twenty year tenure, was responsible for numerous innovative programs including the Men’s Volunteers Corps and the Junior Volunteer Program for high school students. Today, Volunteer Services has approximately 1200 volunteers who can choose from nearly 100 positions, ranging from direct patient contact to behind the scene work.
The critical role played by volunteers at the Hospital throughout its history was no more evident than it was during World War II. The Men’s Volunteer Corps, the first organization of its kind in the country, helped to supplement the Hospital’s manpower shortage. At the height of the war, there were as many as 2,000 men and women volunteers.
(Source: Yale-New Haven Hospital Archives)