October 11, 2019
Hello ,
At age 91, Eula Hall still works every day at Mud Creek Clinic, which she founded forty-five years ago in rural Floyd County, Kentucky.
At the time, it was the first, and only, clinic in Appalachia where poor people could see a doctor. The office charged fees on a scale that slid all the way to zero.
Today, it's called Eula Hall Health Center. (Photo below by Taylor Sisk/100 Days in Appalachia)
“I’ve fought like hell to get what we’ve got.
Eula was a 40-something mother of five in 1973 when she opened the health clinic in Grethel, KY.
She had an eighth-grade education and a driving sense that medical care was a right, not a privilege.
“Nobody was turned away regardless of their income,” Eula said. "[They'll be] treated with respect and we’ll give them the best we have to offer.
Eula convinced two doctors from a regional hospital to each one day a week for $1 a day.
She drove to pick up patients in her own car, and often spent evening hours delivering prescriptions.
When the clinic became overwhelmed in 1977, because patients traveled from Tennessee, West Virginia, and Ohio to see a doctor, Eula moved the clinic from its location in a rented trailer to her own house. She moved her family into the trailer.
"My dream from the time I was a child was a health facility where nobody would be turned away."
Eula's dream was planted in the poverty of her childhood in the 1930s, and grew decades later when harsh realities still plagued her community.
"You don’t know what it’s like to have a kid with a temperature of a hundred and two, hundred and 3, hundred and four, and not even a Tylenol to give, no phones. You sit and rock your baby. They cry, you cry."
Eula gave birth to her five children at home without ever seeing a doctor. This, after watching her own mother nearly bleed to death when she was six. Her mother started to hemorrhage after two days and two nights of labor in their four room shanty. Her father gave the family's heifer and a hog to bring the doctor and save her mother's life. The baby was stillborn.
"People suffered, they really suffered and died for the lack of health care," Eula said.
She remembers the neighbor children crying on their porch after their mother's funeral. The woman died from tetanus after stepping on a rusty nail. Eula knew children who died of whooping cough and malnutrition due to parasites. “I seen the worms come out of their noses and mouths.”
In 1964, President Johnson declared war on poverty and visited Appalachia where he found families living in shacks with no electricity or running water. Below, a family is dressed in their best to meet the president.
President Johnston's efforts included the Volunteers in Service to America, VISTA. "For the war against poverty will not be won here in Washington. It must be won in the field, in every private
home, in every public office...Our aim is not only to relieve the symptoms of poverty but to cure it–and above all, to prevent it."
Eula signed up. She became one of two VISTA volunteers assigned to Eastern Kentucky. When the War on Poverty failed, she moved forward with her dream. With $1,400 in donations, Eula started the Mud Creek Clinic.
She also worked to get federal money to pipe in clean water, after she discovered ninety percent of families in the region were drinking from contaminated wells.
She advocated on behalf of miners afflicted with black lung disease. And Eula offered empathy and support to battered women, having had a husband who at separate times broke her jaw, ribs and stabbed her face.
She seemed to have boundless energy and determination to help people through
hard times.
“I knew what it was like to suffer,” she said.
Portrait of Eula Hall by Kristen Mendenhall. C. 1971. Kristen Mendenhall Collection, Appalshop Archive.
In 1982, Eula suffered a huge setback when her clinic burned to the ground, the suspected arson never solved. She believed the fire may have started while someone was stealing drugs, but she'd also made enemies
criticizing the region's coal producers.
who lived in Appalachia while his father was a doctor at the clinic. The reviews are great. Check one out here...
There was never any question the clinic would reopen. Within days, the staff was treating patients at a picnic table under a nearby willow tree, and Eula took calls at a telephone installed on a tree. With school out for the summer, the clinic made a temporary home at the elementary building. Eula led the fundraising effort that rebuilt the clinic.
The clinic has become a community center, including a food pantry and clothing room.
Eula has continued working as a patient advocate and social director, which includes doing everything from raising money, to helping people navigate access to benefits like disability, social security, medicaid, workers comp and food stamps.
She's given up driving now, but works to arrange rides for patients with no cars. “It gives me joy to help people. If I get down here, I can do it or get it done,” she said. “I’m gonna do what I want to as long as I know what I’m doing.”
Born in a "holler" with little education, Eula faced huge personal obstacles, yet sharpened her innate leadership skills, cultivated compassion and courage, and she would say "stubbornness" to accomplish more for the health of her community than the entire War on Poverty. She did it because, in her words, she "couldn't stand it anymore."
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