Former Cleaning Lady Founded a Health Clinic in Kentucky
By James R. Hagerty, 5/14/21, Wall St. Journal

Born into a poor eastern Kentucky farming family in 1927,
Eula Hall left school after the 8th grade, worked as a
domestic cook & cleaner, married an abusive husband & helped
him make moonshine. Lacking dental care, she lost all her
teeth by age 40.

On the plus side, Hall gained a rep as a self-taught social
worker who fought for decades to bring medical treatment &
clean water to her Appalachian neighbors.

In 1973, fed up with the failures of a federal program, she
decided to take matters into her own hands by founding the
nonprofit Mud Creek Clinic in Grethel, Ky. Staffed by
idealistic young doctors & nurses, the clinic provided basic
care & advice for people who in some cases had never before
had professional med services. Hall added a food pantry. She
drove thru the hollers, or valleys, to pick up people who
lacked transport.

Ms. Hall died May 8 at her home in Craynor, Ky. She was 93.

The clinic became a model for community-health centers
serving low-income people. While badgering politicians for
more healthcare funding, she made friends with powerful Dems
& Repubs. “She was among the toughest women I’ve ever met,”
Sen. Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said in a tribute.

The clinic is now known as the Eula Hall Health Center, part
of a network operated by Big Sandy Health Care Inc., a
nonprofit. The center provides primary care along with vision
& dental services & operates a pharmacy.

Kiran Bhatraju met Hall because his father, an immigrant from
India, worked in her clinic. The younger Bhatraju wrote a bio
of her, “Mud Creek Medicine,” published in 2013.

“You give me too much credit,” Hall told the author. “You see,
I’m actually just too damn stubborn to sit by & let the world
be cruel to my family & friends.”

She was born Eula Riley, the 2nd of 7 children, on the floor
of her family’s 4-room cabin in Pike County, Ky., on Oct. 29,
1927. The cabin lacked electricity & indoor plumbing. Her father
was a tenant farmer. Her mother had worked as a schoolteacher.

One of young Eula’s early memories, according to “Mud Creek
Medicine,” was watching her mother nearly bleed to death, in
the absence of medical care, while delivering a stillborn child.

As a child, Hall was a dreamer. “I always wanted to be
somebody,” she said.

At age 14, after completing middle school, she went to work,
cooking for coal miners in a boardinghouse & scrubbing their
muddy clothes with a washboard. At 17, she married McKinley Hall,
a miner. When he wasn’t mining, he made moonshine, with her
help. She later described their product as “good, clean & safe.”

Hall offered to help a neighbor find hospital care when she
was about to give birth. She drove the neighbor to one hospital,
& then another. They were turned away from both. At a 3rd
hospital, Hall gained admission for her friend only after
threatening to call the local newspaper.

Later, Hall publicly confronted an exec of a local hospital
company about what she said were hollow promises to serve
people who couldn’t pay. She berated a school board that
shamed children who got subsidized lunches by forcing them to
sit apart from their better-off peers. She also pushed for a
new water-distribution system to reduce reliance on
contaminated wells.

In 1967, the federal Office of Economic Opportunity provided
funding for a Floyd County, Ky., health-services program.
Hall complained that it sent patients to hospitals they
couldn’t afford & was “mostly just a glorified taxi service..”
Some local doctors attacked the program as unfair competition
that would drive out private-sector physicians. Citing
mismanagement, the federal agency cut off funding in 1971.

Hall set up her own informal health service in an old trailer
perched on cinder blocks. “I didn’t know what the hell I was
getting into,” she said later.

At first, her Mud Creek Clinic mainly offered advice for
people trying to find medical care. Later she attracted young
doctors to staff the clinic. Some of the early funding came
from a miners union.

“She wanted things done her way,” said Mary Swaykus, who
worked at the clinic in the mid-70s. “She was bossy; she was
tough; she was absolutely dedicated to bringing healthcare &
legal aid—really, justice—to her neighbors.” People with black
lung disease, diabetes & rheumatoid arthritis found help at the
clinic. One patient paid his modest fee in the form of cabbage.

Meanwhile, Hall divorced her husband, whom she accused of
beating her when he was drunk. The clinic gave her a modest
income that allowed her to support herself.

In June 1982, a fire destroyed the clinic. Hall cried for the
first time in decades. She suspected arson. Within days, she
was serving patients at a picnic table next to the ruins of
her clinic. Soon it moved temporarily into a school lunchroom.

Hall began raising money for a new building by holding yard
sales & potluck dinners. Sympathetic police officers looked
the other way when she staged roadblocks on a highway to
collect donations from passing drivers. A story about her on
national TV drew donations from faraway admirers. The new
clinic opened in 1984.

Hall’s survivors include 4 kids, 8 grandkids, 14 great grands
& 5 great-great grands.

In a 1987 interview with the Louisville Courier-Journal, Hall
spoke of the challenge of attracting doctors to work for low
salaries in a rural area. “Ain’t nothing here but hard work
& sick people,” she said. OTOH, she said, advice & preventive
medicine went a long way. “What we do is we keep little probs
from becoming major probs.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/former-cleaning-lady-founded-a-health-clinic-in-kentucky-11621000800