Verenice Hawkins, The Shot Lady Of Dade County And CPR Advocate

By LYDIA BERGLAR
News Editor

When Mary Verenice Cooper Hawkins was a student at Valley Head School, one of her high school teachers trained the students to think for themselves and live with conviction. This (and her parents’ influence) made an impression on Hawkins, and she used critical thinking and conviction throughout her nursing career, even helping to add a state law.

Hawkins recalls, “This teacher would ask you a question, and when you’d answer, he would try to make you change your mind. If you did, he’d get on to you: ‘Don’t do that! Make up your mind carefully and study things. Don’t let anybody change your mind unless they prove you’re wrong.’”

Born in 1932 in Valley Head, Ala., 93-year-old Hawkins is still sharp as a tack and can easily recall all kinds of details from her childhood in Valley Head and adult life in Dade County.

She grew up in a simple but happy home with her parents, Horace and Nancy, and siblings. The Cooper family didn’t have electricity or running water. They cooked over a wood stove, they heated the house with a fireplace, they converted flour sacks into linens, and most of their food came from their farm, but Hawkins and her siblings never felt poor.

Hawkins remembers, “The Great Depression was really hard for Daddy. He said that it was harder having us kids and knowing he was responsible for us, but that we did help him because we didn’t know things were bad. We were cheerful. We were just happy kids. That helped him get through it.”

Horace gave Hawkins her first lamb and her first calf. She gave the firstborn from each animal back to her father, but all the rest of the offspring were hers to sell. She saved up enough money to put herself through nursing school after high school.

Along with the teacher mentioned above, Hawkins’ parents also prepared her to speak her mind and do what’s right. “My parents were different. Back then, kids were to be seen and not heard, but not with my parents. We discussed family matters, and we voiced our opinions, and our opinions were listened to. If they couldn’t follow our opinions, they explained why not.”

In 1950, Hawkins graduated with 23 other students from Valley Head and started nursing school at Erlanger. The nursing program involved three years of schooling while also working shifts at the hospital.

“We ran that hospital,” Hawkins says proudly. “On night shift, there would be no one but student nurses and the night supervisors. I wouldn’t trade anything for those three years of nursing.”

She remembers notable patients of hers, like the first tracheoesophageal fistula patient in Chattanooga. She remembers her three-month pediatric rotation during the polio epidemic. “It was terrible. I heard the kids scream and cry.” One of her polio patients was a 16-year-old boy in an iron lung. He recovered and grew up to become a surgeon, and one of his patients was Horace, Hawkins’ father.

With the influence of her parents and teachers, Hawkins was equipped to do what was right even when it wasn’t by the book. “I learned early on that you could sometimes break rules.”

Once, a pregnant woman with aplastic anemia had been ordered penicillin by the doctor. “It was new, and everybody was trying it, and they didn’t think as much about the allergies to it as they do now,” Hawkins explains.

At this time, nurses weren’t allowed to tell patients what medication they were giving them. Those matters were left up to the doctor. “We couldn’t even tell them their blood pressure—you see how stupid some rules were,” Hawkins explains bluntly.

When she gave the penicillin to this patient, the woman asked what it was. Even though she wasn’t supposed to, Hawkins told her it was penicillin. “She said she was allergic to it, so I went back and told the doctor. He was glad I had told her!”

This woman’s husband came to see her every evening, but visiting hours ended at 8:30 p.m. “They weren’t bothering anybody, and she was getting enough rest, so I told them they could stay during my shift and leave about 10:30 p.m.,” says Hawkins.

Sadly, the pregnant woman died during delivery by caesarean-section. “I could’ve made the husband go home at 8:30, but I didn’t,” Hawkins reflects soberly. The husband came back to Erlanger later to thank Hawkins for giving them that precious extra time.

Hawkins not only stood up to foolish policies but also held her ground when dealing with unpleasant doctors. She has stories about a few doctors who looked down on the students, but mostly she remembers doctors being incredibly helpful. The nursing students worked alongside the doctors and learned from them through hands-on experience.

While she was in nursing school, a young man named E.M. “Brody” Hawkins often visited her parents—at least that’s who she thought Brody was visiting.

As she wrote in her memoir, “One time, I was going home on the Greyhound bus, and Kylus Campbell was riding the bus home from work in Chattanooga. I said I was going to be on my vacation, and he said he would tell his friend Brody. I asked why he would tell him. He laughed and said, ‘You don’t think he has been going there to see your mother and daddy, do you?’ I said, ‘Well, that is who he talks to.’ I had been home about an hour when Brody came. He visited several times during the two weeks that I was home but never asked me to go anywhere. After I got back to school, he called and asked me to go to a movie.”

The rest was history, as they say. Hawkins spent three months in Rockville, Md., for her psychiatric rotation while, but she and Brody wrote letters back and forth until she returned home.

