from Diane’s obituary, published February 1o, 2025, in the Addison County Independent, Bristol, Vermont. Diane Cushman, an intrepid traveler and devoted nurse, passed away on January 25, 2025, leaving behind a legacy of devotion to community and a spirit for adventure that began in her childhood in Bristol, Vt. Diane would recount the day she …
Related Content:
Contributed by John Williams, January 2023. My Vanderbilt Law School classmate John Kennedy told me about the Student Health Coalition in the Spring of 1972, during our third year of law school. I worked for the SHC that summer, as John and I drove to Knoxville four nights a week to take a course to …
I’m a native of Blount County in the Smoky Mountain region of East Tennessee. I grew up loving the mountains of East Tennessee and Western North Carolina. I began my college career as a forestry major with the idea of becoming a ranger for the National Park Service. However, after attending three other colleges, I …
Art Van Zee, during his Internal Medicine Residency at Vanderbilt, served as a mentor for Coalition students in 1974 and 1975 when the health fairs were active in St. Charles and other southwest Virginia sites. He was very taken by the community and so many of the local clinic’s founders that he returned to St. …
Contributed by John E. Davis. Carolyn Klyce joined the Student Health Coalition after her Junior year at Vanderbilt University. During the summer of 1970, she was teamed with Dick Burr, working as a community organizer in Morgan County, Tenn. The two of them helped local residents prepare for the health fair in Deer Lodge and …
Contributed by John E. Davis and Jack Beckford. Dick Burr grew up in Lake Wales, Fla. After graduating from high school in 1967, he spent four years as an undergraduate at Vanderbilt University, majoring in philosophy. His years at Vanderbilt included such activities as an early morning arrest for “harassing a truck driver” after following …
Bill Dow co-founded the Student Health Coalition while in medical school at Vanderbilt University, in 1969. His larger-than-life role in the SHC origin story and beyond warrants special telling, which we attempt in the essay that follows. Contributed by Margaret Ecker, compiled in collaboration with friends Bill Dow energized a generation of student activists and …
Contributed by John E. Davis, November 2019. The summer before his final year at the Vanderbilt Law School and during the summer and fall after his graduation, John Kennedy worked for the Student Health Coalition in 1971 and 1972. He provided assistance to former miners who were seeking black lung benefits and disability payments from …
While an engineering student at Vanderbilt University, Charles spent the summers of 1970 and 1971 with the Student Health Coalition. He was 18 years old when he joined the SHC, one of the Coalition’s youngest members. He served as a community worker in Clairfield, Tenn. where, in addition to providing support for the health fairs, …
