Etta Walker

Image of Etta Walker’s ID badge for the Samuel Grimes Memorial Child Welfare Center.

Nurse Etta Walker’s story as told to me by granddaughter Sia Sarmah. 

“She was born Etta Jane Lloyd on April 22, 1926, to Aaron and Ruth Lloyd in what was known back then as Marshall territory (in a town called Lloydsville). She currently lives in Minnesota. As she explained - her first pregnancy was with twins, and her delivery was a near death experience, just plain horrifying, and she sadly lost her babies. Back then, they had these "grannies'' that did deliveries at home. After this experience, she knew there had to be a better, safer, and healthier way. And so, she set out to find that way. She didn't want other mothers to have to go through what she went through. When she heard of Miss Moore's mission (Ellen Moore Hopkins), she enrolled herself and got her training. She delivered so many babies and treated so many patients throughout the years. I remember growing up; some people didn't have money to pay her, but she'd still treat them. Some even paid her with red palm oil or buckets of bitter ball or country rice or yams. She even tried to learn some of the dialects to be able to communicate with her patients. Her passion was taking care of people. She would, many times, carry her medical bag to people's homes because they were too sick to come to the clinic or to our house. She worked in a number of hospitals in Liberia until she retired. Well, her retirement was short-lived because when the Civil War started, she got called back to work at the same Miss Moore Clinic. Even when we were refugees in the camp in Ghana, she worked at the refugee clinic.”