Her memoir continues, “One night, he told me he had never saved any money, although he had been working for some time after he had gotten out of the army. He said he didn’t have anything but his truck and was making payments on it. I was a bit puzzled by the whole conversation. On our next date, we went to a movie at the Broad Street Drive-In. That night, he asked me to marry him. I was shocked.” It was April 1, so Hawkins thought it was an April Fool’s joke, but Brody was serious.

“I really enjoyed being with him but had not thought about marriage. I wanted to get through nursing school and work and buy clothes and things I had not been able to buy. He told me he would buy me the things I wanted. We were so different. He was impulsive and quick to make up his mind about things. I don’t usually rush into things, and I think things over. They say opposites attract.”

After thinking for a few days, Hawkins agreed to marry Brody. “He said he had already decided he wanted to marry me before we started dating, but I had not. Since he had visited us often, I did know a good bit about him, and he was lots of fun. I can’t remember how long it took me to decide, but not very long because I really enjoyed being with him.”

The young couple spent a weekend in Chattanooga for their honeymoon, and they rented their first house with four large rooms and one small room for just $15 a month.

As for all the clothes and nice things Hawkins had wanted to buy, she wrote, “It would have been okay with him, but old practical me decided they were not the most important thing. A house was the thing to plan for.”

So, the young couple worked and saved until they could build their home off Cloverdale Road in Rising Fawn where Hawkins still lives today. (Brody died in 1998.)

Brody brought Hawkins to this property while they were dating. It was a cow pasture, and he said he’d always wanted a house there, overlooking the Rising Fawn valley and facing the side of Lookout Mountain. When the Sentinel visited Hawkins at her home, the mountainside was arrayed in all its autumn glory, hawks circled high up in the sky, and only an occasional passing car at the bottom of the slope disturbed the peace. It wasn’t hard to see why Brody loved this spot.

A week after their wedding in 1953, Hawkins began working in the premature unit at Erlanger’s Children’s Hospital. She worked until a few months before their eldest, Linda, was born in early 1955. Their son, Ronnie, soon followed.

Hawkins had planned to stay home while the kids were young, but the need for nurses soon drew her back to Erlanger. Their neighbor was the evening supervisor at Children’s, and she recruited Hawkins to work second shift on Fridays and Saturdays.

Brody had a career in construction, working for a few different companies over the years. By balancing shifts and the kids, the family made it work.

Over time, Hawkins worked the premature unit, the emergency room, and she got a variety of pediatric experience. “See, everything just worked out so well for my job later at the health department,” she reflects.

Another job that set her up well for the health department job was substitute teaching at Rising Fawn School (which has since closed). It only paid $7 a day, but she enjoyed it, and her kids were at the school, so it worked out well.

Years later, Hawkins volunteered one day per week to listen to students practice reading. She did this for 22 years. “I told the schools I had eight years subbing and 22 reading, so that’s my 30 years!”

If you get the chance, just ask her about where some of her students are now. You’ll quickly see just how proud she is of these former students.

While she was substitute teaching, Hawkins received a call about a part-time public health nurse job in Dade. It was only two half-days each month, so she took the job while continuing to sub. Eventually, Linda and Ronnie were approaching graduation, and Hawkins says, “I knew that sub pay didn’t make college tuition.”

Our health department didn’t need her full-time, so she worked with Bridge Health (it was called Lookout Mountain Community Services at the time) for six months before taking the family planning job for our four-county region: Dade, Walker, Catoosa, and Chattooga.

After a few years of moving around and shifting roles, Hawkins had worked for each of the four county’s health departments. Wilma Pace (head nurse at the Dade County Health Department) was diagnosed with cancer after 22 years on the job, so Hawkins took over from her.

Pace’s approach to the job was personal and caring, and Hawkins has documented stories of Pace going above and beyond for patients. Hawkins took up the mantle and carried on that same level of care. The title “head nurse” makes it seem as if there was a team of nurses, but for many years the head nurse was the only nurse in the department.

Of the four counties, Hawkins says Dade was unique because of its smaller size and population. “People would come in or call us about things that might not have anything to do with health.” Often, people would stop by just to catch up on the latest scuttlebutt.

She remembers one family that had to fill out an application for disability benefits, but neither the husband nor wife could read or write, so she filled out the application.

Another family had difficulty affording insulin needed for their daughter with type one diabetes. Dade’s health department asked for special permission to help the family. “We taught her to accept the fact that she was diabetic,” says Hawkins. The young girl was ashamed of her diagnosis, but with the support of Hawkins, she grew to accept it and was even able to explain type one diabetes to her friends and classmates.

“I loved the job at the health department,” reflects Hawkins. “I loved the people. They appreciated what you did.” One patient gave her a blueberry bush that is still alive at her Rising Fawn home. “Every year, when I pick them, I think of that man.”

She remembers one young boy who suffered from seizures. A specialist in Chattanooga told his parents that it was caused by the DPT (diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis) vaccine, but Hawkins didn’t believe this for one moment.

