1930s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s Sue St. Clair, 98MN/MPH Kelly Spooner, 98N Deaths Faculty News |
Harriet Harper Williams McDonald, 32N, 51N, 57MN, and her husband, Jim, live in Cloncurry, Australia, but keep an apartment in Atlanta for the occasional foray back to Harriet's hometown. (Jim is a native Aussie who runs a large cattle ranch in Queensland.) On a trip Stateside in July, the McDonalds found time to sample cous-cous and take in a belly-dancing performance at The Casbah, a local Moroccan restaurant, with their friend Edith Honeycutt, 39N. All too soon for their Atlanta friends, the McDonalds left Atlanta and its 90+ degree days for the winter weather back home. This fall Harriet plans to do it in reverse: leave the warm weather Down Under for a cool, crisp Thanksgiving in
Georgia.
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ue St. Clair, 98MN/MPH, of Jacksonville, Fla., working with a Graduate Innovative Project award from the School of Nursing, has set up the first community-based mental health program in Malawi, in East Africa. In a post-project essay, she explained the genesis of her work: "In 1996, Embangweni Mission Hospital in the Southwest Mzimba district of Malawi began a primary health care department, which set the stage to incorporate mental health into its primary health care activities at the village level." St. Clair learned that Malawi did not have a community mental health program and that Embangweni Hospital was interested in hosting a nursing graduate student from Emory to do hospital or community-based research and training. She applied for and received a Graduate Innovative Project award to do a Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices (KAP) community survey in Malawi and to initiate a process that would lead to the creation of a community-based mental health program. In October 1997, she went to Malawi. "The theoretical model of Paulo Friere, based upon the importance of communities making their own decisions about their needs, guided my research. Therefore, before any program could be developed, time had to be spent in the targeted communities to determine community interest in, and level of cooperation for, a mental health program. Meetings were held with village leaders and village health committees. Both were very concerned about mental disorders in their villages, but they thought nothing could be done beyond the care provided by the traditional healers. Nevertheless, the problem of how to care for people who are mentally disturbed weighed heavily upon their minds; therefore, their interest in any efforts to improve mental health care for their people was both enthusiastic and heartwarming. . . . Through discussions with village leaders it was possible to develop a survey that would help the Embangweni primary health care department understand the communities' attitudes and beliefs about the mentally disturbed." Following a series of such surveys and meetings, a program development plan was approved and a work plan established that identified those responsible for running the clinic. "Before leaving Malawi," St. Clair writes, "a proposal for funding was completed and submitted to UNICEF for the 1998 development activities. I returned to Emory on Jan. 22, 1998, with a warm glow in my heart, put there by the people of Malawi, and with confidence that I had left something behind that would benefit the targeted communities of Malawi." |
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elly Spooner, 98N, was intrigued to find that the sick infants who visited the pediatrician's office in which she worked one summer were formula-fed, while those making "well-baby" visits were breast-fed. "I am passionate about the importance of breast-feeding," says Spooner, who transferred that passion, along with fellow 1998 graduates Kate Brown and Emily Young, into a Senior Innovative Project that targeted expectant and new adolescent mothers at Atlanta's Booker T. Washington High School. "What is lacking for a lot of moms is education about breast-feeding - enough information to make an educated decision," Spooner says. Many of the moms-to-be who attended one or both sessions eventually changed their minds about breast-feeding, Spooner reports. Spooner, who plans to work for a year before returning to school to become a nurse practitioner, has long been interested in pediatrics. Her tiny hometown of Sneads, Fla., is 50 miles from Tallahassee, the location of the nearest pediatric hospital. "My goal is to go back home and provide care we don't now have," she says. "Doctors and nurse practitioners come but don't seem to stay." Spooner herself remembers having to travel miles to see a pediatrician. Spooner once planned to become a doctor but was prodded into nursing by a friend who thought the profession better suited Spooner's disposition. She soon agreed. "Nursing felt at home," she says. "It's giving the type of care I'd always been interested in - preventive care." |
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Sisters Irene Layfield Darden, 24N, and Lucy Layfield Ryan, 24N, died within six months of each other in 1997, with Irene passing away in June and Lucy in December. Both were born in Harris County Georgia - Lucy on Oct. 1, 1900, and Irene on Oct. 26, 1902 - to W.D. and Sallie Lou Smith Layfield. Lucy's daughter, Mrs. Diane Cole, wrote us that her mother "was always proud of her Emory degree." After retirement, Lucy had traveled with her daughter's family to Pennsylvania, then to Florida, and finally to Dollar Bay, Mich., where she was when she died. Bessie Wood Watkins, 29N, on March 28, 1998, at age 90, of complications from a stroke and pneumonia. She died in Monahans, Texas, at the home of her daughter, Laura Spearman. Eva Shook, 33N, of Stanley, N.C., on Dec. 17, 1997. Miss Shook had first completed nurse's training at Gastonia, N.C., Orthopaedic Hospital. She then completed her bachelor's degree at Emory. She is survived by a sister, Kathryn S. Allen. Sarah Eaton Russell, 34N, of Winder, Ga., on April 15, 1998. Frances Riley Bailey, 38N, of Atlanta, on Sept. 6, 1998. Mrs. Bailey had been a head nurse on the urology floor of Emory University Hospital. According to Professor Emerita Elizabeth Mabry, "she was a wonderful person who did wonderful work throughout the community." Sara Reed Easley, 42N, of Terre Haute, Ind., on May 3, 1998. She is survived by her husband, John Easley. Jacquelyn Lewis MacClements, 45N, of Charlotte, N.C., on June 13, 1998. According to her husband, John E. MacClements, "Jackie never forgot Emory." Nathalie Titus Furniss, 47N, of San Rafael, Calif., on Oct. 20, 1997. Lora Cope Marshall, 55MN, of Atlanta, on Dec. 21, 1997. She was a member of the first master's of nursing class at Emory. Julie Buck Lambert, 58N, of Stone Mountain, Ga., at age 62. Linda Margulis, 88N, of New York, NY, of complications from cancer. Margulis' former roommate at Emory, Betsy Schechter, 88B, now a filmmaker living in Venice, Calif., is collecting gifts in her friend's memory to establish a scholarship in her honor at the School of Nursing. For more information or to contribute to this scholarship, please contact Anne Bavier at the School of Nursing, at (404) 727-6917. Mattie Lewis Shelley, 94N, of Stone Mountain, Ga., on May 11, 1998. She is survived by her husband, Larry E. Shelley, and three sons. |
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Copyright © Emory University, 1998. All Rights Reserved.
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Web version by Jaime Henriquez.