In 1977, Lorain Miller, a high school student from Burien, Washington, and aspiring veterinarian, reached out to Dr. Roberts to document her story for the National Organization for Women’s essay contest on American women pioneers. Dr. Roberts responded with a detailed 10-page letter, typed out with care, offering a rare firsthand account of her groundbreaking achievements. Miller’s essay won first place in her school district, earning her a $1,000 award.
Today, Lorain Miller—now Dr. Lorain Abel—is a proud 1987 graduate of Washington State University and has been practicing veterinary medicine for nearly 40 years. Her award-winning essay, along with Dr. Roberts’ letter, remains a vital record of Washington’s first female pioneer in veterinary medicine, preserving a legacy of resilience and excellence.
12 April 1977
Dear Lorain:
Your letter arrived in Watsonville Saturday while all our relatives were there helping us move. The moving went on Sunday also, and the moving van came Monday, yesterday, to take the furniture. We drove the pick-up and the car full to Oakdale, and my husband has gone back to get the rest today. It is a three-hour trip each way, and we have had it with moving. So, that is why I did not answer sooner.
Don’t let some of my answers discourage you from your course; what I feel and express is only one person’s reaction to things. First, your phone call was no shock or surprise. Nothing has ever surprised me. I have had phone calls and mail from many people from the time I graduated. When I passed the State Board in California, it caused quite a commotion and a celebration in San Francisco with all the press there and pictures taken and sirens screaming: the president of the State Board was fire commissioner in San Francisco and led a cortege with me in his car up and down the hills—a ridiculous performance, and I never could figure out what all the excitement was about. So it all got in the Associated Press dispatches, and I got fan mail from all over the world, one long letter from a sheep-herder in the outback of Australia who invited me to come and marry him.
I will try to answer your questions in order but will likely digress at times. I have had a very interesting life, and many amusing things have happened. I can remember things that happened 65 years ago, but this morning I couldn’t remember where I had put my toothpaste, which I had tossed into something at the last minute. Finally, I stirred it up from the bottom of the pile in my purse, a voluminous reticule in which I carry a small weapon in one compartment with the clip in another compartment so no one can say I am carrying a concealed loaded weapon; a pair of sunglasses, a pair of reading glasses, two wallets, a checkbook, chewing gum, Bufferin, allergy pills, belly-ache pills, innumerable other extraneous materials, and a New Testament tucked into each end—one a King James version, the other a modern English version.
Questions one, two, and three will probably all run together—here goes:
Born 17 June 1917, Eureka, California, which then was a small town on Humboldt Bay with surrounding dairy country to the North, South, and East. My own father was primarily a newspaper man who was a popular editorial writer in his day, and somehow acquired a steamship ticket agency before World War I when everyone was taking trips to the Old Country and business was so good that we took quite a few trips as well.
I loved ocean voyages; destination was not important, and no other mode of travel has ever seemed worth the effort except to get there when you have to go.
At the age of 12, my father’s health became a problem, and he thought if he could get out in the country, he would feel better. We bought a ten-acre farm which had a three-acre strawberry field, a large raspberry patch, various other berries, and some fruit trees. There were a bunch of rabbit hutches. My grandmother gleefully presented me with a pair of rabbits, and in no time at all, I was the proud possessor of 29 of the miserable things which had to be fed and watered twice daily. My father bought a pure-bred Jersey cow with heifer calf, which did not reproduce quite so rapidly as the rabbits. Being on a farm, it was necessary to acquire pigs, chickens, ducks, pigeons, all of which required daily sustenance doled out by who else? Me, since I was the only child. I hated every one of the little dears; I even got so I could hardly stand my dog and cat. Animals, bah! Strawberries, too, I could do without.
So, how did I get along in school with all that extra-curricular activity? Just fine. Through some fluke of nature, I inherited the intelligence of both parents, whom I considered a little above average. I learned to read and write and count before kindergarten, and I’d read all the classics (and some not so classic) by the age of 10. Also blessed with a photographic memory, I could read a lesson once and had it. Writing came easily. Writing essays as required was no problem. Having read so much, I could always come up with conversation, idle or otherwise, and could recite in class ad nauseam. My teachers always felt quite successful as each one took full credit for my learning, and I never disillusioned them.
