Ruth Coker Burks (RCB) and Paul Wineland (PW)
RCB: The nurses were drawing straws to see who would go in and check on him. And so I snuck into his room. And he wanted his mama. And so I marched myself out to the nurses’ station and I said “Can we call his mother?” and they go “Honey, his mama’s not coming. He’s been here six weeks. Nobody’s coming.”
And so I went back in and he looked up at me and he said “Oh mama, I knew you’d come.” I stayed with him for 13 hours while he took his last breath. I called his mother and I told her that he had died and she said “I’m not burying him.”
So I had him cremated and I brought him home.
PW: And you buried them. When they died when no one else would.
RCB: Yeah. I’ve buried over 40 people in my family’s cemetery because their families didn’t want them.
PW: You were the only person that we could call. There wasn’t a doctor. There wasn’t a nurse. There wasn’t anyone. It was just you.
RCB: You know, they always say “fake it ‘til you make it” and I faked my way through the whole thing. I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know anything.
PW: But you loved them more than their families could. You loved them more than their church could. Now it almost looks like looking back into another world.
RCB: It really does. It was such a horrible time. But we’re still standing.