Capt Carolyn Chapin Blackwood, USPHS Ret. Oral History Tape 1, Side A - Edited

title:

Capt Carolyn Chapin Blackwood, USPHS Ret. Oral History Tape 1, Side A - Edited

creator:

Blackwood, Carolyn (Chapin) (1930 April - )

subject:

US Public Health Service (USPHS)

description:

Tape 1 of 2, side 1 of 2. This is the edited audio. Carolyn Blackwood (formerly Chapin) was born in April 1930 in New Haven, Connecticut, where she was raised with one older sister. Her father was a supervisor at a Winchester Repeating Arms factory, her mother worked at the Office of Price Administration ensuring rationing rules were being followed during the war, and her sister was a nurse for the Hartford Circus Fire. After graduating high school, Blackwood attended a local girls’ college for two years before transferring to the University of Connecticut for her final two years. She was required to complete an internship, which is when she joined the Public Health Service (PHS) in July of 1951. She was sworn in as an ensign with a one-year commitment. PHS was the medical corps for the merchant marine, predating the Navy Medical Corps, and most of their patients were merchant seamen and immigrants at Ellis Island hospital. After her year at Staten Island, Blackwood was transferred to Detroit to a hospital that had about 100 patients. From there, she went back to Staten Island then to Fort Worth, Texas where she worked at a minimum-security prison hospital for drugs and mental health. When she was 26, she was then sent to a similar hospital in Lexington, Kentucky. At the time, there was no orientation for women or formal structures on how to stay safe while working in prison hospitals. She left her commission when she got married in 1956 and stayed out until 1975, returning as a single parent. The rest of her career was spent at the National Institutes of Health. Had she been told how to stay in the reserves in that gap, she would have done that rather than being entirely terminated. She got her master’s degree in public health from the University of California: Berkeley then worked in the San Francisco Health Department in an infant and maternity unit. She retired from PHS at age 64 with the rank of Captain. No transcript of this interview is currently available.

publisher:

Military Women's Memorial Foundation

contributor:

Bellafaire, Judy | Binker, Mary Jo

date:

2000-08-09

type:

Audio

format:

Cassette

identifier:

083.01; 2000.083

source:

CLIR - Recordings at Risk

language:

English

relation:

095837

coverage:

Korean War (1950-1953) | 1951-56

rights:

Unrestricted