Oh, yes, more background: My mother was quite gifted musically and took vocal lessons from the time I could remember. She practiced several hours a day—opera songs in Italian, French, German, Spanish—music going on all the time. So I took piano lessons and sang. In high school, I took vocal lessons and played in the orchestra. Now I play the organ and accordion, but the piano leaves me cold.
Just before I started high school, my father died from a gunshot wound, which we never understood. It seemed he was cleaning the gun and held it against him and phht! Well, anyway, hard times fell upon us for a time. My mother went into the insurance business and did quite well at it so that by the time I graduated, we were in clover again. In the meantime, I thought I had fallen in love, and I was fed up with school and decided to get married to avoid going to college. I soon saw the error of my thinking and went to business college. My mother then married the veterinarian, Mr. A.F. Hanna, who was responsible for my becoming one. He had a son who was four years younger than I and nearly to start high school, so he went to live with them. He had been living with his mother and stepfather in Idaho until then and was kind of hillbilly in his ways. My mother thought him terribly uncouth and resented having him there. I was not living at home, nor even nearby, during that time as I had gone to Seattle, where my mother’s family resided, trying to get away from my husband, but the fool followed me and was an awful nuisance. I worked as a secretary, and I worked for a clinical laboratory where I learned to do many of the tests and picked up a lot of medical terminology and got the urge to study medicine. I had everything arranged to enroll in the pre-med course at the University of Washington and went home for a visit. Talk about brainwashing! I never did know what happened, but I found myself at Pullman enrolled in the vet course. It seems that my stepbrother had flatly stated that he did not want to be a vet, would not be a vet, etc., and Pop was ‘broken-hearted’ and almost disowned him on the spot. My stepbrother told me later how they put the pressure on me. The argument was that the depression was starting and times were bad. If I went to pre-med school I would put in four years and still have med school ahead of me. If I went to vet school, I would have my degree in four years and could start practice. It was understood that I would have to work enough to pay most of my expenses. So there I was.
The Dean of Women was a real old battle-ax, Dean Annie, we called her. She did not approve of women going to college in the first place and the fact that I had been married made me contaminated. She told me that I should go home to my husband and raise children. Inasmuch as I had had six miscarriages, I took a dim view of her advice. Then she advised that if I must go to college why not take home ec. or something ladylike.
To think of a lone woman going into the vet department where there were MEN! So far as I was concerned the men were the best part of the whole deal, but I had sense enough to keep that thought to myself. They had stupid rules about chaperoning the girls. Single women could not live with married women. Married women could not live in dormitories. No women could live where men boarded. A woman could not have her own apartment. What a muddle! I managed to get a room with another couple of whom Dean Annie approved, but she still called me in weekly to try to discourage me from my course. She was hoping my grades would be so poor that she could get rid of me on that account. Alack-a-day, I got all A’s.
Of course, all that static was what it took to spur me on to stay with it until I got my degree. Combating Dean Annie was so rough, however, that I decided to marry a vet student and live with him and there would be nothing she could do about it. This I did, but it turned out to be not such a brilliant maneuver as I had thought.
With all that, you must be wondering how I had time or energy to earn any money. I took notes of all the lectures in class in shorthand and typed out copies and sold them to all the boys. I did a lot of tutoring, mostly in English and Chemistry. It seemed to me that vet students were unusually stupid in English and Chemistry, two subjects they had to take, and most of them flunked at least once. The only subject that I had trouble with was economics (we had to take four hours of some social study). I tried Economics because it would fit into my schedule. I saw I would flunk it, so I quit it. I even fainted in the class because I had pleurisy. Isn’t that ridiculous, to faint in Economics class and sail through all those messy vet courses with no trouble at all?
In the veterinary department, I got along fine with everyone. The boys were accustomed to having girls in their classes in high school. The professors seemed to be quite pleased to have a girl in the classes. There was no embarrassment involved in any of the courses, as I was warned, there would be by Dean Annie. The professors. used very professional language in their lectures and explanations. Occasionally, something funny would happen, and we could laugh together without embarrassment. I was just one of the boys.
