Health care workers recall assisting area families

Helping families get health care, many times by improving living conditions and sources of drinking water, was the mission of an elite group of Family Health Workers in 1970.

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In June 1970, what was known then as Beaufort-Jasper Comprehensive Health Services was formed to help poverty-stricken families in the Lowcountry.

Dr. Donald E. Gatch, a Beaufort and Bluffton physician, reported in a New York Times article that he saw children dying of starvation, that most black children of his area (Beaufort County) were infested with worms and that families were living in hovels worse than the pig sties.

Studies by three medical universities found "178 Negro pre-school children (showed) that nearly three out of every four had intestinal parasites, either Ascaris (roundworm) or Trichuris (whipworm) or both" said the Times article.

Among the original 19 women recruited to improve life for the children and people of the area was Gladys Pope of St. Helena Island. Thirty-eight years later, Pope continues to provide health care through her volunteer work with Friends of Caroline Hospice. She has received a volunteer lifetime achievement award for her more than 20 years with hospice.

"I love it, because I am working with some nice people," said Pope of her work with hospice.

Her work today is very different from what she faced in the 1970s, when there were few doctors in Beaufort. She was part of a group, selected from a cross section of the county, that was trained to seek out patients in their community.

If a family needed a new well, a roof, a septic tank or treatment for cancer or diabetes, the Family Health Workers were there to find a resolution.

The women also drove patients in their own personal cars to doctor appointments and to get medications. In some cases, they drove to the patient's home daily to administer medication or to help a family through a death watch.

MOTHERS WORKED HARD

The Family Health Workers traveled to Coosawhatchie every morning for six months. The women had families, other jobs and took classes in health care.

Pope, a mother of seven, drove from her home, just a few miles from Hunting Island, to Coosawhatchie, for training and then worked with patients.

"All of them touched my heart," Pope said. "I did it to help the needy out in the community: the ones who couldn't really get out to do a whole lot of things for themselves and who had relatives who had to work. We were like nurses in a hospital, the only thing different is that we used to go into the homes."

Pope took her patients to a clinic that was in a building on the Penn Center campus on St. Helena Island.

Patient care ranged from small children to pregnant moms to diabetics. Their services went beyond medical needs such as taking blood pressures, giving injections or checking for medical reactions. The Family Health Workers shared information about food stamps, which were unheard of at the time by some, to improve nutrition and home improvements as well as water well and septic services.

One patient suffering from breast cancer didn't want to take her medication because of her faith. "It was a fight to get her to take the medicine," Pope said. "She had a lot of church folks who believe God is a healer, and that's true. She prayed that God would heal her, and that's why she didn't want to take the medicine. She didn't want her faith to go down. She was a young lady and had a lot of kids. I felt bad for her, because I believe that God gives you common sense and knowledge, and God gives you the strength to heal yourself, then you should. I felt my job was not completed, because she wouldn't take the medicine and finally died."

Sometimes the Family Health Workers simply offered moral support. When one of her patients was dying, and his wife didn't have any family in the area, Pope sat with her from 1 a.m. until he died at about 9 a.m. "She asked if I would come over and sit and give her the courage to go on," Pope recalled.

When Lillie Mae Young was in her 40s and the mother of eight children, she worked as a maid at the Buccaneer Motel. At the same time, she trained to become a Family Health Worker and went to night school at Robert Smalls High School to get her diploma.

Proud to be elected to become a Family Health Worker, Young was already active in the community in the 1960s and 1970s.

"I was involved in all of the schools and Civil Rights movement when Martin Luther King Jr. started coming here to integrate the schools," said Young. "I was a community worker. They thought I would be the best candidate for the job.

"I was happy and proud. People was my thing, I helped people. That way I could do a lot more to help people with their health needs. I could go to the clinic or the site and see about what the people needed."

Young believes newborns under the watchful eye of Family Health Workers were healthier. She also treated children whose "belly was big" from worms.

The workers used personal vehicles for transportation. "We had to take our personal car to transport these people back and forth to clinic or to the hospital until the site got their own ambulances," said Young.

Today, the 76-year-old Young offers healing in a different way: as a minister. She drives to Charleston every other week to minister at her church.

The eldest surviving Family Health Worker, Thelma Robinson, 84, retired in 1985 from comprehensive health as an in-home health nurses aid.

The Family Health Workers are planning a reunion Saturday, and Robinson is excited about it.

"I am looking forward to seeing all my friends again, and as many visitors as possible," said Robinson who will be 85 in September.

BACKBONE OF HEALTH

ThomasC. Barnwell Jr., of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, who had testified about the needs of the Lowcountry in 1968, called the Family Health Workers "the backbone" of Beaufort-Jasper Comprehensive Health Services. "They helped to stabilize patients," Barnwell said. "They were extremely important."

"Family Health Workerswere the prerequisite to home health activities and other related activities going on now all over the country. Beaufort County was ahead of its time planning comprehensive health care. There is still a need."

With the help of Barnwell, Sen. Ernest F. Holling, Sen. Strom Thurmond and others, Dr. Elijah Washington, a Sheldon native, was brought to Beaufort to serve the patients of the Family Health Workers. The need for physicians in the area was so great that Barnwell and others helped get Washington's service in the U.S. Navy cut short so that he could come to Beaufort.

"(The Family Health Workers) made a lot of difference," Washington said. "When we first came here, there was the blue triangle of diabetes, hypertension and obesity. And those three diseases were most often responsible for kidney failure and diabetic ulcers."

The health workers sought out people suffering from ulcers and high blood sugar and brought them into the doctor. If the clinic was closed, Washington said, they would call the doctor on call.

Many people were not being seen by physicians because they had no transportation, and there were a limited number of physicians in Beaufort.

Washington recalls that Dr. Donald E. Gatch went to homes where the children had parasites and found their water systems were only 5 feet deep.

After training three classes of Family Health Workers, they were replaced with a national Home Health Agency, similar to what we have today.

BREAKOUT BOX:

Beaufort-Jasper-Hampton Comprehensive Health Services former Family Health Workers reunion celebration is at 4 p.m. Saturday, May 17 in the First African Baptist Church, 70 Beach City Road, Hilton Head Island. Details: 843-524-5599 or 843-846-8591.