| Notes |
By the time Don was trying to talk to Gordon and Jo about their early lives and relationships, Jo was getting quite forgetful but did provide the following information(some of it subsequently verified from her passports and nursing records:
She was born in Johannesburg and grew upon a farm in the Johannesburg area as Dorothy (Jo) Jenkins. She was an Army nurse in Italy in WW2 and left South Africa in 1952. In NZ she was admitted to the NZ Register of Nurses (#19660) on 19 Nov 1953. She undertook obstetrical training in 1954 and passed the State Examination for Maternity Nurses in Dec 1954. She worked as a midwife in New Plymouth (registered midwife #10405 from 4 Mar 1955) and then moved to Queen Mary Hospital at Hanmer Springs to undertake a 6 month course in Functional Nervous Disorders, passing the State Examination in Nov 1955. In 1956 she undertook Plunket training at Karitane Hospital, Dunedin. She then went to England to train as a psychiatric nurse (1957-60) and in 1960 moved to Ontario Canada where she lived for 20 years, eventually returning to NZ in 1979 where she was granted permanent resident status.
Primrose always thought that she was Jo Smith before she married Gordon. Following Gordon's death we found a Supreme Court order issued in British Columbia on 10 Nov 1978 to allow her to revert to her maiden name. The marriage certificate for Gordon and Jo (3 Aug 1979) showed that her divorce from Burton Smith became absolute on 20 October 1978.
|
1921 - 2008 (87 years)