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VOICE ONE:
I'm Ray Freeman.
VOICE TWO:
And I'm Shirley Griffith with the Special English program People in America.
Every week we tell about a person who was important in the history of the United
States. Today we tell about a woman who spent her life caring for others, Clara
Barton.
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VOICE ONE:
Clara Barton was a small woman. Yet she made a big
difference in many lives. Today her work continues to be important to thousands
of people in trouble.
Clara Barton was an unusual woman for her time. She was born
on Christmas day, December twenty-fifth, 1821. In those days, most
women were expected to marry, have children and stay home to take care of them.
Barton, however, became deeply involved in the world.
By the time of her death in 1912, she had begun a revolution that
led to the right of women to do responsible work for society. As a nurse, she
cared for thousands of wounded soldiers. She began the American Red Cross. And,
she successfully urged the American government to accept the Geneva Convention.
That treaty established standards for conditions for soldiers injured or
captured during wartime.
VOICE TWO:
Clara Barton really began her life of caring for the sick when she was only
eleven years old. She lived with her family on a farm in the northeastern state
of Massachusetts. One of her brothers, David, was seriously injured while
helping build a barn. For two years, Clara Barton took care of David until he
was healed.
Most eleven-year-old girls would have found the job impossible. But Clara
felt a great need to help. And she was very good at it. She also seemed to feel
most safe when she was at home with her mother and father, or riding a horse on
her family's land.
As a young child, Clara had great difficulty studying and making friends at
school. Her four brothers and sisters were much older than she. Several of them
were teachers. For most of Clara's early years, she was taught at home. She
finished school at age fifteen. Then she went to work in her brother David's
clothing factory. The factory soon burned, leaving her without a job.
VOICE ONE:
Clara Barton decided to teach school. In 1836, she passed the
teacher's test and began teaching near her home in North Oxford, Massachusetts.
She became an extremely popular and respected teacher.
After sixteen years of teaching, she realized she did not know all she wanted
to know. She wanted more education. Very few universities accepted women in
those days. So Clara went to a special school for girls in Massachusetts. While
in that school, she became interested in public education.
VOICE TWO:
After she graduated, a friend suggested she try to establish the first public
school in the state of New Jersey. Officials there seemed to think that
education was only for children whose parents had enough money to pay for
private schools.
The officials did not want Barton to start a school for poor people. But she
offered to teach without pay for three months. She told the officials that they
could decide after that if she had been successful. They gave her an old
building with poor equipment. And they gave her six very active little boys to
teach.
At the end of five weeks, the school was too small for the number of children
who wanted to attend. By the end of the year, the town built her a bigger,
better school. They had to give her more space. She then had six hundred
students in the school.
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VOICE ONE:
Within a year, Clara Barton had lost her voice. She had to give up teaching.
She moved to Washington, D.C., to begin a new job writing documents for the
United States government.
Clara Barton started her life as a nurse during the early days of the
Civil War in 1861. One day, she went to the train center in Washington
to meet a group of soldiers from Massachusetts. Many of them had been her
friends. She began taking care of their wounds.
Not long after, she left her office job. She became a full-time nurse for the
wounded on their way from the fields of battle to the hospital.
Soon, Barton recognized that many more lives could be saved if the men had
medical help immediately after they were hurt. Army rules would not permit
anyone except male soldiers to be on the battlefield. But Barton took her plans
for helping the wounded to a high army official. He approved her plans.
VOICE TWO:
Barton and a few other women worked in the battle areas around Washington.
She heard about the second fierce battle at Bull Run in the nearby state of
Virginia. She got into a railroad car and traveled there.
Bull Run must have been a fearful sight. Northern forces were losing a major
battle there. Everywhere Barton looked lay wounded and dying men.
Day and night she worked to help the suffering. When the last soldier had
been placed on a train, Barton finally left. She was just in time to escape the
southern army. She escaped by riding a horse, a skill she gained as a young
girl.
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VOICE ONE:
For four years, Clara Barton was at the front lines of the bloodiest battles
in the war between the North and the South. She was there at Antietam,
Fredericksburg, and Charleston. She was there at Spottsylvania, Petersburg, and
Richmond. She cleaned the wounds of badly injured soldiers. She eased the pain
of the dying. And she fed those who survived.
When she returned to Washington, Clara Barton found she was a hero. She had
proved that women could work in terrible conditions. She made people understand
that women could provide good medical care. She also showed that nursing was an
honorable profession.
After the war ended, Barton's doctor sent her to Europe to rest. Instead of
resting, she met with representatives of the International Red Cross. The
organization had been established in eighteen sixty-three to offer better
treatment for people wounded or captured during wars. She was told that the
United States was the only major nation that refused to join.
VOICE TWO:
Barton began planning a campaign to create an American Red Cross. Before she
could go home, though, the war between France and Prussia began in eighteen
seventy.
Again, Clara Barton went to the fields of battle to nurse the wounded. After
a while her eyes became infected. The woman of action was ordered to remain
quiet for months in a dark room, or become blind.
When she returned to the United States she again suffered a serious sickness.
She used the time in a hospital to write letters in support of an American Red
Cross organization.
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VOICE ONE:
In 1881, Barton's campaign proved successful. The United
States Congress signed the World's Treaty of the International Red Cross. This
established the American Chapter of the Red Cross. Clara Barton had reached one
of her major goals in life.
The next year she successfully urged Congress to accept the Geneva
Convention. This treaty set the international rules for treatment of soldiers
wounded or captured in war.
For twenty-five years, Clara Barton continued as the president of the
American Red Cross. Under her guidance, the organization helped people in all
kinds of trouble. She directed the aid efforts for victims of floods in
Johnstown, Pennsylvania and Galveston, Texas. She led Red Cross workers in
Florida during a outbreak of the disease Yellow Fever. And she helped during
periods when people were starving in Russia and Armenia.
VOICE TWO:
Clara Barton retired when she was in her middle eighties. For her last home,
she chose a huge old building near Washington, D.C. The building had been used
for keeping Red Cross equipment and then as her office. It was made with
material saved from aid centers built after the flood in Johnstown.
In that house on the Potomac River, Clara Barton lived her remaining
days. She died after a life of service to others in April, 1912, at age
ninety.
She often said: "You must never so much as think if you like it or not, if it
is bearable or not. You must never think of anything except the need --- and how
to meet it."
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VOICE ONE:
This Special English program was written by Jeri Watson. I'm Ray Freeman.
VOICE TWO:
And I'm Shirley Griffith. Join us again next week for another People in
America program on the Voice of America.
（来源：VOA 英语点津姗姗编辑）