After my freshman year was over, Dean Annie gave up worrying about me as I was married and out of her control. Along the way, I found that the jerk I married had not gotten a final decree of divorce from his former wife, and she was threatening to come and make waves around the school. I had a woman attorney friend in Seattle who arranged a nice quiet annulment. Being of a fickle nature, I was tired of that marriage and glad of an excuse to get out of it. Easy come, easy go.
During summer vacations, I went home to California and learned more veterinary medicine from my step-father than I ever did in college. I learned it easily whether I wanted to or not, and he was rated one of the best vets in the state, and he saw that I learned it right. The only thing he couldn’t teach me was how to drive a car—I had no natural ability for anything mechanical. To this day, I would not know the carburetor from the transmission. The battery and the radiator are the only internal parts of a car I can recognize. Pop used to get so mad at me when I ran off the road and knocked down fences—he would jump on his hat and swear! My stepbrother was a born mechanic and taught me to drive. It took several months, but I finally became a very good driver. My stepbrother, by the way, attended a flying school and became an airplane mechanic, worked as a civilian employee for the Air Corps, and was rated so highly he was sent as a troubleshooter all over the world when they had big problems no one else could solve.
Other women came along, one each year. Pat Henno was the first. Her father had a veterinary hospital in San Francisco. She graduated the year after I did. I hardly knew her as we had no classes together. I guess it was the same year that Frances Pixby and her husband came along, both brilliant students, and had been to college before in some other major. In my senior year came Mary Donworth, who had graduated from the University of Washington in languages and had lived in Europe for four years. Her uncle was a vet in Los Angeles. She was a wonderful person, smart, and a real lady. She was a spinster and desirous of catching a man. The first time she saw me was at the beginning of my senior year when they had a sort of open house for all the departments to meet the newcomers. I had had a wonderful time that summer and broke my wrist to polish it off. I arrived at the open house with my wrist in a cast and six men dancing in attendance. Was Mary ever impressed! She fell in love at first sight with one of the fellows in my entourage. So we became roommates and had a nice apartment. She paid the rent and bought the food, and I did the cooking, and she got her man and married him.
I just remembered that I got a scholarship from the Women’s Auxiliary of the AVMA for my senior year, so life was a bowl of cherries from then on.
At the end of my Senior year, I was tapped for Alpha Psi, the national Veterinary Honorary Fraternity, to which no woman had ever before been admitted. I caused a great deal of controversy, but when the dust settled, I was a member.
Our professor who was responsible for teaching the seniors the techniques of vet practice was a knowledgeable man, and we all loved him, but he had low blood pressure to the extent that the boys would have to go and get him up in the morning and make coffee for him and see that he got to class. He just didn’t have any energy. We learned our work by going out on calls with him or any other professor available and doing what had to be done. A call would come in, and he would ask if anyone knew how to take care of it, and usually, I did after having spent summers with Pop. So he would assign some of the boys to go with me, and I taught them how to do T.B. tests, to take blood samples for undulant fever tests, to treat cows for post-parturient paresis, anything about large animals, which I could tolerate quite well, but the small animals were not my cup of tea. During the years after graduation, when I would meet some of my classmates, they would laugh about how the only demonstrations they had of various techniques were those I showed them. It was certainly a one-horse college in those days, only five professors in the whole department and no assistants, but it was about as good as any of them were then. At that time, there were only eleven vet schools in North America.
When our senior year was finished, it seemed like the end of the world. We were a small class, only thirteen in number, and we had worked closely together for four years. Times had been tough, the depression had gone into full swing, and it was unbelievable how little some of the boys got along on, like $25 a month. Nobody had cars. We walked, and Pullman is all uphill or down. But we studied together and helped each other and had a lot of fun even though we always seemed to be hungry. We hated to leave one another. It was as if I were in love with all of them at once. I missed those guys for months after we parted. To make graduation even more miserable for me, my family decided it was too far to come for my graduation, and they were too busy, and it was too expensive, etc. Can you imagine how I felt? It was their idea I should go there in the first place! I went through all that to please them and graduated with honors, yet they couldn’t be bothered to attend my graduation. It was one of the worst disappointments I ever had, and I still resent it to this day even though they are both dead long since.
