FEATURES
LIFELONG LEARNER Nursing grad Mary Lambert has followed a path in public health by Shawn Ryan
T
he nurse, dressed in her bright, white uniform, often stood in the doorway of the clinic in Brainerd High School, watching the students walk by as they went from class to class. Mary Lambert was fascinated by her. The way she looked. The way she would answer any question Lambert asked. The way she was just there. "She was phenomenal. I would just make up excuses, not to go to the clinic, but to walk by there and hope she was at the door," says Lambert, who graduated from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga School of Nursing in 1978, the school's second graduating class. The nurse at Brainerd wasn't the only reason Lambert chose nursing and public health as a career, but she was a building block. With a UTC nursing degree in hand, Lambert spent the next 34 years in healthcare, working for, among others, Erlanger Hospital, the Hamilton County Health Department, the U.S. Veteran's Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and the Federal Drug Administration.
14
|
ON+CALL
UTC.EDU/NURSING
She was in her office in Washington, D.C., when the 757 hit the Pentagon on 9/11, killing a total of 189. "It's the biggest, blackest column of smoke I have ever seen, that I ever want to see," she says. Lambert retired in 2012 and returned to Chattanooga, although she remained involved in local health organizations and local issues. With her experience ability to work on a team, in April she was chosen by Mayor Tim Kelly to be director of Community Health, a newly created position on his senior staff. Lambert says she was silent for a moment when she received the phone call—out of the blue—asking her to take the position. "I had to pause, but I couldn't say, 'No.' I retired from active-duty service, but I did not retire from service," she says. Patti Childers, project coordinator for the Hamilton County Family Justice Center, has known Lambert worked with her on several public health projects, both governmental and strictly volunteer.
