An Answering Flame

Riding horseback up Kentucky's rugged hollows, Frontier Nursing Service nurse-midwives delivered babies, treated the sick and injured day or night; winter or summer. Risking surprise encounters with desperate bootleggers, they answered the call usually alone with only what they could carry in their saddlebags. In winter their horses wore steel shoes with ice nails for traction in the treacherous creeks. In summer the only defense against poisonous snakes were the nurses' tall...
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Riding horseback up Kentucky's rugged hollows, Frontier Nursing Service nurse-midwives delivered babies, treated the sick and injured day or night; winter or summer. Risking surprise encounters with desperate bootleggers, they answered the call usually alone with only what they could carry in their saddlebags. In winter their horses wore steel shoes with ice nails for traction in the treacherous creeks. In summer the only defense against poisonous snakes were the nurses' tall leather boots.

By the light of smoking kerosene lamps, the women delivered babies as lard cans of creek water boiled over the wood stove.

Undaunted by fires, floods, drought, the Great Depression and World War II rationing, they brought care to America's most remote families, lowering the maternity death rate below the national average.

One young nurse had to reach deep into her soul for the courage to go on.

By and by, she could not imagine her life anyplace else.

Here is her story.