Pets for older people: a matter of value. Interview by Marian Brickner.

As a professional photographer, most of my subjects have been animals. But of course, I have come to realize that with animals there are people. And I have learned how fascinating the interactions between people and their animals can be. The opportunity to present the stories of five such pairings has been most interesting. All of these persons are older women and all live in their own homes. BEATRICE PARKS Me: Bea, tell us a little bit about you. Bea: I was born in Decatur, Illinois. And I have a twin sister who is still living also. Our father died on Halloween the year before we were born, in October, and we were born in April. It left our mother with four children and a pregnancy. I was born in 1919, and he died on Halloween in 1918. The flu epidemic. My mother had a struggle, but she saw that we went to school. Me: What did she do? Bea: She did house work for people and then some of the people at the hospital where we were born knew our circumstances and they helped her with food and things like that. And then, my eldest brother when he turned 14, he quit school and started working. Me: What did he work at? Bea: He worked at the Wabash Railroad. As things got improved, then he went to night school. So he even graduated college. So he got his education and my sister and I went thru high school and graduated. Me: How much older was your brother? Bea: I think he was 8 years older than we. There were three others then before we came. After we graduated, we started working in a factory near us. Of, yes, I forgot. My mother put us in an orphanage from when we were two until we were six. And then she remarried and our father couldn't have been any nicer to us than our step father was. He was a gem. I still remember nice things about the orphanage. They treated us really nicely. So then after we graduated, we went to work in a lamp factory. We assembled lamps. Floor lamps. They taught us the wiring and everything. We got all of ¢9 an hour. We worked 54 hours a week. Then some of the fellows got the silly notion that we should go on strike, so we went on strike for six weeks. And went back to work at ¢11 an hour, plus we only worked 44 hours a week and then we had to pay $5 a month union dues. Me: How did you feel about the union dues? Bea: I wasn't in favor of it, but everybody went out and the factory closed so we couldn't go in. So then, President Roosevelt, I think, made a minimum wage at ¢25 an hour. Well, that doubled our income, you know, and 40 hours a week. Well, we still got more with that, then later on, the war started and we got ¢40 an hour. Then I got a chance to move to St. Louis and got a government job. Me: How did that come about? Bea: Well, we had an inspector that came to inspect, well when the war came along, they did ammunition. And the inspector that came to inspect it all the time said there was government work in St. Louis. I was married by then and he wouldn't work, (my husband) and we had a child. So we separated and my mother took care of my son. I came to St. Louis to work and I went home every weekend and so I just progressed along. I stayed with the government in different jobs until I was 53. Well then, I remarried (actually I remarried at 42). Then my husband got ill and the government offered early retirement if we had 25 years and were 50 years old, and I happened to have 25 years of service and I was 53, I took an early retirement and my husband lived for 4 more years and then passed away, and then I was lost. And then, lying in bed at night, I always had my biggest thoughts. And I always wanted to be a nurse. So I called the teaching hospitals. They wouldn't take me (the teaching hospitals), I didn't know how to go about it. They said by the time I graduated, I would be ready to retire and they wanted working nurses, so then, another night I got the idea that my husband had some very nice LPN's when he was sick and maybe I could be a LPN. …