About Alla Pearl Frost

by Sharon Reed Gray

My parents got married on a dare. My mother had traveled to Morenci, Arizona with her roommate, June Reed, from nurses training at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix. She had known June’s brother, R.S. “Dick.” Reed, for over a year when June and Dick talked her into coming to Morenci to visit.

On the evening of July 7th, 1943, Dick, Red, Dick's sister; Nell Brownell and a buddy; Nolas Byrd went for a joy ride near the Arizona-New Mexico Border. They had been drinking and in the early hours of July 8th, they were pulled over by a policeman, most likely for speeding. They claimed they were trying to get to Lordsburg to get married. The averted speeding ticket resulted in a police escort to the home of Rachel Atkinson, Deputy Clerk of Hidalgo County. The poor clerk was awakened in the wee hours of the morning by the scared looking young couple at her front door. The license is officially recorded as having been issued at 5:50 a.m.

The hung-over foursome then waited outside the county courthouse til it opened. At 9:15 a.m. it is recorded that Robert S. Reed and Alla Pearl Frost were married by Justice of the Peace, C. W. Marsalis, with Nellie Brownell and Nolas Byrd serving as witnesses.

Information from the Marriage License and Marriage Certificate reveal the following:

::: Robert S. Reed, age 25 of Clifton, Arizona married Alla Pearl Frost, age 20 also of Clifton ::: (not true, she was from Snowflake, attending nurses training in Phoenix).

Keeping the secret

Now that they were married, what were they going to do? Red could not be married and be in nurses training. They had no real plans to set up housekeeping; Dick was working in Morenci, Arizona with Phelps Dodge Corporation in the copper industry but had intentions to join the service, either the Army or the Navy. It was wartime and most every able person of age was joining the military.

Alla Pearl, “Red”, went back to Phoenix with her new sister-in-law, June Reed, to continue nurses training with a great big secret. She would not be allowed to continue in nurses training at St. Joseph’s Hospital if it were known she was married.

In the fall of that year the senior class of nurses-in-training had a falling out with the administration of St. Joseph’s Hospital. They resigned as a class and moved to Fresno, California to finish school at Fresno General Hospital. Apparently it was against the rules at both hospitals for a nurse-in-training to be married so it had to remain a secret for at least another year.

World War II- Arizona. Responding to national recruiting- Uncle Sam Needs You, My Dad joined the Navy. My mother was in nurses training waiting for letters from my Dad. After she graduated from Fresno General Hospital as an R.N., she worked for a while in McNary, Arizona for Drs. Herbst and Dysterheft at the McNary Hospital. She joined the war effort as a lieutenant in the Army nursing core, and yes she had her share of training in combat boots.

My mother wore combat boots!

Combat Boots and Nurses Cap were an appropriate symbol for my mother’s life. The combat boots refer more to her life and attitude that to the actual boots she wore in boot camp. The nurse’s cap can also refer to her mothering as well as her professional life as a registered nurse, but it does define so much about her.

In my memory she was always a nurse and she was associated with the Morenci Hospital. Every week-day and many holidays my mother worked at the Hospital. She wielded a great deal of authority and even a measure of power that create fear in patients because she was the head of the dispensary and most likely the person to administer shots in the arm or the derriere to all patrons of the hospital. In a copper mining town where everyone works for “the company” and the hospital is a company hospital, a sense of authority seemed to be attached to the caretakers of the health of the community.

The company, Phelps Dodge Corporation, controlled everything. We lived in a company house, all 1200 square feet of it. Everyone else lived in a company house too.

Most were the same size as ours, only a handful of “company big shots” had larger houses. We thought it was fine since there was no other choice and the rent was only twenty-six dollars a month. The company had carpenters, plumbers and painters that took care of the maintenance needs of the houses. Whether you wanted it or not, house interiors and garage exteriors were painted every five years. Company homes were situated in neighborhoods like Plantsite, Stargo and Tent City.

We shopped at the company store, the Phelps Dodge Mercantile. The convenient thing was, it could all be on an account, so you just got a statement at the end of the month. The account could just be subtracted from your paycheck. If it happened to be a strike year, purchases could still be charged, but when the strike was over all the paycheck went to compensate the debt until it was totally settled. It gives meaning to Tennessee Ernie Ford’s mournful refrain, “I owe my soul to the company store.”

I remember my mother’s starched white nurses cap, it was worn almost like a crown, a symbol of authority and professionalism. Less authoritarian and more arbitrary were the white “nurses” shoes, thought to be unattractive but sturdy and a must for the uniformed nurse. Her dress was knee length and tight and had to be fitted with the clip-in mother of pearl buttons with the medical symbol that matched her cuff links. There were at least 15 of those buttons that went from collar to hem. She had to wear white nylons and wrestle with a girdle and garter connections. In this tight fitting outfit she changed sheets and bedpans and dealt with all the needs of the patients. She working extremely hard. In the 1940s and 1950s, R.Ns were required to do more of the tasks that are now assigned to nurse’s aides or “patient care technicians”.

As a little girl I used to sit on her bed and watch her go through the process of girding up for a gruelling day of work at the hospital in a uniform that by today’s standards seems torturous. She did complain about it sometimes. I think the words she used were “these damn buttons” and” this damn uniform” as she dealt with them daily.

The uniform looked formal and awesome on my mother. I remember her auburn red hair contrasting with the whiteness of everything else. Everyone in Morenci who knew her well called her “Red.” and the name suited her well. She was well read, she “saw red” often and she had a “red hot” personality. Red was much more descriptive than her legal name which was Alla Pearl Frost Reed. In fact she had been named Allen Pearl at birth, but as a young adult had it legally changed to Alla Pearl, which seemed more feminine.