let me make sure I'm picking me up. Mhm. I'm Mary Melcher, I'm
interviewing Dora Ocampo Casada in your home in Wickenburg, Arizona on May
seven,
Dora. I understand you're the second child of your parents. When were you
born, 1921? December four. Okay. And your parents names were Jose and
Francisco, Jose and Francisco, Jose
franco was his mother's name and Francisco Ocampo was her maiden name and
she came from a long time Arizona family Phil Campbell going back to the
mid sixties, 18 sixties, several generations. Uh 12.
Mhm. I would be 5th generation Wickenburg. Mhm. And he was a rancher. Your
grandfather? Um
All my grandfather's as far as I know we're ranchers except one who was um
a shoemaker in las Vegas new Mexico, but the ones that lived here in
Arizona were ranchers and cattle. And the great great grandfather,
Valencia was also entrepreneur
and mining, he was not a minor, but he would cite uh mining claims for
people your others, so he was quite knowledgeable in that area. And so
they would look for him to do this kind of work, right? But my grandfather
Compal was in farm farming and cattle, horses, freighting also. You did
some taster. Yeah, it seems like I've seen that name in relation to
parading uh because a lot of those early ones did free. Yeah, he had a he
had a brother here that came about to Wickenburg of Teodoro Campo. That
grandfather had a brother Manuel that came here Maybe 2025 years later, I
think it was about 1876,
something like that. And he came with the rest of the members of the
accomplice family. And he went, he did mostly mining That one brother. So
but grandfather Ocampo had a ranch in the Wickenburg area, right? Um He
sold it in 1908 when he became real. I don't know if you know all this. So
um uh he uh he had developed that piece of land and we don't really know
where the boundaries are. I mean the the the deeds are not that exact
descriptions, they're just sort of big my uh my I think my information
leads us to believe that that these were squatters in the mid 18 sixties.
And then at a certain point they got some kind of legal, whatever it was
needed. And so he was up here maybe, I guess the distance might be two
miles from the city limits at that time. And uh part of his ranch was on
the mesa. And then there was a drop off when the drop off was quite a
large, very fertile land With a lot of wonderful, wonderful uh stacked up
soil really, I guess years of it. And then in 1890s he developed that land
and into farming and cattle and horses. This was open range. So he used to
build up quite large herds, not in the thousands, but in the hundreds. And
then they would ship them off. And
uh huh
When he was well established about 1870, maybe four or something like that.
He made a trip specifically to bring his mother and brothers and sisters
back his father and then his back a to Sonora Mexico. He went to get them.
Uh he was established here, he had a house, he had plenty of uh you know
he could support them and all that. And so uh He made the trip back and
coming returning to Wickenburg in 1876.
Um there was a skirmish with hostile indians. There was an awful lot of
that activity went on and they tried to come in through humor from cab
orca. That's a town where he came from and his father was killed and one
brother was killed there and the rest of the family came on. There were
two young sisters and a brother and his mother and they lived out their
lives here and then they, you know they inter married with local people
and so Manuel's family is quiet. I mean his descendants really alone,
large, large group of people very large. I think they had about 10
Children that lived. That was another thing that would happen during those
years. Now my grandmother had I believe seven or 8 Children but three
survived to adulthood. What was your first name? She's married? I'm called
Mariana Rodriguez married uh tilde Ro Ocampo
And how many survived? three. Yeah. Mhm. And the others died when they
were very young, you know, early teens. And some of them one I think was
about seven or 8. And then a son survived until he was 20 I forget them 25
maybe. And by that time Wickenburg was a tv resort In the 1920s. And those
hills that you see out there were covered with tents, tv tents and the
townspeople were prohibited to go out there. But anyway there was a lot of
that present and I suppose it was easy to contract the disease if you you
know that weakness for and that's what happened to him. So he died I think
it was 1925. Mhm. And that was that was the reason that my father gave up
what he was doing in walnut grove with another ranching outfit and came to
manage the oil company cattle. Mhm. Back to Wickenburg. Right. And
so you were you born on that ranch then? No, no I was born here in town.
