Sharon Smith, spouse of Philip Smith, MD, discussing helping the NBU team during Ebola

30 June 2022

Sharon Smith: Well, you know, what can you expect? I've been married to a doctor for almost 40 years. And they work long hours. This was different. But I just—my heart was just with him 100%, all the way, and I wanted to do anything I could do to help him. I felt really helpless because there wasn't anything I could do. I did do one thing. One day Phil called me from the unit and said, “We need Crocs without holes in the top.” I said, “Okay. I don't think I've ever seen any like that.” But he said, “As many as you can get. And we need them now.” I said, “Okay.” So I got on the phone, started calling shoe stores and you'd be surprised that all the Crocs have holes in the top. I called every shoe store that I could think of in Omaha. I googled. I went to several. I finally found one and I don't even remember what store it was, but they had some. So I drove there, and I went to the shoe section and there they were, and so I just took—I took all of them. Every size, every color, piled them in my shopping cart. Went to the checkout stand, and there were, you know, some employees milling around there, and they looked at my cart and they were curious. And so they asked me, “Is there something special going on?” I told them. And they were, “Ah. Wow. Well—we're going to give you five dollars off.” [Laughs] So that's just a little anecdote.

From the McGoogan Health Sciences Library Special Collections and Archives