“Octavia and Robert Millman at the Millman home in Useless Bay, where Octavia delivered hundreds of babies.Photo courtesy of Lorinda Kay.Right from the beginning, Whidbey Islanders have relied on each other when they were sick or hurt.By combining their labors, they made sure that one was available to sit up nights with a neighbor who was ill, writes Theresa Trebon in the preface to her book, A Common Need. A local farmer suffering severely from rheumatism could rest assured that his crops had been brought in, thanks to the cooperation of the community. … Women … aided a friend in childbirth, or nursed a sick infant through an epidemic of diphtheria.Women, in particular, stepped in to care for each other’s families, Trebon said, so much so that her book is dedicated To the women of Whidbey Island for their comfort and healing to those in need over the past 150 years, their courage to dream, and act, against formidable odds.The primary caregivers were the women of the household, Trebon writes. Mothers passed their skills on to daughters, and some families developed their skills to the point where neighbors often called on them in times of need. From the north to the south end of the island, Trebon writes, midwives delivered babies until well in the 1940s.Octavia Millman was one of the most renowned midwives on south Whidbey, Trebon records. She came to Whidbey with her husband Robert in 1900 to join the fledgling cooperative colony at Freeland. Finding themselves ‘disillusioned’ with that undertaking, they settled near Deer Lagoon instead and built the first house in Freeland. There, Trebon writes. Robert set broken bones and pulled bad teeth. Octavia delivered babies. Hundreds of them. Their dwelling on Millman Road became an early home hospital for those who had no one to care for them.One expectant woman came by canoe from Hood Canal and stayed with the Millmans for two months prior to her delivery, Trebon writes. The Millmans’ son James recalled that his parents were community-minded people who never turned away a person in need.At about the same time, Anna Lang and Carolyn Leys Youngsman delivered babies on North Whidbey, Youngsman’s daughter, Elsie Noorlag, told Trebon that her mother had no nurses training. She charged a dollar a day and for that took care of the mom, baby, other kids, washing, ironing, cooking, and cleaning for 10 days.In Coupeville the queen of the midwives was Polly Harpole, who delivered an entire generation of Central Whidbey children. Many of the midwives’ stories were all but forgotten before Trebon began to gather them for her book. I had to dig so hard, Trebon said. Most people don’t know any of the history.Whidbey also had women who were medical professionals. The first woman doctor to practice on the island was Agnes Harrison, whose husband, Isaac, was also a doctor. She came to the island in 1883, at a time when it was very difficult for women to qualify as doctors. We were derisively called ‘Hen Medics’ Mrs. Dr. Harrison recalled. Women medical students were kept separate from male students, professors gave them simplified lectures and they were allowed to dissect only female cadavers, Trebon writes. Harrison’s practice wasn’t easy, either. She often hitched up the horse and raced out through the night, once with her 3-week-old son in her arms, since there was no one to leave him with. She cared for the island’s Indians as well as the settlers, and learned to cope with their different ways, which included communal healing practices. Trebon found this account of one such call:I was mighty annoyed when I had a delicate operation to perform on a squaw … I chased all her relatives and other curious tribesmen out of the house. But … as fast as I shooed them out the doors they came back through the windows. Finally, I couldn’t waste another minute so I operated – with a ring of muttering Indians looking on! In the early 1900s two sisters living on Ebey’s Prairie, Hattie and Luella Jenne, were among the first island women to train as nurses. Luella, whose picture appears on the cover of Trebon’s book, trained at Seattle General Hospital.She came back to the island to nurse her brother, Carl Jenne, through the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918. In 1997, at the age of 96, Carl told Trebon how his sister was at his side 24 hours a day for several weeks, administering sweat baths and hot lemon water and changing his soaked clothing. Bless her heart, he said, she stuck to it. Home hospitals began appearing on Whidbey Island in the mid-1920s Trebon records, filling a critical void in the first half of the 20th century, when Whidbey Island lacked both a hospital and easy access to the mainland.The need for