You were uh
My sister, Josephine was born at home and I was born at home. Uh And the
house of where I was born and still standing. It's not too far from the
bridge as you come into town. Uh Did your mother have a midwife for a
doctor? Doctor? She had doctor for all well drunk or sober. But they were
doctors, she had a doctor for all the deliveries at home. The same one. Dr
Copeland too. There was a lister that came before Copeland. Mhm. He
delivered me and my older sister. Uh huh and I'm not sure if she delivered
Alice or it was Copeland delivered Alice and my two brothers, the three
younger ones were delivered by Copeland. Do you know why she chose the
doctor? Did she ever talk about it? Because a lot of mexican, I don't
think she had shot lives? Oh I suppose, I don't know. Number one that
could afford it. No two. Uhh probably she had more faith and her hopes,
maybe that was more like hopes and the doctors did a good job well with
her. They did yeah, this same dr Copeland delivered one of my aunts, you
know, maybe two or four years later and he really botched it up because
she had a lot of complications and she ended up with a lot of a lot of
complications, fractured bones, she was paralyzed for several months, a
lot of injury. The mother, the mother, my my mother's sister and anyway uh
in the middle of the labor, she had to be taken to phoenix for delivery.
So she must have suffered an awful lot Years later, 60 years later we were
on a trip with her too. Um Las Vegas new Mexico where we had gone to meat
, other um kissing cousins, I mean lots of them. Oh they're wonderful
people. So uhh my aunt, you fell On the side of the road, we've gotten out
of the car, she fell and we had to take her to the emergency room because
she was like 80. And we didn't want to know if she'd hurt herself. So they
did some X rays and that's when her daughter's discovered or learned that
every bone in her pelvis had fractures healed. But they were there and had
to have been from those difficult deliveries that she went through. Like
more sips. I wonder if the doctor used forceps and broke some of her bones.
You might use a shovel. But they this was in the 31,
32 34 I think. So it wasn't a lack of knowledge, it was lack of knowledge
maybe for those doctors. And so a different doctor came here in 1935 Dr.
Coleman sold to a new doctor. Mhm. A younger man. And I don't know, I I
tend to be critical now, but I'm sure that at the time this latest doctor
had probably brought a lot of improvements, you know. Uh You have to learn
something with time, right? Yeah. They weren't all that well trained, I
mean, but sometimes the midwives did just as well, depending on how
complicated the birth was. The midwives could have real difficulty was
complicated. And the doctor is also so years later after my nursing
training in the and From say 49 to 54,
I was I worked in a newborn nursery wing in the hospital in Mesa. Arizona
. I was charged nurse on my shift and all that stuff. I became very
competent in um deliveries had to deliver a lot of myself because the
doctors were such mules had a long day of color anyway in in delivery and
timing the delivery. And then later on I was in charge of the newborn
nursery. And so it's very interconnected. The whole thing had a lot of
interesting experiences those three or four years there. Um That's where I
that was the place where I had my first buddy in with racist doctors and
having to with patients with me. They were, there are pleasant. But mm I
knew that I was more competent. I knew that but I was more competent than
a number of people that were promoted over me and because I was studying
at the time at issue. I uh I wanted to get a degree in nursing, bachelor
of Science in nursing, which they were offering that year. And I was in
the first group that went in and to this day. Um Well anyway that was, I
started in 49 I believe And finished in 51.
Okay, well we're getting ahead of ourselves. Let's see. So you were
telling me about your parents. All right. So you grew up along the the
river from what else playground. You played outside a lot. Oh yeah and she
told me school was very important in your family. It's major is the only
thing we're supposed to think about and we accepted that uh we one of the
reasons we accepted the whole thing is because our extended family and
family friends, there was a lot of association, people, association, you
know, no other distractions. No tv there were a lot of gathering
especially on Sundays and funerals and other events. But anyway my mother
would brag about us but you know that we didn't know that until we were
adults when people started telling us, well she used to say this about
your brother, said that it's been very interesting. But anyway we've got a
lot of support from all these people, adults and their their relatives or
their friends or some of the realities of some of their friends and so we
felt it made us feel important. Um And then as far as my parents were
concerned, they just um insisted that that was our job, you know, that's
that's what you're there for All of all of five kids.
I think he felt that way about school. I have one brother that was very
bright to I mean and other things anyway, he he felt that the schools
weren't good enough. Mhm. But uh it wasn't uh he didn't talk about it at
the time, he discussed this was his opinion that he shared with us after
20 years later he would criticize this and that and the other he had he
had a different insight. Uh What about you spoke spanish when you went to
school? Oh yes we were in the, in the house. We always spoke spanish
period. It was kids, you know um
when did you learn english at the same time that you were going to school
? I already knew english. So you learn, I knew Alice knew english when we
started school. I don't know when when I learned english I just knew it.