In 1933, when I graduated, there weren’t many jobs even for the men. Men who had graduated before were still working part-time at meat inspection or other state or federal jobs. I went home and worked with my step-father. I had to take all the small animal practice but got to take the leftover large animals he didn’t have time for.
While I had been in college, my family had moved to Ferndale, California, which is not far from Eureka and Fortuna, but it is a small place and not very inspiring for young people. My stepbrother was home for a few weeks before he got a job, and he helped me in my work and was like a real brother. We were always close friends until he died about 10 years ago. After he left home for his job, I wanted to get away. My stepfather and I were both high-spirited and hot-tempered. He thought I should be on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week. He could see no reason why I should want to go anywhere or do anything for fun. He disapproved of every man I had a date with. He and my mother acted as if I were about sixteen and wanted me to do nothing but practice. One of the things I resented most was that though I was expected to give my whole time to professional work, I should wash the dishes and do the ironing in my spare time. No matter what a woman’s profession or how much money she makes, she some way gets stuck with washing, ironing, dishwashing, and other housekeeping chores, all of which I hate. One reason I wanted a profession was to get away from housekeeping, which I managed to do at times but not always. I am one of the worst housekeepers in the state of California, but I am a good cook and like to cook as long as I am not obligated to cook three meals a day.
Now let me backtrack a little. At the time of graduation, the State Board of Examiners in Veterinary Medicine for the state of Washington came to the college and conducted said examinations for three days. They were three very nice gentlemen who were most gracious to me and appeared to feel that I was an asset to their profession. They graded our papers as we turned them in, and by the time the last graduate had turned in the last paper, they had the previous ones graded, so we all knew what our grades were then. As I remember it, we all passed and got our licenses. And the three examiners took me to lunch afterward and sent me Christmas cards the next Christmas. It never occurred to me to wonder about being accepted by the men in the profession, or anyone else, after Dean Annie went out of my life.
The reason I went to California was because I couldn’t afford to start practice anywhere else. Then I had to take the State Board Exams in California. They were given in Los Angeles such a short time after our graduation that none of us could take them until the following January when they were held in San Francisco. There had always been a lot of friction between Washington State graduates and the California State Board. California had no vet college at the time, so I could never quite understand what the controversy was about. Washington State graduates just could not pass the California Board in less than two or three tries, and there was one who took it eleven times before he finally made it. The scuttlebutt had it that the California Board members were partial to Cornell and Iowa State graduates, and they were the only ones who could pass the exams.
Nothing daunted, we (six of us) went to San Francisco and took the California Board in January. I never had trouble with exams of any kind and did not expect to have. I always wrote fast and thought fast, and that was the way I went at it. On every exam, I was the first one through, and the board members would grab my paper and go over it with a fine-toothed comb. After the third exam, before I could get out the door to get out and relax, one of the board members came to me and asked if he could talk to me. I thought, “What did I do wrong now?” But he asked me how come I could be so smart coming from Washington State. I told him to look at the papers from the others in my class and that we were a smart class. Well, the others from my class were a little nervous, so they did not do as well as I did, but they did not disgrace themselves. I passed the Board with the highest grade that anyone had ever done, no matter what college they came from, besides being the first woman to take the California Board. The five examiners were just as delighted about the whole thing as the ones in Washington had been and put on that big celebration I mentioned earlier. There never was any question as to my acceptance anywhere, professionally or socially. Medical doctors and surgeons call me doctor and give me professional courtesy even now, and always have.
My stepfather and I came to the parting of the ways in our practice. I moved to Eureka, after an internship with him of several months. We were still friends, and he helped me a great deal. I started practice in a very secluded neighborhood off the beaten track and was hardly ready to go into it when the business started. Remember, I had been known in that town and went to school there for several years. My father had been well known and highly regarded there. Everyone had read the Associated Press write-ups about my passing the California State Board and were quite pleased to have the first woman vet practice there. A lot of people came to me because I was a woman—more sympathetic, more gentle, more understanding, they said!
