Community Members

James Lovett first encountered the Student Health Coalition as a young patient at the 1970 or 1971 health fair in Norma, Tenn. In this clip of an interview with Caryl Carpenter and Rick Davidson, learn directly from Lovett about his… Continued

Sharon Roberson attended Vanderbilt University from 1974 to 1978, an era during which the campus was still adjusting to racial integration that had begun less than a decade earlier. Stories she shares during a 2018 interview shed light on her… Continued

Odes and Shelby McKamey were among the most cherished local hosts for members of the SHC when the health fair arrived in their remote mountain community of Stoney Fork, Tenn. Later, after the Stoney Fork Clinic was established, the McKameys… Continued

A self-described “Hillbilly Activist”, Eula Hall (Pike County, Ky., 29 October 1927 –  Craynor, Ky., 8 May 2021) was a former Appalachian Volunteer and the leader of the “Eastern Kentucky Welfare Rights Organization” which invited the Student Health Coalition to… Continued

Emma Ruth “Kate” Hobbs Bradley was born 13 October 1932 in Petros, Tenn., a small Appalachian coalfield community in the Cumberland Mountains. Kate was the sixth of seven surviving children in her family. Her father was a coalminer. Kate married… Continued

Jean was a community leader in the 1960s and 1970s in and around Brownsville, Rossville, and Stanton in West Tennessee.  With help from the health fairs conducted by Student Health Coalition (SHC), including students from Meharry and Vanderbilt, Jean helped… Continued

Jacob “J.W.” Bradley was born on 29 June 1930 and raised in Petros, Tenn., a small Appalachian coalfield community in the Cumberland Mountains. J.W. married Emma “Kate” Hobbs in 1951. As an adult, J.W. worked several jobs. At eighteen he… Continued

Betty Anderson was born in Scott County, Tenn. on March 26, 1936. In the 1970s, she became involved with Save Our Cumberland Mountains (SOCM), a social justice organization that addressed strip-mining and other community issues in Tennessee and Kentucky. She… Continued

Contributed by John E. Davis When the newly recruited medical workers and community workers of the Student Health Coalition gathered in Nashville in June 1970, beginning a week of orientation for the SHC’s second summer in Appalachia, they were introduced… Continued

Contributed by John Emmeus Davis, 2015. Marie Cirillo was born in Brooklyn in 1929.  Her father had emigrated from rural Italy.  Her mother had grown up in a small Catholic community in central Kentucky.  Every summer, her mother returned to… Continued