When Sharon Cranford Easterling was growing up in the sleepy southern village of Seminary during the 1960s, most schoolgirls were encouraged to choose between a career as a teacher or a nurse. To emphasize that point, the shelves of the town library were brimming with autobiographies of Florence Nightingale, Clara Barton, Helen Keller, and the like.

 

It was an era of enormous change, when Mississippi was making national headlines for civil rights issues, and women had not yet made their mark in the workplace.

 

Because folks living in the South Mississippi community were more open to change, integration came about more gracefully, and even though a few burning crosses popped up around town and Ku Klux Klansmen occasionally paraded down Main Street, Seminary was largely insulated from the threats of the outside world.

 

After school and on weekends, Easterling and her younger sister, Donna, often pedaled their bicycles to Cranford's Drugs on Main Street—the family pharmacy—for a float at the soda fountain or a treat from the candy counter. Their older brother, Bill, was often playing basketball.

 

"Mom and Dad went to all of our ballgames, band trips and cheerleading activities," recalled Easterling. "Dad was a pharmacist, the son of a pharmacist, as well as the younger brother to a pharmacist. So we've all helped out in the family pharmacy all of our lives. It was nothing for the three of us kids to help with closing every night, with chores including vacuuming, recording the scripts, filling the Coke machine, cleaning the glass showcases, and sweeping off out front. This was our family time. We were together and that's all that was important."

 

Childhood activities primarily took place at Seminary Attendance Center and Seminary Baptist Church, both located on the banks of the Okatoma River and within a half-mile strip on Main Street that closed occasionally for street dances.

 

"My mom always wanted one of us to be a teacher," said Easterling, with a chuckle. "I truly never even considered anything but nursing."

 

Of the senior salutations she received—Miss Seminary High School, Most Talented, and Friendliest—her most cherished one was Most Likely to Succeed.

 

"Receiving this award was an affirmation from my classmates that they believed in me, which I desperately needed," she said. "I considered myself somewhat shy and wasn't blessed with an overabundance of confidence!"

 

After graduating from Southern Miss in 1984, Easterling worked as a nurse at Forrest General Hospital on the dialysis/urology floor.

 

"When I graduated from nursing school, I hadn't started an IV on a patient," Easterling admitted. "For the first few months of my career, I was very unsuccessful at this nursing skill. But I'll never forget the older nurse that pulled me aside one day and taught me. Now, it does my heart good to be at the bedside with a student nurse who's learning to start an IV, or to put an NG tube down, for instance. After the student leaves, I make it a habit to lean down, hug and thank the patient for allowing my student to learn from their illness."

 

Easterling relocated to Tampa, Fla., where she worked at St. Joseph's Hospital for 13 years. After her second year there, she started working with the IV team. "This position led me to many oncology patients, young and old, who taught me volumes about life," she said. "When I was in orientation for the IV team role, I remember thinking, 'I could never stick a child … how could someone survive if their child had cancer?'"

 

Easterling would soon find out.

 

After two years on the IV team, Easterling transferred to home health IV therapy/pain treatment. 

 

"I loved going into patients' homes, meeting them in their own environment, and sharing in their lives as I gave them the care that would hopefully improve their lives, or would allow them to die with decreased pain and increased dignity," she said. "It didn't matter whether the patients were rich or poor, lived in a mansion, the projects, or a trailer with no electricity. These patients were always happy to see me, appreciative of their care, and taught me so much. I would always feel like I was the one blessed when I left my patients' homes—and they would look out for me as well."

 

For example, a patient living in an inner-city housing project in Tampa told Easterling: "Don't you worry about your car or anything else when you come here. I've told everyone that you're my nurse."

 

Easterling's 4-year-old daughter, Kelli, was diagnosed with leukemia in 1994 (See "Through the Fire") and remained in remission after three years of chemotherapy treatment. The family relocated to Easterling's hometown, where she taught Allied Health for five years in the Covington County School System. That experience led to her desire to teach nursing students. But the transition wasn't easy.

 

During her first year of graduate school, Easterling and her husband separated, her dad was diagnosed with cancer and died within a year, and Hurricane Katrina touched nearly everyone in South Mississippi.

 

"Sharon was going through such a difficult time," said her mother, Barbara Cranford, a retired schoolteacher who recently endured a cancer scare. "I encouraged her to go for it. She knew we were all behind her, and her dad would've wanted her to keep moving forward."

 

After marrying Cecil Easterling in 2006, the blended family moved into her great aunt and uncle's 110-year-old home, where her youngest daughter, Sarah, now 13, crosses the street to attend school.

 

Easterling's sister, now a pharmacist who runs Cranford Drugs with her husband, lives next door with her family. Her mom lives at the end of the street and runs Barb's Antiques on Main Street. Her older daughters, Kristen and Kelli, both Southern Miss students, live in Hattiesburg. Roaming their home is Dixie, a black, gold and white calico cat named after the Southern Miss Dixie Darlings, and a visiting "grand-dog," Lillian, a Shih Tzu.

 

At least once a year, Easterling heads to the Great Smoky Mountains with her family, usually around Christmastime. On the weekends, she might head to the family farm with her husband and go antiquing "whenever we see an antique sign on the side of the road," she joked.

 

Even though she no longer rides a bike to Cranford Drugs, Easterling frequents the store, where her daughters have worked, and Sarah continues to clock afterschool hours.