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From Henry Litherland

Audrey Mary Litherland

I have to tell you how I nearly missed the opportunity to ask Audrey to be my wife.

In the fall of 1957 I was a newly minted intern, the lowest form of medical life, and had obtained a post as a House Physician at the Westminster Children’s Hospital in London, England. Audrey McDonagh, whose numerous qualifications have been listed in the obituary in The Vancouver Sun, had been appointed Night Supervisor, being in complete charge of the hospital overnight. A child had come to the Emergency Room one evening having swallowed a bottle of Aspirin pills. I was called and determined that the child would need to have its stomach pumped out, but I hadn’t a clue how to do this. The nurse and I called the Supervisor, Audrey, and when she arrived I said “please carry on with the usual routine” and left. Later they saw me peeking round the door to see how this procedure was done.

After a busy evening in the ER Audrey would make scrambled eggs for the internes on duty.

As Christmas approached there were Christmas parties in the hospital and with great trepidation I started dating Audrey, she at the top of the nursing hierarchy and I at the bottom of the medical hierarchy. At the end of my interneship in 1958 I continued my training elsewhere but continue to date Audrey. When she finished her Supervisor job she told me that she had obtained a job at the Mayo Clinic in the open heart surgery unit. With her training and experience she could obtain a job anywhere. After she had been gone a week I realized that my life had suddenly become empty. I started writing frequently, at least once a week, and she wrote back. I conducted my courtship by mail. I was terrified that she would meet and fall for an American resident at the Mayo Clinic. When she returned in the spring of 1959 I proposed to her within 24 hours and she accepted.

There was one more hurdle to surmount, I had to call upon her mother in Belfast to obtain her permission. I went to the finest flower shop in London and bought some orange and white flowers with some greenery. Upon handing them over her mother said “how nice, the colours of the Republic”. My heart sank, she was never going to hand over her daughter to an ignorant Englishman, but she did.

Audrey’s sister, Joy, who is unable to be here today, is four years younger than Audrey and has sent me e-mails and I have talked with her at length. She has described their early life together and that showed me the source of Audrey’s personality. Joy wrote “when I was an eager annoying small girl, she was always my big brave sister who picked me up when I fell off my bike and pulled me out of the deep water when I lost my armbands. Audrey always wanted to be a nurse and our games involved wearing a nurse’s uniform.”

Her father was a Methodist minister. Audrey’s mother had graduated from the Royal School of Music in Piano and taught all her children to play.

Joy continues “In the early 1940s, in wartime Donaghadee, our mother and father kept open house, and not for just Methodists. The manse was filled with friends from nearby Belfast after the air raids, Jewish refugees from a nearby camp to play the violin and American soldiers, billeted in the hotel opposite, would come for sing-songs on Sundays. Audrey or my mother would play the piano for them. And, of course, while my father dug our plot of land for potatoes and vegetables, Audrey and I had our little plots for flowers. It was then that we realized that on of the great pleasures in life is planting seeds and seeing them grow”. Audrey’s father died when she was 14.

Joy continued “when she was 16 and against our mother’s advice she marched up to the Children’s Hospital and convinced the matron that she was exactly the sort of nurse they needed in the next intake.” From then on, her nursing career took off. After we were married she continued to work from time to time, but allowed my surgical career to determine where we would work and live.

In Canada she soon made many friends when working and volunteering. Her usual reply to a phone call was “Och hello, what can I do for you”. After a few years in an organization she would be asked to be president, a sign of the esteem in which she was held.

She saw people around her as persons with a life. She could find the life history of a waiter or a saleslady in three minutes and when she was stopped by a policeman for speeding she would find that his relatives had come from Ireland before he even had time to write the ticket.

She has taught me so much. I shall miss her,

Henry Litherland
3 October 2007