Unpacking History: Creepy Dolls and My First Assignment

When I first moved to Dayton a little over two years ago, the VA History Office looked quite different than it does today. Mostly, it was much smaller! The VA Museum Program (VAMP) at that time consisted of just our Curator and Museum Program Director, Kurt! I was joining him as the Collections Curator with the main goal of unpacking and processing the objects that could become part of the National VA History Center Permanent Collection.

But before I could dive into boxes of historical objects, Kurt had an assignment for me: my first ever article for the Curator Corner blog on the VA History Center website. He explained that in October 2021, he wrote an article on the “creepy dolls” that were in the recently acquired collection from Johnson City, Tennessee. I remember reading the article when I was first learning about the National VA History Center, so I was thrilled when Kurt sent me out to write my very first “What’s in the Box,” an idea he had to highlight new discoveries about the objects considered for our collections.

This article was the first of many to explore VA History through the artifacts that tell its story best, all in the model of Kurt’s original post about the creepy dolls.

In many ways, it is the blueprint for all of our posts on the Curator Corner blog, and since it is Halloweentime once again, it seemed like fun to revisit his original article and provide a little update on the scariest residents of the collections floor.

If you don’t recall the original piece, we’re talking about a collection of 10 dolls, each outfitted with their own bed and accessories, including gowns, blankets, a hot water bottle, and even a change of clothes stored neatly on a miniature pink hanger. These dolls are laying in beds that are rigged up with a system of pulleys and rope connected to weights.

At the time, Kurt’s assessment of the dolls was that they were for procedural demonstrations. In other words, somebody would use the dolls to show a patient, volunteer, or medical aide exactly how a certain procedure is meant to be done. Little else was known about them at the time, and it was unclear if we would ever be able to determine their provenance, or original context. 

During my research on the dolls, I was able to fill in a lot of the blanks that we had when originally looking at them.

First, we needed to know how old the dolls were. Kurt correctly recognized back in 2021 that these were ordinary children’s dolls before they became models for various orthopedic conditions. This ended up working in our favor, as the models of dolls were easily identifiable. For example, a Barbie-like doll was dressed as a nurse, while lesser-known dolls named Pepper and Tammy served as patients. These identifications made it easy to start to piece together the rest of the doll’s story because it helped place it in time. Each of the dolls included in the “set” were made between 1963 and 1965, which gave us a great window to explore further through newspaper records.

These records revealed a trove of details that originally felt impossible to find. It turns out Kurt’s initial analysis was correct! A 1964 article in the Johnson City Press confirms that the dolls absolutely were intended for the demonstration of orthopedic procedures. The article features a photograph of the dolls as well as the nurses who were responsible for them.

These nurses worked in the orthopedic department, and they created the dolls in order to convey the proper way for patients to be put into various forms of traction, a technique using pulleys and weights in order to hold or pull certain bones or muscles in certain ways. This would have been an important practice for newer nurses on staff, while more experienced colleagues could show them how it was meant to be done. These dolls would have also been great resources for volunteers such as the Gray Ladies, a group associated with the Red Cross who were regularly serving the Johnson City VA at this time. An additional benefit to these dolls was that they provided an easy way to communicate to patients and their families what a certain procedure might entail. Models such as these dolls may have been used the same way that a surgeon today might request a three-dimensional scan or print of an organ that needs operation.

Whether in the 20th century or today, using a visual aid to communicate to patients can help ease their concerns about a procedure, and creates space for positive experiences between a healthcare provider and the Veterans they serve.

I learned in archaeology school that we have to understand objects in their own context; at one point in time, every creepy doll or broken toy might have been some child’s favorite thing in the whole world. As for these dolls, they probably weren’t childhood treasures, but a remarkable story hides behind their creepy exteriors. Understanding these stories and the people who lived them are part of what makes exploring VA History so exciting. Happy Halloween from all of us at the VA Museum Program!