Whatever Was the Hardest Work, She Did It
The Extraordinary Life of Lieutenant Sadie Brown, As Remembered by her Son Don
She was the barefoot daughter of an itinerant cowboy and his 14-year-old part Cherokee wife, tar-paper shack poor, him mostly gone, they were transient on the West Texas plains. Grandma Brown and two daughters, Pauline and Sadie, were left to fend for themselves, taking in washing, boarders when they could–– it’s a miracle they even survived. Things got better when Paw Paw, their father, got a job with the Civilian Conservation Corps boys. That’s when they came to New Mexico and things started to settle down a little. Between 1st and 12th grade, Sadie went to thirteen different schools; the constant search for a job kept them relocating.
Sadie received her RN degree from the University of Texas, probably around 1941. She enlisted in the Navy the following year. She could not swim; to pass the required swimming test she bribed the examiner: “Chief, I got a 5th of whiskey says I can swim that pool.” She passed.
As World War II raged, she staffed the hospital ships, often under attack, that sailed out of Pearl to the Pacific islands, such as Guadalcanal, to evacuate the terribly wounded Marines. While between island trips, she and her sister Pauline, a Red Cross worker, ran into each other on the street in Pearl Harbor, after having been out of touch for many months. By that time the hospital there housed 10,000 beds.
Sadie was stationed at Pearl Harbor until VJ Day, 1945. She met her husband, Frank Schreiber, there. They returned to New Mexico after the war, married, and had two children, Don and Anna.
Sadie served as a public health nurse in Albuquerque until Frank finished his studies at the University of New Mexico in 1947, then moved to Farmington, New Mexico. There, she worked as the only nurse at the San Juan Episcopal Mission, providing care to thousands of Navajo families, mostly in women’s health care, under the direction of Jane Turnbull, a local midwife who is said to have delivered over 3,000 babies. Sadie took her little boy, Don, to work every day.
Don recalls:
My first memories are of playing there at the mission with all the Navajo kids. Later, she helped Dad open the only classy bar in our oilfield town. The Rig. That got them kicked out of the Methodist church and led a portly gentleman dressed in black to stroll down their drive one spring day when they were working outside, pull a six-pack of beer from under his robes and introduce himself as Father Smith from St John’s. This led to now four generations of Episcopalians. They operated the bar very successfully until 1956 when Mom pivoted to help Dad open Schreiber Insurance Agency - but she returned to nursing and teaching.
After helping her husband build his insurance agency, Sadie worked for two physicians, Dr. Hartz, and Dr. Peacock. It was a frontier town. When she told Dr. Peacock she could assist in an emergency surgery, he said, “Okay, Sadie, just don’t spit in the wound.”
But Sadie went on to earn a teaching degree by attending summer schools in Boulder, Colorado and Portales, New Mexico. And she created a vocational nursing program for high school students at Farmington High School and Shiprock High School. She custom wrote a textbook/ manual for the program, recognizing early on that for many of her Navajo students, English physiology/health/ medical vocabulary was 'lost in translation’. A heart, for example, was a Valentine. She recognized that this needed to be addressed, and she built bridges to understanding across the language and cultural divide. She taught for over ten years.
Under a grant from the newly established Office of Navajo Economic Opportunity during the Carter Administration, Sadie loaded her pickup truck (the El Camino) with educational supplies, testing equipment, and camping gear, and traveled on long trips deep into the Navajo Nation to teach the basics of nutrition and sanitation to Navajo families in need. Her objective was to curtail or slow the rapidly increasing diabetes and food or water borne diseases in those rural communities that had few public utilities: no electricity, no gas, no water.
And, by the way, Sadie would probably want it mentioned here:
STILL TODAY 1/3 OF NAVAJO FAMILIES DO NOT HAVE ACCESS TO RUNNING WATER. GODDAMNIT.
Later, she became a Public Health Monitor at the Public Health Hospital in Shiprock, New Mexico on the Navajo Nation where, in collaboration with Dr. Joyce Price, a surgeon at the hospital, they helped investigate and uncover that white doctors, who had been sent there after med school to satisfy educational grants were practicing Cesarean sections on the young Navajo mothers who did not need them.
A scholarship for Native Americans pursuing a degree in nursing at San Juan College (Farmington, New Mexico) was established in Sadie’s name.
As a sideline, throughout the years of teaching and nursing, Sadie embarked upon the business of flipping houses every chance she got. The model was, buy a run-down house, spend every hour after work, weekends––never take a vacation––to get it livable, then find another dump with possibilities, and do it again.
“We lived in eleven houses in seventeen years,” recalls Don, “and she was the boss of that whole show. We all worked for Mom, Dad included.”
Always a devoted FDR Democrat, Sadie and Frank were instrumental in establishing the Democratic Party in the largely Republican community populated by Mormons, West Texas/Oklahoma oilfield developers, and transients. Politics became another job, and the family worked at it. Her brother-in-law was State Democratic Party Chair, State Treasurer and twice State Land Commissioner. Going to all the conventions, knocking the doors, pushing, pushing, pushing to get good Democrats elected, that was all part of the picture.
Sadie was a champion of gay rights in the ‘60s, and hired a young Navajo male housekeeper to work in the home.
“Some people are different than we are,” she told her son. “Not less, just different. Welcome them, help them.”.
Another memory from Don:
“Growing up I had a bunch of good friends, and one of whom was always the coolest kid, even in grade school. We played Little League together, mostly band and when we got to high school, he was the drummer for all the local bands, just the kid everyone wanted to be. His mom ran the Trailways bus station downtown and it had a little apartment in the back where they lived. She was very Sadie-like and they were good, good friends. Our group of guys all worked there, loading and unloading the busses, it was so busy, then eventually selling tickets. Late hours, early hours. A real job.”
“Then, in our senior year, my friend began having problems with his leg and they couldn't figure it out. On and off, until I went to college in Flagstaff. When I came home, he was living in my room, diagnosed with terminal bone cancer. His mother was just overwhelmed with work and the rest of her family, including care of her terminally ill father in the little apartment behind the bus station. Naturally, Mom stepped in. He was so sick. There was no hospice care in those days, so Mom did it until the end.”
Whatever the hardest work was, Sadie did it.
“And I never, ever saw her leave a job unfinished,” says Don.
Sisters in Service: Sadie (left) in her Navy uniform with Pauline, who was with the American Red Cross.