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within the dusty outback, among the kangaroos, big snakes, feral camels,
bucking broncos, cattle stations, and ringers (cowboys), lives Harriet
Harper Williams McDonald, 32N, 51N, 57MN, a former surgical nurse and
faculty member with a passion for adventure
and the School of Nursing.The 91-year-old McDonald and her husband, Jim, live on a spread the size of a small country in northwest Queensland, Australia. Their home cattle station is south of a small community called Cloncurry. Mount Isa, the nearest town and home to the bronco-busting Mount Isa Rodeo,is a mere 100 miles away, and the city of Brisbane is about 1,000 miles away. But who needs town when everything you need is outside your back door? “I can look out my window and see the cattle ringers’ house, the gardener’s house, the landing strip, and the pilot’s house,” says McDonald in her lilting Southern accent. McDonald didn’t start out in the semitropical outback surrounded by cattle and miles of flat, gritty country occasionally spiked with rangy scrub brush and rugged mountains that look more like hills. The Bogart, Georgia, native has been associated with the School of Nursing for much of her life. She enrolled at Emory in 1929 and received her nursing diploma in 1932. Her class was the last to have the name “Wesley Memorial Hospital”—the predecessor to Emory University Hospital—on its pin. McDonald began her career as a private duty nurse and surgeon’s assistant at Emory Hospital. “I first saw her when she would come to the hospital to write doctor’s orders on the charts. I was in awe of her,” says Edith Honeycutt, 39N, a student nurse at the time. “She showed me what one could do if one so desired.” Eventually, McDonald switched career paths from private nursing to teaching. She enrolled again at Emory to earn her bachelor’s degree in 1951 and joined the School of Nursing faculty a year later. “I taught in the operating room at Emory Hospital using the theater as a laboratory,” she reminisces. “I taught nursing care prior to, during, and immediately after surgery. I was deeply concerned with aseptic technique.” In 1957, McDonald received her master’s degree from Emory and married her first husband, Ellis Williams, a real estate developer and singer whom she met in their church choir. She continued to teach students like Barbara Reed, 57N, 79MN, whose first rotation was a six-week stint in the OR. “Mrs. Williams—that’s what we called her then—taught aseptic technique in a way that ingrained the information in you,” Reed recounts. “It became part of practice. We never forgot what she said.” On her first day in the OR, the surgeon had Reed stand on a stool so that she could peer in and see the patient’s heart up close. “I was scared to death. It was the first time I had ever seen a beating heart. But Harriet was very supportive and nonthreatening,” Reed says. Dr. Elizabeth Mabry, professor of nursing emerita, who was responsible for teaching medical/surgical nursing at the time, says McDonald 
may have been nonthreatening but was very “determined and strict.
You didn’t dare do anything wrong.” That’s because McDonald put the patient’s welfare first and made sure that students in the OR didn’t contaminate the sterile field. “If there was a break in technique, I called it, no matter who was to blame,” she notes. “I couldn’t sleep at night if my nurses learned a sloppy technique.” From the time she joined the faculty until years after her retirement in 1967, McDonald served Emory and the nursing school as a volunteer. She was president of the Nurses Alumni Association (NAA) in 1951 and subsequently represented nursing alumni at the university level as director of the NAA and vice president of the Association of Emory Alumni (AEA). The AEA presented her an Award of Honor in 1981 for her many years of service. A few years later, after her husband Ellis died in 1983, McDonald went “down under” to visit her godson’s sister, who had married an Australian. “Right after that, she told me she was going back,” recounts Honeycutt. “I asked Harriet, ‘What in the world is in Australia?’ She replied, ‘You’d be surprised.’ ” The main attraction was Jim McDonald, her godson’s father-in-law, whom she had known for several years. McDonald married the cattleman in 1988 and moved to Brightlands Station in Queensland. Jim, 96, is the patriarch of the family-owned MDH Pastoral Company, run today by his two sons and two of his grandsons. With 150,000 head of cattle and 11 cattle stations, his enterprise is one of the top 10 cattle producers in Australia. Harriet McDonald embraced this new world with her customary spunk, despite Jim telling her she shouldn’t get up on a horse at her age. She also jokes about moving into the station’s “honeymoon cottage,” a house built 30 years ago when the oldest son married. Luckily for her Atlanta friends and family, McDonald returns twice a year for long visits to regale them with stories about life in the outback. Emory, too, remains close at heart, despite the 9,000-mile trek between Atlanta and Australia. “Emory has been so good to me,” she says. “I spent most of my life there.” |
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 arriet
Harper Williams McDonald cares deeply about Emory nursing students. When
her first husband died unexpectedly in 1983, she used the proceeds from
a life insurance policy to establish the Harriet and Ellis Williams Scholarship
in his memory. She also stipulated that it help nursing students with
strong academic records after they completed their first year."My idea is to give students-including graduate students-the opportunity of having a scholarship after they've worked hard enough to deserve it," she says. Zoe Hicks, 76L, a family member and McDonald's attorney, says the gift "is a positive project for Harriet" and one that continues to bring her pride. Today, McDonald continues to support nursing scholarships-a strong tie that extends between Emory and her home in Australia. Because giving has made such a difference in her life, she made a bequest to the School of Nursing so that future students become the excellent nurses she wants them to be. To learn more about planned giving, contact Meaghan R. Hogan in the Office of Gift Planning at (404) 712-8207 or mhoga02@emory.edu. |
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