Woman dedicates life to dispensing comfort, compassion and caring
November 4, 2013By age 5, she already knew what she wanted to be when she grew up.Terry Peters had accompanied her great aunt – a public health nurse – on home care visits to new mothers. In those days, it wasn’t unusual to see a baby sleep in a bureau drawer. After all, it was 1931 and there was a depression on.
“We were poor, but we didn’t know it,” Terry said. “Everyone else in our neighborhood was in the same boat.” The neighborhood was Manchester’s “Little Canada” section, filled with French Roman Catholic families.
She, her parents and three brothers and a sister lived in a four-room apartment. Her father did painting, wallpapering and custodial work. His training with the Job Corps helped build Gunstock. Her mother was a seamstress and often worked until 2 a.m. sewing wedding dresses.
Homemade dresses and hand-me-downs from her cousins were the norm. She and her sister Priscilla shared a pair of shoes for school, stuffing paper in the toes so they would fit each girl. She was excited when she got a job in a laundry at 15. She could afford to go to the movies – 10 cents in those days – and buy a new blouse.
In her cozy Woodside apartment at Taylor Community, Terry reminisced about her youth and the details of her lifelong career as a nurse. She’s barely 5 feet tall with short white hair, bright eyes and a voice that’s still clear and strong at 87. Terry’s not afraid to speak her mind and one gets a sense that her tenacity is what’s kept her going.
She got her childhood wish in 1944 when she was accepted into the U.S. Cadet Nurse Corps, a government program. The program paid the women’s $300 nurses’ tuition and gave them $15 a month to boot. The women would supplement the hospitals to fill in for registered nurses enlisting in the military during the war.
At age 17, Terry had only been in training three weeks. “They said, ‘Don’t bother putting on your blue uniform today – you’re working in the nursery.’ Well, I almost fainted,” she said. “I’d never even changed a diaper! And there I was with a roomful of 20 newborns.”
She worked 12 hour days seven days a week and graduated in 1947. The Laconia Public Library currently has an exhibit on the second floor showing the history of Laconia Hospital. The 11 women in the black and white photo from the graduating class are standing straight and proud. The biggest smile of all belongs to Terry, who’s right up front. She recently visited the library with several Taylor Community residents.
“When I looked at that photo, I thought, ‘There stands the happiest girl in the world.’ We’d only been in a few weeks when we received our uniforms – a gray wool suit for winter and blue and white striped seersucker for summer.”
Terry worked at Laconia Hospital and married in 1948. Her husband, Edward, was a dairy farmer whose parents owned Peters Dairy. In 1949 they had their first son, James. Their second boy, Allen, arrived three years later. She and her husband planned on four children, but “God only gave us two boys.”
When the couple started their family, Terry made Edward promise she could go back to work after the youngest was in school full time. He agreed, thinking she’d change her mind.
One day in 1956, she told him she was ready to go back to work and he would need to teach her to drive. “I’m not teaching you,” he said, “that breaks up marriages!” Not to be deterred, Terry went to the Laconia Police Department and got the name of a man in Lakeport who gave lessons. Twelve lessons later, she had her license.
She arranged her work schedule to suit motherhood – not leaving until the boys were on the school bus in the morning and ensuring she was home a half hour before they arrived back home. She went back full time once the youngest was in Junior High. In her 15 years at Laconia Hospital she worked on every floor and the Emergency Room.
“In those days, the doctors decided which RNs worked in the ER,” she explained. The doctors said they trusted Terry because “You dare. You’re not afraid to try something and if it doesn’t work, then you call us.”
At age 51, Terry went back to school to get a bachelor’s degree in sociology and psychology, graduating summa cum laude. She worked 10 years with a husband and wife doctor team in private practice and 15 years as a school nurse at Gilford Elementary School. She then worked for an insurance company doing physicals for people in their homes until she was 60.
As the years went on, the boys left home and Edward’s parents passed away. They decided it was time to start thinking about their retirement. One day Terry went to check out Taylor Home (as it was then known) with her grandson. At that time, only three cottages had been built. Both the Peters’ lawyer and sons agreed it would be a good move for them.
In the middle of packing and clearing out a barn and cellar full of items, Edward had a heart attack. He was in the hospital for 10 days and then ended up in a Boston hospital for a month with other health issues.
But spunky Terry soldiered on alone, holding multiple yard sales until she got rid of many unwanted items. She kept one milk can from the dairy, which was turned into a lamp. Eventually they sold the dairy, the two houses and some land and moved into Taylor a week before Thanksgiving 1988.
The couple originally lived at 46 Taylor Home Drive because it looked out over the dairy fields that had been so much a part of their lives. “I remember we’d sit on the front porch with glasses of lemonade and Edward would say, ‘I wonder what the rich people are doing?’ I’d answer, ‘Who knows? They can’t be having as much fun as we are,’” she said with a smile.
Once they moved to Taylor, she again stepped into the familiar role of nurse helping out when they needed someone to fill in on the night shift at the nursing home. Eventually she learned the daytime jobs as well, and did home care at the Ledges.
It was during this time her husband’s health took a downward turn and he passed in 1996 at age 70. She remembered thinking how grateful she was that they had moved to Taylor. Eventually the Woodside Apartment complex was completed and she moved there in 2007.
Today she has the distinction of being the resident who has resided here the longest. Her apartment is filled with a myriad of quilting supplies – a passion her arthritis won’t allow her to partake of any longer. “I go down to the craft room and visit the quilting group every Monday,” she said, adding she can still use her sewing machine to help her friends with alterations when needed.
“Helping people is part of the core of the person I am,” she said matter-of-factly. “If a neighbor is sick, or needs some assistance, how can you not help them out?”
Terry is the proud grandmother of Commander Justin Peters, U.S. Coast Guard, who is assigned as Chief Liaison Officer of the Coast Guard to the U.S. Navy stationed at the Pentagon. He and his wife, Kelly, have two children – Riley, age 5, and Sean, age 2. They live in Virginia.
