Time to Return a Favor to Hospital Volunteer, Lucille Culpepper

The Macon Telegraph
Sunday, April 2, 1995, Section: B, Page: 1
By Bill Boyd

Maybe you can walk down the halls of a veterans' hospital without getting a lump in your throat, but I can't. It doesn't matter how bright and cheerful the hospital staff tries to make the place, I choke up.

You see, I know these men, the type of people they are.

Most of them have always been strong and active and selfreliant. But now, they are sick and weak, and they often rely on others for both physical and mental support.

Too many of them never see a family member, so others become their family. That's what Lucille Culpepper has been to military patients for more than 20 years.

I want to tell you this lady's story because it is important ... and it's important right now.

Lucille grew up during the Great Depression and maybe that's where her good heart comes from.

She came to Macon from Virginia in 1944 to take a job retouching photographs. ``I came for two weeks,'' she told me. ``But they (her employers) never mentioned me leaving and I didn't either.''

Then she met and married T.D. Culpepper, a Macon native who was at home on leave from the Army. After his military service, they settled in Macon for all time.

T.D. became a Macon police officer in 1948 and, as he worked his way up the ladder to the rank of sergeant in the detective bureau, Lucille kept house and kept busy.

The latter was not a problem because her good heart was always reaching out to others. But she never latched onto one cause so tightly as she did the VA hospital in Dublin in the early 1970s.

By then, T.D. had retired and they spent a lot of time on VFW projects. In fact, she was a constant at the side of T.D., who served a year as state president of the VFW in the mid-1980s.

But Lucille had a special place in that good heart for the veterans, and she spent more and more time at hospitals in Dublin and Milledgeville.

I guess Lucille became as close to a Mother Teresa as the veterans ever had. Just the appearance of the slender, neat, white-haired lady would put a smile on the faces of the weathered and the weary.

However, Lucille never shied away from the big projects.

For instance, she was a shaker and mover in getting up $100,000 for the building and landscaping of Independence Park at the VA hospital in Dublin. She did so much, in fact, that the gazebo in the park was named for her.

When the hospital needed television sets (and unlike prison inmates, old soldiers can't get them free of charge), Lucille showed up with one here and one there until the need was satisfied.

When there was talk of putting in a kitchen that the vets could use freely, Lucille dug down in her own pocket and bought the silverware and dishes.

Of course, she bought many other items with her own money, but she never bragged to anyone about it. That really wasn't important to the woman with the good heart.

When a proposal was made to put up what is now known as the ``Avenue of Flags,'' Lucille helped convince families of dead veterans to donate the flags from caskets to the project. Many donated when they were told that the veteran's name would be sewn onto the flag as a memorial.

The projects were endless, and so was Lucille's energy until ...

Last Nov. 9, Lucille underwent a five bypass heart operation, and at her age, recovery has been slow. Five months later, she is still convalescing at Bel Arbor Nursing Center in Macon.

Her friends in the VFW know that. But there are hundreds of families who have been touched by this lady's kindness, and I thought they might want to let her know that they care.

The address is Lucille Culpepper, c/o Bel Arbor Nursing Center, 4468 Napier Ave., Macon, Ga. 31204.

Incidentally, VFW Post 658 has nominated Lucille for a statewide ``woman of the year'' award. I hope she gets it.

Culpepper Ancestry. Lucille died on 2 Sep 1995 and was the wife of Thomas D. Culpepper, son of William J. Culpepper, #3643.