Donna Locke: A boomer looks at 70
Donna Locke
Having closed in on seven decades of life, I’m thinking back on many things here in my old hometown. I tell my grandchildren I don’t see what they’re seeing when we drive around town I see what used to be there.
I was born in the old King’s Daughters Hospital on School Street when Columbia was truly a small town. I moved to Atlanta when I was grown and moved back here 19 years ago.
I remember when summers were long and unrushed because we got out of school in May and returned after Labor Day. In those long-ago Augusts, we took our time and bought our school clothes in old shops around the Columbia square. Everyone got one pair of leather shoes, usually loafers, to wear all school year.
Bell County contributed more than its share of nurses who served during the two World Wars — first from the schools of nursing at Scott & White, founded in 1904,
BROOKHAVEN â It is hard to even describe the stress experienced by the frontline healthcare workers during the height of the pandemic at the Kingâs Daughters Medical Center (KDMC). CEO Alvin Hoover said the hospital used to average 5-7 deaths per month. In January, they saw 25 deaths.
âThe tragedy we have seen is nearly unspeakable, minute-by-minute, hour-after-hour, and day-after-day,â Hoover said.Â
In January, all the ICUs in Jackson were full, so KDMC started taking ICU patients from more distant communities such as Grenada, Union and Choctaw.Â
âThat put tremendous stress on the staff,â Hoover said. âWe went as high as 13 ICU patients with 12 patients on a ventilator at one time, which was unheard of. It was exhausting the staff. Then one day when we had 12 ICU patients and every room in the emergency room full, we had a wreck on 1-55 that injured six people, including children. At same time, another ambulance brought in a patient with a
In 1918, Sara Kerr Culbertson lived a respectable life in her sprawling craftsman house in Temple. The next year, she traded it all for a rundown neighborhood in the underbelly