North Sunflower Medical Center Remembers Fallen Friend

By Ryan Fulgham
The Leader

A memorial for JoEllen Lambert Ferguson was held on the campus grounds of North Sunflower Medical Center in Ruleville, Friday.

Relatives, coworkers, and friends of Ferguson watched Stephanie and Rebecca, her daughters, start the ceremony by lighting a large, purple candle, front-and-center, at the base of a flagpole. Kimberly Eastland and Rodger McClain then began their rendition of “Amazing Grace”.

Like Ferguson’s life and now her memory, the memorial candle refused to succumb to the gusty winds’ challenges. The hymn ambled on, and the crowd in mostly purple shirts and scrubs could look past that sturdy pole to see a wellspring of new life: a flowerbed growing in front of a stately hedgerow. The campus grounds were ripe with metaphors.

Fair weather blessed the service during a week full of storm predictions just like the day of her funeral. “There isn’t any doubt that Jo Ellen’s with us. She’s here,” Rachel, one of Ferguson’s best friends, began in the ensuing silence. “We tried so hard to save Jo Ellen. She couldn’t leave. She finally saw a light at the end of the tunnel and thought life was gonna be great now. Jo Ellen loved everybody,” Rachel recounted to the tearful gatherers.

Eyes were wiped, and cries choked back as Dr. Rodney Frothingham took the front. He closed the ceremony with an articulate and moving prayer.

Ferguson’s memorial service was followed by a Lunch and Learn in the dining hall of North Sunflower Medical Center. Attendees paid five dollars a plate which was put toward the Domestic Violence Transition Center in Cleveland and Our House, Inc. in Greenville. Donations can be made to the North Sunflower Medical Foundation’s Domestic Violence Shelters Fund and/or North Sunflower Medical Foundation’s Annual Fund.

Sarah Deason directs the North Sunflower Medical Foundation, the philanthropic end of the hospital. She and others started research on domestic violence after Ferguson’s death. They found that Mississippi ranks second in the nation for domestic violence and ninth in the nation for rate of females murdered by males in single victim/single offender homicides. Thirty-seven percent of all women who sought care in hospital emergency rooms for violence-related injuries were injured by a current or former spouse, boyfriend, or girlfriend according to the U.S. Department of Justice. “We lost Jo Ellen to domestic violence and are trying to not let her death be in vain,” Deason said.