I think one of the strangest facets of that idea was that the prostitutes (of which there were many in the town) decided to bring their dogs to me or preferably call me to come see them and it was the most lucrative part of my small animal practice. The girls always paid cash for any service and usually a tip besides and gave me gifts at Christmas. Some of them became very close friends, and I enjoyed their company more than I did that of some people who thought they were the elite of the town. The girls were always perfect ladies, used better English than most people, and some were college graduates. The only disadvantage to having their business was they were always calling me at 2 a.m. or 3 a.m. after their working day was done.
About the husband I have now: I had met him before I graduated from college while home on vacations. We (I) met a lot of other fellows too, but after two or three years, it narrowed down until he came out with the best score, and though I was not particularly entranced with the thought of marrying again and being responsible for a household, I finally married him on 16 January 1976. We had a Grange wedding, as we were very active members in the Grange. And in 1976, the same Grange put on a 40th-anniversary party for us, and people came from everywhere to attend. We had not lived near said Grange for years but had kept up our friendships over the years.
This husband was not a vet, but he had a natural ability to help in such work, and I never would have stayed in practice as long as I did without his help. I got more and more large animal practice and it was rough. The climate in Humboldt County is miserable—always raining or foggy and windy and murky and cold. It seemed to me I was slogging around in the mud and wind all the time. In the spring when all the cows are calving I never seemed to have a full night’s sleep. I got bursitis in both shoulders and that did it. World War II was just getting off to a good start and my husband was subject to the draft but of an age that if he engaged in some defense work he would not be called for military service. So we decided to give up practice and we went to San Francisco and worked for the Navy at Hunter’s Point Naval Shipyard for the duration. I did personnel work of various kinds, a very interesting job and at the time more rewarding than vet practice.
After the war we sold our home and spent some time on a large farm in the San Joaquin Valley. Suddenly I decided I wanted to do something in my profession again and went to Sacramento and looked around until I came up with employment with the USDA in the Poultry Inspection Service. I took my training at Campbell Soup Company there and later was sent to Swift and Co. at Albany, Oregon. After I said I’d go there my boss told me I did not have to stay if I couldn’t stand it as they were an awful outfit to inspect for and no other inspector even stayed out the three months they signed up for. I stayed. In three months Swift and Co. requested that I be made inspector in charge at an annual salary even though they worked only about half the time. They wanted to keep me because I got the job done without any hassle. They gave my husband a job too and he did everything they gave him to do so well that every time a better job came up he got it and was put in charge of the poultry killing plant. That was a fine job for pay, but rough physically and after two and one-half years I got bursitis in my shoulders again so that was that, I had to quit. Swift and Co. went out of business shortly afterward when the inspector who replaced me died on the job.
I was such an individualist that I never used my husband’s name until after this last phase. You asked if I used initials to hide the fact I was a woman—no, never. I was always Dr. Catherine E. Roberts, or Catherine E. Roberts, DVM. No one ever seemed perturbed when I was introduced that way and then my husband was introduced by his name. It never bothered him either. He was always proud to be married to a veterinarian.
The State Board finally wrote and asked me would I like to have my license in my married name—I always signed the checks for license renewal in my married name. They always knew who I was. I thought I might as well since I wasn’t in practice anymore so they changed it over and I still keep it up and haven’t practiced since. You ask if I liked the profession and what I have said so far probably gives you the answer, but it wasn’t all bad. There was a prestige connected with it which tends to inflate the ego. Many amusing things came up, and when we weren’t too tired to be amused we took the hilarious view of everything. Because of my profession and my success with it I could get away with being an oddball. One group of friends had a pin made and gold plated with a screw and a ball on it and presented it to me gleefully.
And, no, I have no children but my husband has two sons by a former marriage. They have spent their lives trying to be as oddball as I am and have never quite made it. When I was in practice they were quite young and delighted in going along or helping in any way. Although we did not have custody of them they seemed to be with us all the time—they promptly became ill when separated from us. When they got in arguments with other people, including their teachers and their mother, they ended all controversy by stating their final crack, “My stepmother says—” They hated school so much there was never any chance they would go into the profession. They still address me as “Doc”.
