A man with any sense at all would never call a woman old, but Becky Cogburn uses that term for herself — and a lot of friends.
Cogburn, now 69, recently shared that she had a thought when she retired from nursing in 2023.
“I said, ‘God, I still feel like I got some good years in me. And I still feel like I could be of service. So you just tell me what you want me to do.’
“I just got together with some of my friends that have retired, and we said, ‘Let’s do something.’ So we called ourselves the Retired Old Nurses Still Serving. And so we said, ‘Okay, we’re the RONSS.’” Cogburn said that, among other projects, the retired nurses cooked breakfast at the Ronald McDonald House and at a respite center for the homeless who had been in the hospital and still need medical care. “And we go out to lunch together ... We just have a good time serving and fellowshipping … Our group is up to about 30 now.”
Cogburn has lived in Jones County 41 years with her husband. Cogburn and family members refer to him by his given name, Rallie, but almost anyone else calls him Rooster.
“He was in high school when True Grit came out with John Wayne. And his last name was Cogburn. So, It came out that Friday night, and a bunch of kids went to see it. He walked in school Monday and they said, ‘We’re calling you Rooster.’” Cogburn said Rallie hated the name at that time.
“But then after high school, he went in the Navy, and they called him Rooster. So, it just stuck.”
The former Rebecca Farr grew up in Kathleen, and she has three brothers and one sister, all close in age.
“My mom had five kids in about six and a half years,” she pointed out. “There is only 10 months difference between me and the brother right after me.”
Change of direction; a career in nursing
Cogburn thought she wanted to be a special ed teacher, but she babysat for the director of nursing at the Perry Hospital while in high school.
“She got me to come work as a nurse’s aide,” Cogburn shared. “I was 16 years old, and I saw things that a lot of 16-year-olds today couldn’t handle. But, it was a great life experience. So that changed my direction. I went into nursing.”
Cogburn obtained her BSN degree at the Medical College School of Nursing in Augusta. She was working in the ER at the Medical College of Georgia hospital when her future husband brought in a son by a previous marriage for care. She helped tend to the youngster and met his father.
“For about two months, he would ask me out,” Cogburn recalled, “and I wouldn’t go out with him because he was divorced. I was like, ‘My daddy will have a stroke if I go out with a guy that’s divorced.’
“Long story short, we ended up going out and married six months later.” That was 44 years ago. Cogburn adopted her husband’s son, Kasey (now deceased), and they have one son, Matthew. He and his wife, Claire, live in Jones County.
Cogburn, who obtained her Masters in Nursing Leadership from Western Governors University, worked in Augusta for a year before the family moved to Houston County, close to her family. They eventually bought five acres of land in Jones County and moved here in 1985.
Cogburn started with the Medical Center (now known as Atrium Health Navicent) in 1982 and worked there until her retirement, except for two years she spent in Augusta, 1998-2000.
“Early in my nursing career I developed a passion for pediatrics and was frequently asked to help develop new programs to advance care for children,” she said. She helped develop the Pediatric ER at Augusta University Medical Center before coming back to Middle Georgia.
“I was asked to return to the Medical Center’s children’s hospital in 2000 to develop the Pediatric Critical Care Transport Team and teach pediatric advance life support classes to rural hospitals in central and south Georgia,” she explained, pointing out that those counties have limited ambulance service.
“They typically maybe only have only one ambulance on duty, so if that ambulance has to transport even an adult or pediatric patient out, they don’t have any coverage for the rest of the county till that ambulance gets back.”
A busy nurse
Cogburn was working with the Beverly Knight Olson Children’s Hospital from 2000 on, and she was instrumental in developing and expanding numerous programs. She did not, however, seek out the responsibility.
“I’ve not applied for any leadership jobs. I’ve just been given them or asked to do them,” she commented. During her tenure, in addition to the transport team, Cogburn coordinated the development of the Pediatric Emergency Room, the Pediatric Step Down Unit, the Pediatric Palliative Care Program, the expansion of the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, and expansion of the school nurse program for the Bibb County school system.
The children’s hospital managed the school system nurse clinics, and that responsibility was placed under Cogburn’s umbrella.
“We were able to get it to where there was actually a nurse in every school rather than one nurse going to four schools. For a lot of children, their only source of health care is that school nurse.”
Among the numerous awards Cogburn received over the years was the Georgia Hospital Association Hospital Hero Award for her work in developing bereavement programs for grieving parents and children.
“I created a family bereavement camp for parents who’d lost a child or a child who’d lost a parent.”
Cogburn also noted that in 2016 she spearheaded a study of asthma cases in children, which was brought on by an unusually high number of deaths in a relatively short time period.
“We took teams of people, and we really dissected all of those cases that we had,” she reported. They looked back at the children that had been admitted for the past year with asthma, interviewing parents and utilizing school nurses for information.
“We found out a lot of things that were wrong with the way kids were being managed in the southern part of the state with their asthma. So, we did a massive education blitz with all physicians in the southern part of the state. We just went everywhere with asthma management, and we did a lot of things to make sure kids had their inhalers and were using them.”
Commitment to Caring
Cogburn, who retired as Division Director of Pediatric Critical Care and Emergency Services at the children’s hospital, believes there is a reason why she undertook so many programs and tasks.
“I love a challenge,” she declared. “I love coordinating and planning. But I love serving people and helping others and doing anything that’s going to be a part of that. That’s my passion. I guess that’s why I was a nurse for so long.
“I just wanted to care for others, and at the end of the day, I wanted to say ‘I made a difference.’” The retiree is still trying to make a difference. Every Friday she volunteers with the Daybreak Mercy Clinic in Macon.
“It’s run by the Catholic Church, and it’s where they take care of the unhoused. Some of them are just lonely people. Some of them are senior adults that have no family at all. It’s a daycare center, and the only rule is you have to behave.
“They have a nurse clinic every day in the morning and afternoon, so I do the nurse clinic in the afternoon. You can fix a splint or a broken finger, give a breathing treatment, just whatever needs to be done.”
Cogburn has another part-time obligation: for the past two years, she has been a funeral assistant at Gray Memorial Chapel.
“I love helping people, and I have a passion for helping grieving people just because I have seen a lot of deaths. I’ve had a lot of personal deaths, but I’ve also seen a lot of deaths just because I’ve always worked in high acuity areas. And I just have a passion for helping people who are hurting.”
Besides traveling a good bit with her husband, Cogburn has one other pastime that does not involve nursing, death, or grieving. She is a cookbook author.
“Everybody’s always calling me and asking me for a recipe for something, or they’ll come over and say, ‘write that down for me.’
“I’ve just always loved to cook … So, I just decided when I retired, ‘You know what, I am just going to put everything together in a cookbook.’ So I did and gave it to all my friends and relatives for Christmas.”
There are about 125 recipes in the book, and it’s a little late to get a copy.
“I only had 50 printed, and I think I have two left.”