The schools were concerned about making sure the child was safe when he enrolled. “They called me and said, ‘What are we going to do?’ I told them, ‘You’re going to learn to do CPR.’”

When the boy was in high school, his family took him to Vanderbilt where it was revealed at last that a brain tumor was causing the seizures. The tumor was removed, and the boy joyfully kept track of the number of days that turned into years that he didn’t have a seizure.

Hawkins says, “The momma took a lawyer with her when she went to get his medical records. They didn’t want to give her the records, but when they got them, it was on the record that the specialist in Chattanooga knew he had a brain tumor, but the family was not to be told. You see why I’m furious! He strung them along for years while that child had bad seizures.”

One major part of her job was handling vaccinations, so Hawkins became known as “shot lady” to the youngsters of Dade. When they saw her in stores or around town, they would say concernedly, “Momma, there’s shot lady!”

“In one month, I did over 800 shots,” Hawkins recalls. “Those kids I’d had in school started having babies and coming in. That’s my kids!” she says proudly and protectively. “They were used to me bossing them, and they listened to me, so I could tell them how to raise kids.”

For many years, she attended Dade County High School’s graduation ceremonies and looked at the list of names. “95 percent of them I did their baby shots. Linda taught them, and I did their baby shots.”

She retired from the Dade County Health Department in January 1996.

Out of all of the stories from her life, Hawkins is most proud of being the driving force behind getting CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) taught in health classes in Georgia schools. Without her insistence and advocacy, Senate Bill 212 might never have come to be.

The bill reads, “Beginning in the 2013-2014 school year, each local board of education which operates a school with grades nine through 12 shall provide instruction in cardiopulmonary resuscitation and the use of an automated external defibrillator to its students as a requirement within existing health or physical education courses.”

Hawkins’ firm belief in the importance of having as many people trained in CPR as possible started when she worked at the Walker County Health Department. She and another nurse were giving a baby its vaccinations when the baby started turning blue.

“Nobody had had CPR in nursing school back then,” Hawkins explains. An earlier iteration called artificial respiration was taught, but CPR was still new and she’d only ever read about it. “My first reaction was, ‘Get the doctor, and get the resuscitator! You can’t let this baby die!’”

She began mouth-to-mouth while the other nurse did chest compressions, even though neither had been trained in CPR. Hawkins told the nurse to get the adrenaline, and when the nurse hesitated, Hawkins said firmly, “I said, get the adrenaline!”

With mouth-to-mouth, chest compressions, and adrenaline, the baby began breathing again. Hawkins found out later that the baby’s father, who was in the room at the time, was an EMT trained in CPR. He told Hawkins that he assumed she had been trained in CPR because she and the nurse did everything correctly.

Hawkins maintained good relations with Dade’s schools and told them about the importance of CPR. She helped get local EMTs to train teachers, and Hawkins herself was at last able to get CPR training alongside the teachers.

Some of her former students were the EMTs, and in talking with them, she learned that they loved teaching CPR. However, she couldn’t convince any superintendents to add CPR to the curriculum. “I had teachers that wanted to teach it, and the fella that was over the ambulance service out of Rome told me he’d come and teach the teachers how to teach it. He was all for it too.”

Temporarily, Hawkins gave up the pursuit, but after she retired, she took up the cause again. She turned on the news one day and saw a story about a baby who drowned. CPR wasn’t anywhere in the story. It seemed that no one at the scene knew that CPR might have saved this young life. “I woke up in the night thinking about that. It was bugging me,” recalls Hawkins.

So, she met with Jeff Mullis (our state senator at the time) to talk about the need for a state law requiring CPR to be taught in schools. Mullis liked the idea, but “it just wasn’t going along fast enough to suit me,” says Hawkins.

She wrote to the state superintendent, the state health department, and the governor. She was the driving force that kept the ball rolling even when she received very few responses and it seemed like the bill would never happen.

At one point in the process, Mullis had concerns that the requirement would create a financial burden on schools. “I wrote back, ‘How much is a life worth?’” says Hawkins.

About that time, Robin Ford Wallace wrote an article for the Sentinel about the EMTs teaching CPR here in Dade. “I sent that article to the governor and all the people who didn’t bother to call me back and Jeff Mullis, and said ‘We did it, and it didn’t cost a thing!’”

At last, all of her advocacy came to fruition, and Governor Nathan Deal came to DCHS in 2013 to sign the bill with Hawkins watching proudly. She knows of two Dade students who used CPR to save lives after they had recently completed the training in school.

Throughout her life, Hawkins found ways to do what was right in order to help people, even when rules or people stood in the way. When she’s studied a situation and made up her mind, her persistence is a force to be reckoned with.

Hawkins still serves on our Board of Health and is a member of the Dade County Historical Society. Deservedly, Hawkins was named Dade’s 1945 Fair Queen in 2023.