After I quit the Poultry Inspection Service I had no further contact with vet work. The only vets I have seen have been inadvertently. One of my classmates looked me up a couple of years ago and we enjoyed a visit but that was that. A few months ago I helped my neighbor take her dog to the vet and asked her not to tell him who I was. The dog got worse after a time and my husband took the dog to the vet to be put to sleep and brought it home and buried it for her.
I suppose I could say that one advantage I have enjoyed is that when I wanted to work in jobs related to the medical field I could always get a job as medical secretary and bookkeeper. I was a whiz at filling out insurance forms for doctors to sign for the patients because I could read the charts and fill them out without bothering the doctors except for their signatures. Then I read about a nursing course for LVN’s when I had nothing better to do in 1964 and had an awful hassle getting into it because I was over-educated and it was supposed to be for underprivileged people so they could get a job, and they were still short of nurses and the class was not full! So I just held onto the right man who had the influence to get me in if I promised not to tell anyone my background. So I got in and it was obvious to everyone that I had had medical training of some kind but I never told anyone until the course was finished and when we graduated this same man announced it when he gave me my certificate and everyone thought it was wonderful and it was one of the few times I was embarrassed. There was one hospital where the administration had sworn they would never hire an LVN, only RN’s, for them, but guess who was the first LVN they hired and made me treatment nurse for the surgical floor yet. And I enjoyed the nursing more than veterinary work. I guess it is because I like people. This reminds me of one of my pet peeves: People who gush “Oh, I always wanted to be a veterinarian because I just love animals.” The worst reason in the world for some. There is so much more to it than that; the brains to learn all you should know in order to do the best for the animals, the compassion and empathy with the animals in order to feel how they are feeling when they can’t say “I have a headache”, the stamina to stay with a job until it is done even if it takes seven hours of back-breaking labor in heat or mud or rain, and then when you get through that one go on to another with no rest, and then to be able to relax and forget it when you do get time off and to keep a sense of humor so you can always see something funny in any situation. It is also quite difficult at times to maintain a ladylike composure if you feel you must. I had no trouble that way in college. But when I first ran into some of the expressions people use I was flabbergasted. I got over it. I really was never noted for being ladylike anyway. Advice? Examine your motives for desiring to be a veterinarian. Then if you are sure that is what you want, give it all you’ve got. There is a lot to learn and some of it you will be sure you will never need, but you do need it all.
One thing I felt was lacking in the veterinary course when I took it was cultural subjects. We were so immersed in scientific matters we hardly had time to know what was going on in the world. I wanted a broader education so I took four full years of English, two full years of chemistry (because I liked it), psychology, swimming (4 hrs.), and music. This I did by taking 20 hours a semester instead of 16, and 10 hours in summer school, besides an extension course during Christmas vacation.
In reading over your questions I see I left some loose ends about the other women who were in school at the time I was there. Pat Henno graduated and passed the California Board a year later. I never saw her again. She went into large animal practice somewhere in the bay area and I heard she married a sailor. She must have changed to her husband’s name or quit the profession or left California as I have never seen her name on the list of licensees to practice there. I believe that when Frances Pixby’s husband graduated he was hired somewhere far away from Pullman and she left just short of graduation. Mary Donworth married Jack MacFarlane and he graduated as a veterinarian and went to Montana in some state job and became quite influential and Mary did not graduate. I met her in Seattle about 1940 when I was vacationing there and she was there for surgery. I happened to go to call on her doctor who knew us both well and told me where she was. She was very happy and had her little boy there. I always felt that Mary had accomplished her purpose much better than the rest of us. I never saw her again or heard any more of her.
Another question I skipped over (Ha!) graduated in June 1933. I answered the part about how I felt, and yes I was in the upper part of the class. The administration apparently couldn’t have cared less about a woman graduating. We all marched up and got our diplomas with no fanfare.
I really don’t know what additional information you might obtain from the records at Pullman, but I am writing a to whom it may concern letter giving my permission for the release of records pertaining to me and my attendance there. If you find anything interesting let me know—maybe they knew more about me than I thought. I don’t believe you will have time to cut through their red tape and get any information in time to make use of it before the deadline.