an island medical facility became especially acute in time of critical injuries, when a patient could not be moved far, or endure a long trip off-island, Trebon writes. Information about most of Whidbey’s home hospitals is scant at best, she adds. There is a brief reference to Lone Lake Hospital (1934) and the Wylie Hospital is mentioned in a 1922 newspaper account of yet another auto accident that had occurred at the sharp curve just southwest of Langley.Trebon also records Edwin Smith’s memory of an accident in 1925, when his 3-year-old cousin Donald suffered a severe head injury and was taken to ‘a home’ somewhere between Clinton and Freeland.When (my dad and uncle) got part ways up from Clinton, the road was awfully narrow and windy through the stumps, gullies and cow paths, Smith recalled. And some car was coming down from the other way, coming quite fast and in the middle of the gravel road, and he was kind of weaving around back and forth. And Uncle Ralph, instead of crashing into the car, pulled off the road and ran up this embankment into a big stump there and his kid hit the windshield and it left him goofier than all-get-out. And some people lived not too far away, they took the kid over to the house and he was there for about two weeks in bed. The doctor would come down and visit him. In all likelihood, Trebon writes, it was either the Lone Lake or the Wylie Hospital that cared for the boy. Among the first nurses on the island was Audrey Kingma Bultman of Clover Valley. She got her nursing degree at Everett’s Providence Hospital and went on to establish several maternity homes in Oak Harbor between 1935 and the late 1950s. Her daughter, Irene Bultman Tyhuis, told Trebon about the days when there were as many as six new mothers in the house – which also served as the family home – and new babies lined up in baskets. And according to the wisdom of the time, new mothers were kept lying down for the first 10 days after delivery. Irene remembered how amused she and her sisters were as children when they watched their mother help the ladies get up when it was time to go. They’d sit there and then she’d try and stand them up and oh! They’d keel over; they’d faint after lying in bed that long.Another nurse, Doris Martin, who had earned her nursing degree at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Yakima and served as the Lewis County Public Health Nurse for 10 years, bought Freeland’s White Acres in 1955 and, Trebon writes, quickly raised White Acres’ standard of care as well as its classification from a Group 3 to Group 1 nursing home. Under Martin’s management, White Acres became the first, and only, of Whidbey’s home hospitals or maternity homes to move beyond basic care. Within three years she had a staff of 17, including three registered nurses. She also had 24-hour physician coverage for the facility, courtesy of Dr. Don Purdy of Langley and Dr. Paul Bishop of Coupeville.Her professional standards elevated the facility to a true nursing and convalescent home, one that served as a training center for licensed practical nurses, Trebon writes. Martin expanded White Acres to include a new 16-bed wing, complete with a ‘hoist for bathing bedridden patients,’ and all rooms had an ‘electronic all system’ and ‘modern’ hospital beds.Two of the patients under Martin’s care at White Acres were Susie K. Roberts and her sister Miss White, who ran another home hospital, the Sandy Point Hospital on Edgecliff Drive in Langley. Granted a license to operate as a place of refuge, in the late 1940s, the Sandy Point Hospital functioned as a maternity home in its earlier years, later becoming more of a nursing home for the elderly.While recounting the contributions of women in the early history of medical care on Whidbey, Trebon also gives credit to the island women who banded together in the 1950s and said, Enough is enough. We need a hospital of our own. They were an incredible force, she writes. They made it happen.Many men were involved in the process, too, and made valuable contributions to getting Whidbey General Hospital built and finally opened in 1970. That effort harks back to the way islanders worked together in earlier times, Trebon said, a theme that stretches through her book. I really wanted people to be aware that the hospital is only as good as the community participation in it, she said. From the beginning, people always helped each other, and that has been a vital element in the island’s health care. That community spirit is what helped create the hospital, and it will be what ensures its health in the future. Note: Information in this article is extracted from A Common Need, by Theresa Trebon.Joan Soltys contributed to this article. “