By Ashley McCleery

The North Jefferson News



Looking through the memorabilia of her past, Gardendale resident Bea Davis tearfully reads the grateful words from several of her patients.

“I’m just so thankful that I had the opportunity to help people,” Davis said as she finished reading the last line of a letter. “They touched my lives, too.”

After 42 years of service as a nurse, Davis has decided to hang her white uniform and stethoscope up for retirement.

As the youngest of 11 children, Davis didn’t expect to pursue a college education. So after graduating from high school, she began working as a telephone operator. But, Davis soon discovered that this was not what the Lord intended for her life.

“I saw that it was a dead job, and I wanted to make a difference in people’s lives. The Lord laid upon my heart to go to LPN [Licensed Practical Nurse] school.”

Since she excelled in LPN school, her instructors soon urged her to attend professional nursing school. Following their advice, she applied to several schools and was accepted to Birmingham Baptist School of Nursing, now called Ida V. Moffett School of Nursing at Samford University.

Although her family couldn’t afford it, her dad borrowed $150 so she could move to Birmingham to pursue nursing. Nursing school started out well for Davis, but she soon hit a roadblock on the path to graduation when her father had a stroke.

“It broke my heart,” she said. “I just wanted to quit school and take care of him.” But with her teacher’s advice, she continued her education, shining in the classroom and the hospital as well.

However, the cost of school was becoming too much to bear. As an answer to prayer, she was nominated for a grant from the Altrussa Club in Bessemer, which paid for most of her expenses. In fact, Ida V. Moffett herself recommended Davis.

Even Davis’ patients believed in her enough to support her in any way they could. “While I was in school, I just didn’t know how I was going to make it. But I was amazed when patients would mail me money and presents.”

One time in particular Davis said she had no idea how she was going to pay her insurance bill of $24. Right before the bill was due, she received a check for $25 from the children of a man and women she was currently treating. “God blessed me, enabling me to finish nursing school,” she said.

When she graduated in 1965, Davis began using her nursing skills to nurture patients full-time. Over the past 47 years, Davis has worked at Highland Avenue Baptist Hospital, Baptist Montclair, Hillcrest Hospital, Gardendale Nursing Home, Carraway Methodist Hospital and HealthSouth Lakeshore Rehabilitation.

For the first half of her career, she acted as a bedside nurse, caring for her patients’ physical needs. And the second half of her career, she worked as a case manager, coordinating the patients’ continuity of care.

Several decades later, she still keeps in contact with her patients and their children. Since she’s changed many of their lives with her healing touch, they consistently invite her to important events in their lives such as weddings, baby showers and graduations.

Davis said she’s continually touched by their gratitude. “I consider it a wonderful blessing. For 47 years, my life has been touched tremendously.”

However, her patients aren’t the only ones that are thankful for Davis’ passion to help others. “Seeing her take care of people and nurturing others made me want to do something meaningful with my life,” daughter Bethany Heron said. “I wanted to follow in her track to make the world a better place.”

So, Heron went to nursing school and works as a nurse practitioner at the oncology unit at the Children’s Hospital.

Now, Davis devotes all her time to her family including her husband Bobby, children Barry and Bethany and grandchildren Peyton, Parker and Davis. But she will always be a nurse at heart because she said it was a calling from God.

“My years in nursing was my attempt to serve God without actually going into the mission field,” Davis said. “Being able to share in tragedy, grief and sorrow with my patients as well as the joys of recovery made me a better person.”