Gallaher worked the night shift at Alabama’s Coosa Valley Medical Center – his preference, said the son, so he could mentor younger nurses. Known in the hospital as “Miss Betty”, she loved being her sounding board, personal therapist and “work mom”.
She would make sure that everyone she worked with was fed every night. She cared for her patients the same way she cared for her family and her co-workers, who became family. She was, according to her loved ones, everyone’s favorite nurse.
Then, when the Covid-19 pandemic started in March, Gallaher’s concerned co-workers asked her, for her safety, to stay home.
But sitting was not like her. She knew her colleagues and the community needed her, so she continued to work until Covid-19 dropped her in December.
Gallaher died of Covid-19 on January 10, the day before his 79th birthday, in the same hospital where he worked for much of his career.
“She didn’t do it to stand out,” said her son Carson Grier Jr. “She did it because that’s what she was like – that’s her calling.”
She was a dedicated nurse and mentor
Gallaher was a nurse for most of his life. She believed it was her lifelong duty to care for her patients and mentor her younger colleagues, said Grier, a high school basketball coach and elementary school physical education instructor.
“This was his purpose and plan for his life,” Grier told CNN. “And she lived it daily.”
“We’ve all worked with Betty now,” said Terrell. “I never managed to make her understand how much everyone loved her.”
One part of the job she loved most was working with young nurses who were sometimes 50 years younger, such as the nurse and supervisor of the Coosa Valley emergency room, Nikki Jo Hatten.
“Betty is the type who cares about you as a nurse as much as you care about a patient,” Hatten told CNN. “She’ll stop you while you’re busy, just to make sure you’re okay.”
Gallaher knew the names of everyone in the emergency room, as well as the names of his partners, children and pets, Hatten said. She showed up with a bag of hamburgers to feed anyone who forgot to bring a meal for the 12-hour shift. She would hold your hand and wrap you in a warm blanket if you needed to. She showed the same love for her colleagues, as well as for her family and children.
“She was the cure for an anxiety attack,” said Hatten.
She worked in the ER until Covid-19 pushed her away
Miss Betty was not afraid to work on the front lines of a disaster. She was working as a supervisor at a hospital in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina cut power and left many of her co-workers stranded.
A few years after the 2005 hurricane, she told her son that she was retiring. When he asked what she would do next, she said she would return to Coosa Valley, where Terrell had worked to become director of the emergency department, and return as an emergency room nurse.
“She wanted to go back to the daily routine in the emergency room,” said Grier. “She did this until her last days.”
In March, her co-workers tried to persuade her to avert the pandemic. Hatten said that after staying a day or two at home, the 78-year-old returned to work to resume her night shift.
“She couldn’t take it,” said Hatten. “She missed coming to work. That’s what she lives for.”
On December 19, Hatten noticed that the typically indefatigable Miss Betty was out of breath during her rounds. Hatten suggested that Gallaher be examined after the shift ended, but Gallaher ignored his symptoms as exhaustion.
The next day, the emergency team took Gallaher to the hospital, even though she hadn’t called them, said Hatten – they looked at her with concern. She tested positive for Covid-19 and would stay in Coosa Valley until she died.
Even when she was confined to her hospital bed, Gallaher’s main concern was the welfare of her colleagues. On New Year’s Eve, she called Terrell and asked him to buy pizza for the ER staff with his debit card as a thank you. She refused a transfer to a Birmingham hospital suggested by her caregivers – Hatten said she joked that she would have no one to comb her hair.
Hatten, Terrell and their co-workers tried to keep Gallaher comfortable and busy. After making his rounds at the hospital, Hatten stopped at Gallaher’s room in the intensive care unit and drew on his door in white paint or with PPE to show Gallaher’s pictures of his dog.
Miss Betty feared she would die alone in the ICU, said Hatten. At the end of her life, her working family made sure that she was surrounded by people who loved her.
“On the day she passed away, almost the entire ER team went and occupied that room,” said Hatten. “It wasn’t the way we wanted her to leave, but I’m happy that we’re there.”
Recalling Miss. Betty
Hatten’s shift is quieter than normal without Miss. Betty over there. When the silence becomes very sad, Hatten and his co-workers exchange “Betty stories” or repeat the funny jokes she would make. It is therapeutic, she said.
“She was the glue of our emergency room, or the matriarch of the emergency room,” she said. “It looks like we lost our mother.”
Gallaher’s legacy was well known in Sylacauga, but Hatten wanted to share Miss. Betty with the world. Then she made a TikTok dedicated to Gallaher, a compilation of short clips of the 78-year-old nurse playing with her colleagues, beaming.
“We didn’t want it to be forgotten,” said Hatten. “Everyone deserves a Betty in her hospital and we wanted to share ours.”
Grier likes to remember his mother as she appears in Hatten’s TikTok – smiling, playful, always with a bag of food in hand. He believes that if his mother had a chance to make her life again, knowing how it would end, she would do it in exactly the same way.
“There was only one way she knew how to live: to help others,” he said. “I hope I can say that I lived my life the way I wanted, as she did.”
Terrell was scheduled to preach at Gallaher’s funeral before it was postponed; Grier tested positive for Covid-19 a few days before the service, although he is now recovering. Paying the compliment would have been 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 missed her so much.
Before she died, Gallaher texted Terrell that she would finally retire when she recovered from the disease. The pair liked to relax by painting acrylic figurines – cows were their favorite paintings.
Gallaher never managed to retire and Terrell never had to paint with her for the last time. He knew she would never slow down in life, so he likes to imagine her now, in ecstasy, painting cows while the people she touched carry her legacy of kindness.