JONES MEMORIAL LIBRARY LYNCHBURG HISTORY LECTURES

Nurse Mary Gilbert Holmes, R.N.: Touched By History; Maker of History
From a barefooted childhood raised on a poor, subsistent Campbell County farm, in Jim Crow Country, Mary Gilbert Holmes became a Registered Nurse who broke color barriers at the University of Virginia Hospital and the City of Lynchburg Health Department in the 1960’s. Mary was touched and influenced by the legacies of American health care and educational heroes such as Agnes Dillon Randolph, Julius Rosenwald and Imogene Bunn. She graduated from Piedmont Hospital Nursing School, the first hospital dedicated to the treatment of African American TB patients in the country. She experienced the civil rights activities of the NAACP in Charlottesville where she was recruited to be a pioneer in integrating health care in that city. With a career spanning 50 years in the field of Public Health, her remarkable life is one of family, faith, courage, hope, and resiliency.
by Robert Gillette