But your parents really didn't want you to speak it at home. So you were
picking it up with your friends, We were picking it up everywhere. Yeah,
sure it was kids you played with I guess. And then uh my older sister was
one year ahead of me in school and she didn't know, she'll tell you about
that but she didn't know english. Right? So maybe it was so I think that I
think that I learned probably a lot from her and I mean it was just fair,
you know, I don't know how gradually picked it up when you were before
school. It sounds like, oh yeah, when I entered school I knew english. But
it's interesting that you knew it that well since your parents wanted you
to speak spanish only at home well. But if you're exposed to seven
languages, you're going to learn them. I had a niece that spoke four
languages when she started school, wow and it was deliberate. It was the
family of the parents and wanted her to the father was italian. the mother
was mexican and she spoke french and german, she was so precocious with it
that they televised her, they made a show out of the public, she was I
mean she but I think it was the concentration.
I uh I don't know, I'm not an authority on how people learn languages but
I have a feeling that everybody learns languages if conditions are right
and they learn every language as a child, especially every language that's
out there.
Um a lot of people that we grew up with our age, you know, like in the,
When my father was in the 70s were dropped by the house and these were
people that at home spoke French here in Wickenburg spoke french and
spanish, they would go into the house our house and that's what they would
speak to my dad in spanish in english of course they spoke english. But
what I'm saying is that kids mm some kids anyway can do and I think all of
them can if the attitude is is right. But when you like my sister was
punished here in school for not speaking english. Uh so she has a
different attack on it. She has a different interesting tack. I mean it
affected it affected her to this day, it would mhm Yeah and also it
resulted in some kids taking a couple years in first grade. I mean if if
they had a difficulty learning english and they weren't taught at all in
spanish, they would be they could be held back. It's not necessary. I have
bad feelings about them. I really do. I know what you're saying, that's
what happened. Uh It happened. Yeah. I interviewed somebody who has been a
couple years in first grade. They put my sister in the dummy class the
first day she entered school. I don't want to steal her thunder. But it's
such a sad story. She's probably the brightest of the whole bunch and she
was the first, so she was the Pathfinder, right?
And they put her in a role of dummies and she was there for a week because
she didn't know english. And at the end of the week they moved her into
the smart kids. Now in one week, at the end of her school year, we have a
certificate. The shows that she achieve the highest point average of any
kid in Wickenburg schools, Grammar and high school. Mhm. You know, it's
great. So it had it had to do with a lot of things while she was
successful. But the treatment she got, she's never forgotten that she
never forgotten how she felt because she knew she was in a dummy role. Now
, why do people do that? Why do teachers do that? Why do schools do at the
time, by the way, the law was that in Arizona uh segregated schools. The
reason why there's a lot of reasons why they didn't have segregated
schools here. Number one, a Mexican man gave the property for the school,
the first school. And my grandfather valencia was a board of trustees in
the vaulter school. The first school hired the first schoolteacher in
vulture. You know, they were into it into the education thing. Presents. I
think so and so maybe that's why we didn't have to schools in Wickenburg
because up to the time that Mr Garcia donated that land, they had
schooling In this house and that house and the other house. And it was
public school numbers, whatever it is, it was an organized legal school,
but they didn't allow the Mexican kids to go to those schools. They were
in somebody's house, mostly they were secretary that way. And that would
have been, say before 18, 19, maybe my mother, when she started first
grade, walked from the ranch to school, her mother would walk her and that
went on for a few weeks or maybe a few months. And then my grandfather
built a house in town, a frame building.
And during the school year then they lived in that house in town. And so
she didn't have to walk anymore. But they got her here. That's my point.
My father, during the floods would get us to school. Uh we were, we just
could not miss school. That's great. And even, I guess uh, when you
accidentally did miss school because of circumstances, um, you still felt
like you've done all you could to get there and that, that was the spirit
that we grew up? Mhm. Come here and you went to church. Yes, I mean you
didn't dare not too, no matter how you felt, you didn't dare feel not.
Yeah, we had Uh huh. My grandmother was one of those that had church at
home before they built a church here in 193 And even then after after they
built the church, they didn't have a designated priest living here until I
think the 1940s they were circuit priests. Uh huh.
Um
My grandmother's Ocampos
next to the last child was the first one baptized in that new catholic
church, all the others were taken by buggy to phoenix to saint mary's and
that's where they were all baptized, she didn't wait for the circuit
priests to come around. They were very deeply religious people, she and
her mother and her grandmother, you know all that that group of people in
New Mexico, they still it's just great to listen to them talk about their
memories. Mhm. Not extended big extended family that may have, it's real
nice.
