Humble beginnings often lead to humility and a life of service. One legendary example is a woman know as Sister Sophie. Born to German immigrant parents, Sophie spent her early life near Kings Mountain, North Carolina. But when her father died, she and her older sister moved to Baltimore to work as babysitters. She was 13 years old. Five years later she joined the closest thing to a convent that the Lutheran church offered. Sophie said that from her earliest remembrance she had wanted to be of service in the hills and hollers of Appalachia.
She found her niche in the Helton Parish at White Top, Virginia where there were three tiny Lutheran churches. Without telephone service or any local doctors, the duties of the school nurse became incredibly important. Enter local legend, Sister Sophie.
When she arrived in the mountains, Typhoid fever and diphtheria were still serious threats and even something that we consider mostly benign today like tonsillitis could be a child killer. Poor transportation across snowy and muddy trails and roads often tipped the balance of survival.
Sister Sophie had made herself an early promise: no delivering babies at home without a doctor on hand. But during the 1939 winter—her first in a sparse cabin in White Top the road was impassable for doctors and there was no other option, that baby was going to be born on its own schedule, doctor or not. She thought to herself, “Well, I don’t really know what TO do, but I do know what NOT to do.”
In that first delivery the cabin was so cold and drafty that old quilts were hung around the bed to keep the winter winds from reaching the mother.
Sister Sophie was the kind of person who would drive her car until the road ended, ride a horse until the trail closed in and then walk through the snow to reach the woman going into the labor of childbirth. In a word, Sister Sophie was “determined.”
Nearly 40 years and over 300 babies later…she had plenty of stories to tell. For example, helping pull a desperately ill pregnant woman on a farm sled as she lay on a mattress across three miles of snowy paths to the train and city doctors who would help her survive.
Sister Sophie quietly smiled to herself when during one delivery the man of the house said that he had put an axe under the bed to help cut the labor pains.
Or the old home remedy of putting snuff or pepper under the nose of a woman in labor because sneezing supposedly sped up delivery. She did have a last name by the way…Moeller, but it simply wasn’t necessary…everyone knew and loved Sister Sophie.
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