This oral history interview with Ida E. Matz was conducted by Sandra Cook at Matz's home in Portland, Oregon, on June 18, 1981. In this interview, Matz discusses her early life as the child of a forest ranger in Oregon and Washington, including her education and family summers camping in state forests. She talks about her education and career as a nurse at Emanuel Hospital in Portland. She also shares her experience during the Depression. She describes how she came to work as a nurse at Commercial Iron Works during World War II. She talks about some of the injuries she saw in patients at the shipyards and about workplace safety there. She compares her shipyard nursing work to her other nursing jobs and shares her reasons for leaving the field of industrial nursing after 1968. She shares her thoughts about the women’s liberation movement.