So you graduated from high school in 30
Jeez 38 or 39 I guess 39 If you're born in 19 I was the one, weren't you?
Uh it would have been about 1939, I was 17,
okay. What did you want to do then? Well I had not taken chemistry and I
wanted to go to nursing school, but I was a gad fly in high school. I I
had to be in everything. I had to do everything. I was one of the least
scholarly of my mother's and father's kids but I had a lot of fun with
extra curricular stuff and I was always in all this, had a lot of dramatic
clubs and a lot of sports and and it was such a tiny school that if you
were interested in that you, they needed you. And I don't think that's
very often a kid was ostracized. You know, not chosen to be on this or not
chosen. I have pictures of all school plays for instance apparatus and I
have lied part singing. There are four of us took a lead part, two boys
and two girls this high school and the entire student body is photographed
there. That was in this Operetta and I don't remember this by nine but
maybe I was junior or senior. So anyway, I needed chemistry and so I
talked to the, after I graduated, I was babysitting somebody's kids over
here while I was not going to stay in this town and and be a domesticated
,
serving to anybody. So I talked to this biology teacher and I said, look,
I want to go to nursing school, but I need chemistry. Okay, come on such
and such days, such and such hour and we'll give you a chemistry Take U-
one semester. That's the way I got my chemistry after high school uh
accommodated
and and so then um I started nursing school in Phoenix in 191,940.
Mm So it is, you know, ST joseph's hospital school of nursing, They had
two schools of nursing, one at ST joseph's hospital and one at good
samaritan. And
one time when I got in trouble with the nuns, they ran their ST Josephs
school, I was in a lot of trouble with and they want to know why I was
even there and I said, well because ST joseph's has the best reputation
for turning out good nurses, good samaritan does not, did they like that?
I didn't like any of that stuff. But um and so then they made me recite a
certain a certain sermon that had been delivered that morning. They were
checking up on me. You know, they really monitored your behavior and you
had certain religious events, you had to be present or else because you
were a rotten example and you know, all that. And so what I would play
games with them, see this is me, I play games with them and I'd hide
behind maybe a pillar or would sit behind a pillar. So they think I wasn't
there because I knew that up there in the bell friend. They were they were
checking up on his attendance 5:00 AM. So then she says, well recite the
sermon, tell me what's inside. I told her almost her band. She says if I
could, I would transfer you to good samaritan today. Okay.
Yeah. So and when you did this training did they also they had you work in
the hospital, right? Oh yes. We got paid $5 a month and almost every bit
of that went for missing bedpans or broken thermometers or something else
, equipment that you would check out for patients that you had no control
over. You know, somebody else had to return it. Right. And so we were
charged with them. That's what the $5 was for really. It wasn't a salary.
Although they called it this is your spending money. They were very, very
strict. There's nothing like today. I mean, I don't think there's a place
alive. This like uh they change, you have to do like um washing things
down to remember talking. Yeah, the beds and the bed past all that stuff.
We have to wash everything because it wasn't plastic. It had to be one.
Everything is metal and glass. Uh So you were doing a lot of that kind of
manual labor while you were getting your training. Yes. But we didn't do
it really until maybe nine months. And then the younger kids would take
over that stuff and the beds all that had to be scrubbed down. It was very
good. It was a very good school. Um, I learned, I learned a lot my first
job after I got out of there. Um they were very strict but then kids think
this of no matter what right. I got my first job here um in the doctors
office dr Breyer and I had the letter from his office nurse asking me to
come and take her job. She wanted out and he wanted me to come and all
that stuff. Well so I did and They paid me, I think it was $128,
a month, which was rich The nurses in the hospital here we're getting 60,
about 60, The teachers were getting about 55 and it was very low key. So
there was when I came here there was a lot of bad feeling among the nurses
that were hospital people And me the upstart Torp I was 21 uh
but I stayed a few months and then I went to Alamogordo New Mexico and
took a job there in a civilian clinic connected to the Air Force and you
know, they were working on mysterious things, airplanes and whatever. But
I worked with the civilian workers. And then while I was there I applied,
I sent in my application or to join the service, the army nurse carr. And
I think it was following March, I graduated in september In the following
March, I enlisted and I got my commission. So that would have been like 41
,
I graduated 43, so it would have been The spring of 44, but I went in,
stayed a couple of years. Everything was over 2.5. Where did you, where I
spent my whole time in san Antonio texas. It was a, we called it a
receiving hospital. They would bring regional hospital. They would bring
injured people there that would come from the West Coast. And these are
peoplethat