Arnold's Story: July 20, 1950 LJN

Dolly takes a turn for the worse and dies. Leonard sends Arnold a telegram with the sad news and then a letter with the details.

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Arnold's Story: July 19-29, 1950

Laura Hall writes Arnold in Newfoundland.

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Arnold's Story: July 18, 1950

Hazel mistakes the date here: Tuesday was July 18, 1950. For reasons to become clear in a couple of posts, the letter could not have been written on the 20th.

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Arnold's Story: July 17, 1950

Dolly's health appears to improve and they are optimistic for a recovery.

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Arnold's Story: July 16, 1950

Hazel writes with an update to Dolly's health and treatment.

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Arnold's Story: July 13, 1950

Two letters from Leonard on the same day:

Dolly's health has taken a turn for the worse, but then she rebounds a bit and may recover. It appears to be nephritis, not gastroenteritis as first diagnosed.

next post  July 16, 1950

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Arnold's Story: July 10, 1950

Hazel writes after Arnold's month-long visit and the family trip north to San Jose, San Francisco and McCloud.

Green Valley Lake is northeast from San Bernardino.

My memory is not clear about the fish pond at their home, but I recollect it being large — some fifteen feet in diameter and a foot or probably two feet deep. It no longer exists as Bill ripped it out to divide the double lot into two lots and build a house on the second lot to sell.

 

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Arnold's Story: July 1950 Newfoundland

Arnold arrived in Twillingate, Newfoundland, Canada, at the beginning of July 1950. Twillingate is off the northeastern shore of the island. 

Here are some of his postcards. They all had unfranked Newfoundland stamps on the back but I only scanned the one back side. Newfoundland was a separate Dominion from Canada in the British Commonwealth until 1949, when it joined the Dominion of Canada. They issued their own stamps through 1949. This two-cent stamp of King George VI may have been issued as early as 1938.

Arnold related an incident from a home visit where his colleague Clem Hiebert delivered a baby in Newfoundland. The family requested some grace. Somewhat surprised, he happily said a prayer for the baby. The family thanked him for the prayer, but again requested grace. Finally he came to understand they were saying grease, but it sounded like grace to him; he offered some ointment for the new-born baby. In Clem's book Seldom Come By: A Surgeon's Stories, 2003, that delivery was actually of twins.

Notre Dame Bay Memorial Hospital and Nurses' Home, Twillingate, Newfoundland (postcard)

This two-cent stamp with King George VI was issued in or after 1938 by the Dominion of Newfoundland
 and certainly before it entered into confederation with Canada in 1949 when NFL stopped issuing stamps.

Decades later Clem Hiebert wrote of his residency experiences in Newfoundland, when he, Jerry Foster and Arnold interned at Notre Dame Bay Memorial Hospital in Twillingate under Dr. John Olds for two–three months.

"Seldom Come By: The Worthwhileness of a Career in Surgery,"  Archives of Surgury, 1989, vol. 124, issue 5, pages 530–534

Here is a photo of Clem Hiebert, Arnold and Jerry Foster from an article on the the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) site about a special collection in the Twillingate Public Library. 

 

Clem Hiebert, Jerry Foster, Arnold Nevis, 1950

Clem Hiebert's photo of Arnold operating with Jerry Foster and an unidentified nurse, 1950,
from the Newfoundland and Labrador Public Library collections

1950 photo by Clement Hiebert of a very tired Arnold Nevis
returning from rounds by boat, Twillingate Harbour

Originally presented as his presidential address for the New England Surgical Society at the end of his term in 1989, Hiebert later published his memoire as Seldom Come By: A Surgeon’s Stories (Blue Publications, 2003).

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Arnold's Story: June 30, 1950

A bill from Harvard University. I am unsure what the Veterans Excess charge would be; could it be tuition after the GI Bill educational assistance is deducted?

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Arnold's Story: May 30, 1950

Arnold writes with the details of his flight home to Los Angeles. 

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Arnold's Story: May 24, 1950

Laura's joining the church may indicate her confirmation in the church.

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