Gaggle of nurses lands in Waikiki

There are tours of Hawaii — all meticulously planned and choreographed — and then there’s the haphazard, see-what-happens kind of adventure.

Five British nurses who traveled to North America in 1958, staying in Hawaii for a few weeks, experienced the latter, and it’s all detailed in a chapter of "Bedpans and Bobby Socks: Five British Nurses on the American Road Trip of a Lifetime," a memoir written by one of the nurses, Gwenda Gofton, with her daughter, journalist Barbara Fox.

The chapter, titled "A Perfect Cloud," relates the hospitality of a place where strangers invited the women into their homes, lent them clothes and cars, and shared Christmas with them as well as a bit of the darker side of island life.

Gofton, now 78 and retired, was Gwenda Brady when she and four other British nurses landed temporary jobs at Mount Sinai Hospital in Cleveland. They decided after a year to pick up and take off on what at the time — and perhaps even by today’s standards — could be considered the mother of all North American road trips: across the Midwest, through Western Canada to Alaska, down the West Coast to California, by air to Hawaii, and back to Cleveland via the Southwest.

"If we’d have stayed two years, (the hospital) would have given us the money to come home, but we decided we’d see the rest of the country," said Gofton in a phone call from Massachusetts, where she was vacationing with her family. "We never dreamt we’d get to Hawaii. We’d been to Alaska, and there was talk that Hawaii might be the 50th state. We wanted to see all the states, thinking we’d never get back."

The women caught an inexpensive one-way charter flight to Hawaii, spending one night at the Moana Hotel, now the Moana Surfrider. Gofton remembers this "great big tree outside, a huge tree, and the waves came up and down, and the Hawaiian music. It was so romantic and you could watch the sun. It was so romantic, fabulous."

Their stay in Hawaii was cut short because they could not get certified for local nursing jobs as quickly as they needed, but they caused a stir when they posted an ad in the Hono­lulu Star-Bulletin that read, "Five versatile British nurses touring the world desiring work of any kind." A Dec. 17, 1958, photo and article headlined "British nurses go broke, happily," described them as desperate and hungry, with results both predictable and not.

"We met this man on the corner who asked if we’d be photographed as models," Gofton said. "‘Oh, yes, we’ll do anything.’ He asked, ‘Lifestyle?’ And my friend asked, ‘What is it?’ And he said, ‘With no clothes.’ And she just grabbed me and pushed me. I never got a chance to see what it was like."

The story also worked its way back to friends in Cleveland, who took up a collection for the "destitute" nurses. "And there we were, living it up on Waikiki Beach drinking their gorgeous drinks," Gofton said.

The women had only a couple of local contacts they’d made on the mainland, but one of them came through with a car for them.

"Did you ever hear of anyone being so generous as that?" Gofton said, still expressing amazement. "We went all over the whole island. Magnificent, I must say.

"There was hardly any traffic. … We were more or less in open country. By Diamond Head it was all greenery."

When Gofton returned to England, few of her acquaintances expressed interest in her journey, she said. Only after she started retyping letters of the trip, as a keepsake for her grandchildren, did her daughter become interested and think "there’s a book in there."

As for her fellow road partners, one of them, Maureen Houghton, returned to America and lived in California but has since died; Cecelia Greene eventually married a farmer in her native Ireland; and Molly Adams and Patricia Beadle married Scots and moved to Scotland. They still stay in touch with Gofton.

Gofton never returned to Hawaii, though she said she would like to.

"I still have a lot of fun, and I’m full of energy and, thankfully, in good health," she said.