A nurse for 50 years refused to retire when the pandemic began. She later died of a 50-year Covid-19A nurse who refused to retire when the pandemic began. She later died of Covid-19

Gallaher died of Covid-19 on January 10, a day before her 79th birthday, in the same hospital where she worked for much of her career.

“She didn’t do it to stand out,” said her son Carson Grier Jr. “She did it because that’s what she was – it’s her calling.”

She was a dedicated nurse and mentor

Gallaher was a nurse for most of her life. She believed it was her lifelong duty to care for her patients and mentor her young colleagues, said Grier, a high school basketball coach and elementary physical education instructor.

“It was his goal and his plan for his life,” Grier told CNN. “And she lived it daily.”

“We’ve all worked with Betty now,” Terrell said. “I never got to make her understand how much everyone loved her.”

One of the parts of her job that she enjoyed the most was working with young nurses who were sometimes 50 years younger, like Coosa Valley nurse and emergency supervisor Nikki Jo Hatten.

“Betty is the guy who worries about you as a nurse as much as she worries about a patient,” Hatten told CNN. “She’s going to stop you while you’re busy, just to make sure you’re okay.”

Gallaher knew everyone’s name in the emergency room, as well as the names of their partners, children and pets, Hatten said. She would show up with a bag of burgers to feed anyone who forgot to bring a meal for their 12 hour shift. She would hold your hand and wrap you in a warm blanket if you needed it. She showed the same love to her colleagues as to her family and children.

“She was the cure for an anxiety attack,” Hatten said.

She worked in the emergency room until Covid-19 sidelined her

Miss Betty was not afraid to work on the front lines of disaster. She worked as a supervisor at a New Orleans hospital when Hurricane Katrina cut the power and stranded several of her colleagues.

A few years after the 2005 hurricane, she announced to her son that she was retiring. When he asked her what she would do next, she said she would return to Coosa Valley, where Terrell had worked his way up to the director of the emergency department, and would return as an emergency nurse.

“She wanted to get back to the daily emergency routine,” Grier said. “She did it until her last days.”

In March, her colleagues tried to persuade her to end the pandemic. Hatten said after a day or two of staying home, the 78-year-old returned to work to resume her night shift.

“She couldn’t take it,” Hatten said. “She failed to come to work. That’s what she lived for.

On December 19, Hatten noticed that the typically tireless Miss Betty was out of breath during her tours. Hatten suggested that Gallaher get checked out after his shift was over, but Gallaher shrugged like exhaustion.

The next day, rescuers took Gallaher to the hospital, although she hadn’t called them, Hatten said – they had checked her out of concern. She has tested positive for Covid-19 and will remain in Coosa Valley until her death.

Even when confined to her hospital bed, Gallaher’s primary concern was the well-being of her colleagues. On New Years Eve, she called Terrell and asked him to buy a pizza for the emergency room staff with her debit card as a thank you. She refused a transfer to a Birmingham hospital suggested by her caregivers – Hatten jokingly said she would have no one to do her hair.

Hatten, Terrell and their colleagues tried to keep Gallaher comfortable and busy. After walking around the hospital, Hatten would stop in Gallaher’s room in the intensive care unit and draw on his door with a dry-erase marker or wear PPE to show Gallaher pictures of his dog .

Miss Betty feared she would die alone in the intensive care unit, Hatten said. At the end of her life, her working family made sure she was surrounded by people who loved her.

“The day she passed away, almost all of the emergency room staff went to fill that room,” Hatten said. “This wasn’t how we wanted to see her go, but I’m glad we got there.”

Remembering Miss Betty

Hatten’s shift is quieter than usual without Miss Betty. When the silence gets too sad, Hatten and her colleagues will exchange “Betty stories” or repeat the jokes she would make. It’s therapeutic, she said.

“She was the glue of our emergency department, or the emergency room matriarch,” she said. “It feels like we lost our mother.”

Gallaher’s legacy was well known in Sylacauga, but Hatten wanted to share Miss Betty with the world. So she made a TikTok dedicated to Gallaher, a compilation of short clips of the 78-year-old nurse swinging with her colleagues, beaming.

“We didn’t want her to be forgotten,” Hatten said. “Everyone deserves a Betty in their hospital, and we wanted to share ours.

Grier enjoys remembering his mother as she appears in Hatten’s TikTok – smiling, playful, always a bag of food in her hand. He believes that if his mother had the chance to start her life over, knowing how it would end, she would do it exactly the same way.

“There was only one way for her to know how to live, and that was to help others,” he said. “I hope I can say that I lived my life the way I wanted to live it, like she did.”

Terrell was to preach at Gallaher’s funeral before it was postponed; Grier tested positive for Covid-19 days before the service, although he is now recovering. Giving the eulogy would have been both easy and impossible, Terrell said – easy because Gallaher secured his own legacy in the care she showed others, and impossible because he loved her so much and so ‘he missed her terribly.

Before dying, Gallaher texted Terrell telling him that she would finally retire when she recovered from her illness. The couple loved to relax while painting acrylic figurines – cows were their favorite places to paint.

Gallaher was never able to retire and Terrell could never paint with her one last time. He knew she would never slow down in life, so he likes to imagine her now, in bliss, painting cows while the people she touched carry on her legacy of kindness.