Netha "Nish" Dowell was the daughter of Samantha Shelton Ball and Charlie Hawkins Ball. She left North Carolina and arrived in Kentucky in 1920. She married a coal miner in 1922 and they had four children together. After her husband fell ill with black lung she went to school in Middlesboro, Kentucky at the age of 52 to become a Licensed Practical Nurse. She retired from that position at Harlan Appalachian Hospital. After her retirement she remained active in her Wallins Creek community. She died on her mother's birthday, 11 Apr 2003, just a little over two months shy of her 96 birthday.
She was a remarkably carrying and personable individual to everyone she met. Most children in her neighborhod called her granny and could expect a frozen treat from her freezer in the summers and lots of candy or Little Debbie oatmeal pies in the winters. Her mother had passed away when she was three years old and this left a deep and lasting mark on her heart. She loved and adored children, often telling people when she was a nurse that she could not bear working in the nursery "because of the sick little ones". She could not stand to see children sick or hurting.
Because of her time with the coal mining community she was a lifelong advocate for miners. In her later years, she became the source of facts and information for researchers and geneaologists with her clear memory and her keen conversation. She had overcome loneliness, abandonment, deaths, two world wars, the Flu outbreak in 1917, the depression (she once remarked "Honey, we in Eastern Kentucky didn't even know there was a depression. We were ALL poor"), the Union strikes and managed to raise three children and nurse a dieing husband. And at the end of it all, when she was 80, she took in her 19 year old grandson and gave him a place he would forever call home. There are few in the world left like Netha Dowell and the world is poorer because of it.
She was a remarkably carrying and personable individual to everyone she met. Most children in her neighborhod called her granny and could expect a frozen treat from her freezer in the summers and lots of candy or Little Debbie oatmeal pies in the winters. Her mother had passed away when she was three years old and this left a deep and lasting mark on her heart. She loved and adored children, often telling people when she was a nurse that she could not bear working in the nursery "because of the sick little ones". She could not stand to see children sick or hurting.
Because of her time with the coal mining community she was a lifelong advocate for miners. In her later years, she became the source of facts and information for researchers and geneaologists with her clear memory and her keen conversation. She had overcome loneliness, abandonment, deaths, two world wars, the Flu outbreak in 1917, the depression (she once remarked "Honey, we in Eastern Kentucky didn't even know there was a depression. We were ALL poor"), the Union strikes and managed to raise three children and nurse a dieing husband. And at the end of it all, when she was 80, she took in her 19 year old grandson and gave him a place he would forever call home. There are few in the world left like Netha Dowell and the world is poorer because of it.
Netha "Nish" Dowell was the daughter of Samantha Shelton Ball and Charlie Hawkins Ball. She left North Carolina and arrived in Kentucky in 1920. She married a coal miner in 1922 and they had four children together. After her husband fell ill with black lung she went to school in Middlesboro, Kentucky at the age of 52 to become a Licensed Practical Nurse. She retired from that position at Harlan Appalachian Hospital. After her retirement she remained active in her Wallins Creek community. She died on her mother's birthday, 11 Apr 2003, just a little over two months shy of her 96 birthday.
She was a remarkably carrying and personable individual to everyone she met. Most children in her neighborhod called her granny and could expect a frozen treat from her freezer in the summers and lots of candy or Little Debbie oatmeal pies in the winters. Her mother had passed away when she was three years old and this left a deep and lasting mark on her heart. She loved and adored children, often telling people when she was a nurse that she could not bear working in the nursery "because of the sick little ones". She could not stand to see children sick or hurting.
Because of her time with the coal mining community she was a lifelong advocate for miners. In her later years, she became the source of facts and information for researchers and geneaologists with her clear memory and her keen conversation. She had overcome loneliness, abandonment, deaths, two world wars, the Flu outbreak in 1917, the depression (she once remarked "Honey, we in Eastern Kentucky didn't even know there was a depression. We were ALL poor"), the Union strikes and managed to raise three children and nurse a dieing husband. And at the end of it all, when she was 80, she took in her 19 year old grandson and gave him a place he would forever call home. There are few in the world left like Netha Dowell and the world is poorer because of it.
She was a remarkably carrying and personable individual to everyone she met. Most children in her neighborhod called her granny and could expect a frozen treat from her freezer in the summers and lots of candy or Little Debbie oatmeal pies in the winters. Her mother had passed away when she was three years old and this left a deep and lasting mark on her heart. She loved and adored children, often telling people when she was a nurse that she could not bear working in the nursery "because of the sick little ones". She could not stand to see children sick or hurting.
Because of her time with the coal mining community she was a lifelong advocate for miners. In her later years, she became the source of facts and information for researchers and geneaologists with her clear memory and her keen conversation. She had overcome loneliness, abandonment, deaths, two world wars, the Flu outbreak in 1917, the depression (she once remarked "Honey, we in Eastern Kentucky didn't even know there was a depression. We were ALL poor"), the Union strikes and managed to raise three children and nurse a dieing husband. And at the end of it all, when she was 80, she took in her 19 year old grandson and gave him a place he would forever call home. There are few in the world left like Netha Dowell and the world is poorer because of it.
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