Little Nell takes after her namesake
				ell Woodruff Hodgson Watt was spoiled rotten as a little girl. She’s quite proud of it, as a matter of fact. Watt, 77, is the youngest of four children born and reared in Athens, Georgia. She entered the world eight years behind her closest brother. “That’s why I’m so spoiled,” she explains happily. “I had three older brothers and was the cow’s tail.”         Watt’s parents, Morton and Lydia Hodgson, naturally delighted in having a daughter. And so did her aunt, Nell Hodgson Woodruff, for whom the School of Nursing at Emory is named. Woodruff studied nursing in Athens before she married her husband, Robert, who would become head of The Coca-Cola Company in Atlanta and the largest contributor to Emory in university history.         Although the Woodruffs remained childless, nothing could keep Nell Woodruff away when her nieces and nephews were born. “She brought me in and laid me in my mother’s arms,” recounts Watt, known from that moment on as “Little Nell.”         The bond between Little Nell and her aunt, Nana, evolved from the lifelong friendship between Nell (Morton’s sister) and Lydia. Because their families were so close, Lydia named her daughter for Nell Woodruff and told her that she and Robert could “have” Little Nell anytime.         “I had two sets of parents from the time I was born,” says Little Nell.  “Have you ever heard of anybody so blessed?  Nana and Uncle Bob put clothes on my back and braces on my teeth. They gave me music lessons, took me on trips, and decided with Mother and Daddy where I would go to school. Nana always told me my mother was the reason. It was a fairy tale.”         Little Nell’s earliest memories of her aunt are the birthday parties her parents gave for her. Nana came each time, bearing a silver plate with her niece’s initials and the year engraved on the back. There were other gifts as well. “One of the ladies in Athens used to turn me upside down to see the rosebuds on the britches that Nana had sent me,” says Little Nell.        As she and her cousins grew older, they accompanied the Woodruffs on their adventures. Uncle Bob taught Little Nell to ride a horse at TE Ranch, the spread he owned in Cody, Wyoming. There were Christmas celebrations at Ichauway Plantation, the Woodruffs’ hunting retreat in south Georgia. There were parties attended by heads of companies such as Procter & Gamble and General Electric. And there were trips to Washington for the second inauguration of President Eisenhower  and to Hollywood, where Little Nell had dinner with Ronald Reagan and chatted with Cary Grant at the Brown Derby.         Those experiences pale in comparison to the affection that Nana and Uncle Bob bestowed on Little Nell and her 26 first cousins. “Nana lavished love on the whole kit and caboodle,” Little Nell says. “Everybody adored her. She never knew a stranger and was warm and loving to everybody. She would get just as excited about having chicken chow mein with us in our funny little kitchen as having dinner at the White House. She was a very special lady.” A well-planned bribe         When Nell and Robert Woodruff were courting, she told her family that if she could not marry him, she would never marry and would be a nurse the rest of her life. In the process, her future husband learned a thing or two about making his way in the world.         “Uncle Bob would take a box of candy and roses and get on the train and go to Athens to visit Nana in nursing school,” Little Nell recalls. “They were not for Nana. They were for the head nurse at St. Mary’s Hospital. He would bribe her to let Nana come out of the hospital and sit on the steps and have a date with him before he had to catch the train back to Atlanta.”         Although Nell Hodgson withdrew from nursing school to marry Robert in 1912, nursing remained part of her life. She volunteered with the Red Cross during both World Wars, often working in the maternity ward. She supported her husband’s decision in 1937 to provide $50,000 to establish the Robert Winship Memorial Clinic for cancer treatment and research. (Known today as the Winship Cancer Institute, the clinic was named for Woodruff’s maternal grandfather, who like Woodruff’s own mother, died of cancer.) Some years later, Nell Woodruff recruited Red Cross volunteers for Emory University Hospital and worked there herself to fill in for the staff nurses serving in the military during World War II.         Mrs. Woodruff’s dedication to Emory Hospital and the School of Nursing continued following the war. In 1954, President Eisenhower appointed her as a delegate to the World Health Organization to represent nursing. In 1959, a visit by Mary Clark Rockefeller prompted Nell Woodruff and others to establish The Associates, a volunteer group that promotes and supports the School of Nursing. Of course, Little Nell was involved.         “Nana wanted me to be a nurse so bad, but I was not cut out for that,” she says. “My husband, Robert, had to take the splinters out of our children’s fingers. I told Nana that I would do whatever I could but could not be a nurse.”         Little Nell found other ways to serve the nursing school. She volunteered with The Associates and, following her aunt’s death in 1968, presented the annual Silver Bowl Award, on behalf of the Nurses Alumni Association, to the nursing graduate with the most outstanding clinical and scholastic abilities. The idea for the award (first presented in 1949) was Mrs. Woodruff’s, who once said, “Each girl who graduates accomplishes for me my life’s ambition.” Also in honor of her aunt, Little Nell continued hosting a tea for new nursing graduates at the Woodruffs’ Atlanta home on Tuxedo Road. The event was a predecessor to the Woodruff Tea now held at the School of Nursing each May.         Little Nell will always be grateful that her aunt lived long enough to attend the January 1968 groundbreaking for the School of Nursing building on Asbury Circle. Emory’s Board of Trustees renamed the school in Mrs. Woodruff’s honor in 1967.         “They had a beautiful luncheon for her that day. I thanked the board for naming the school for her,” says Little Nell, who remembers how nervous she was with Uncle Bob looking on behind her. “It was a dream come true. That was the last time I saw her.”         A few days after the dedication, Mrs. Woodruff suffered a cerebral hemorrhage at Ichauway. By the next afternoon, the woman who had cared for injured animals and sick dolls as a child and grew up to shape the future of Emory nursing was gone. But her caring spirit endures in many ways.         When Nell Watt’s three children were young—including a daughter also named Little Nell—she followed in her aunt’s footsteps by dedicating herself to community service. She served on the Fulton County board and state board of the American Cancer Society and as president of Women of the Church with First Presbyterian Church. She also addressed the national convention for Easter Seals and chaired the Women of the Year celebration for Atlanta.         Today, Little Nell continues to speak on occasion at the nursing school (such as the dedication of the current School of Nursing building in 2001) and is active in Women Alone Together (a group for widowed, divorced, and single women) and at Westminster Presbyterian Church. In October, Little Nell published Heart Whispers (Looking Glass Books, 2003) a devotional book of prayers and lighthearted lessons about God. “I’m just thrilled because I’ve always wanted to be a Christian writer,” she says.         She also finds joy in watching the School of Nursing flourish as her aunt intended. “I’m sure Nana’s spirit is hovering over the school. She is so proud of those students, and so am I.”—Pam Auchmutey
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