Courageous in the Midst of Crises

Ashdown native Amanda town life to help save patients with COVID-19 in New York City.

by ELLEN ORR

Amanda dons her PPE as she gets ready to work her shift at Coney Island Hospital in Brooklyn.

Amanda arrived in New York City on Easter Sunday, April 12.

People often speak of feeling “called” to serve others, whether by a higher power, a moral code, or an emotional pull. But of those who are called, only some pick up the phone—and even fewer stay on the line to listen to the hold music. Then factor in automated menus, poor connectivity, and dropped calls . . . serving others often requires dogged effort. Most of us take any excuse we can find to hang up the phone.

Ashdown native Amanda Dooley (née Stuart), who is currently nursing COVID patients in New York City, didn’t hang up the phone.

Amanda came to her career in medicine a little later in life. As a single mother in her early 20s, she worked multiple jobs to put herself through college at Texas A&M-Texarkana, pursuing a degree not in nursing but in education. After earning her bachelor’s and a teaching certificate, Amanda returned to her alma mater, Ashdown High School, to teach history. She concurrently obtained a master’s degree in educational administration, also from TAMU-T.

Amanda had been drawn to teaching because she saw it as a way to serve others. “Anyone who knows me can attest to the fact that God gave me a deep desire to serve others,” she said. “I’m not sure why God created my heart that way, but He did.”

But teaching, though fulfilling, wasn’t the right fit; Amanda pivoted her focus toward healthcare. In 2009, at age 31, she earned a bachelor’s in nursing from UAMS-Hope. She immediately gained employment at CHRISTUS St. Michael Health System and rotated through intensive care units. In 2011, one of her ICU patients was a man named Ronnie Dooley Sr., who had been in a tragic motorcycle accident. For 14 consecutive shifts, Amanda served as Mr. Dooley’s nurse. During that time, she bonded deeply with his family, who later asked her to speak at the patriarch’s funeral.

Over the next seven years, Amanda kept in touch with the Dooleys—in particular Ronnie Jr. “Through many personal changes in life, we never lost touch but actually grew closer,” Amanda said. “We eventually realized we were attracted to each other.” 

Memorial Day Weekend of 2018, Amanda drove eight hours to Midland, Texas, where Ronnie lived and worked as an oil-field hand. “Our first date was better than either of us ever expected, and we have been inseparable ever since.” Quickly, Amanda moved to Midland.

Since their families are primarily located in Ashdown and Texarkana, the couple makes many trips to the Ark-La-Tex. “On our [most recent] trip back home, we had a random-yet-serious conversation about getting married,” Amanda said. “We had made mention of it many times before, but this time was different. Upon returning to Midland, we went and got our marriage license and surprised the kids and families.”

But, of course, the COVID-19 pandemic put a halt to wedding planning. The ceremony and reception they’d envisioned—a rock-and-roll themed party with all of their loved ones in attendance—were put on hold. 

With family and friends beside them, Amanda and Ronnie were married Sunday, May 10, in Times Square. (Photo by Meagan Rachman)

Social distancing imperatives aside, Amanda, as a frontline worker, had little energy to put toward event planning anyway. “I was working as the night shift house supervisor at Midland Memorial Hospital and at Signature Care ER in Midland,” she said. “At the hospital, I was responsible for staffing, which was an evolving situation, of course. We developed a labor pool funded, by FEMA, to try to keep our staff working despite the census dropping. I was also responsible for keeping up with the PPE for our nurses, which became a nightmare as it has for many hospitals.” Though the environment was chaotic, Amanda was grateful that her community was populated with very few cases.

Meanwhile, in New York City, COVID was decimating communities with a speed and volume experienced nowhere else in North America. Dozens of people introduced the virus to the region by way of international travel, primarily from Europe. It spread quickly and viciously not through high-density boroughs like Manhattan but instead through the economically disadvantaged outer boroughs, like Queens, the Bronx, and Brooklyn, where households are overcrowded, income inequality is pervasive, and medical facilities are underfunded.

Amanda was determined to help.  “As the weeks passed and the COVID numbers and deaths increased, my heart’s desires to respond to New York City’s crisis grew stronger and stronger,” she said. “I eventually asked my supervisor if I could take a leave of absence to go help. I was told I would have to resign.

“Ronnie and I worked our night shift that night, got off the next morning, slept until noon, then began calling the number to Krucial Staffing, who was deploying over 5,000 nurses to NYC. Over 2,000 back-to-back calls later, I got through. I had 48 hours to board a plane and leave for NYC. I turned in my resignation, worked my last night shift at Midland Memorial Hospital, and left for NYC on Easter Sunday [April 12, 2020].”

After a quick orientation, Amanda began her first of 21 straight 12-hour shifts at the overcrowded Coney Island Hospital, located in Brooklyn.  “The first several days at Coney were heart-wrenching,” she said. “Overhead calls for ‘Dr. Pacemaker’ one after another after another will forever be embedded in my thoughts; we [nurses] learned quickly that ‘Dr. Pacemaker’ meant someone was coding, or dying. The ICU tower I was on overlooked the refrigerated trucks that the media pushed out into the public’s eyes. I watched one body after the next be loaded into the trucks and would grieve for the families losing loved ones left and right.

“I witnessed situations I never thought I would see as a nurse,” she continued. “We were running out of medical supplies and equipment—including body bags. The reality of the situation set in quick.”

The nurses were bussed daily from their hotel to the hospital, an hour-long commute one-way. Each night, Amanda and her colleagues spent that hour trying to process the trauma experienced and witnessed during their shift. They cried, devastated; ranted, exasperated.

“Everyone has his or her own way with dealing with grief, but mine wasn’t working,” Amanda said. “The exhaustion of 16-hour days were catching up with me, and I finally caved. I got to my hotel one night and cried my eyes out. I was overwhelmed with feelings of guilt, anger, fear, sadness, and curiosity. I was asking myself, ‘Why aren’t we making positive contributions against our best efforts? Why is nothing we are doing helping?’”

Overwhelmed by inboxes full of questions and check-ins from loved ones, Amanda did something very out of character and went live on Facebook. For half an hour, she relayed to her friends and family what she was seeing. “Yes, we have run out of body bags; yes, we have three makeshift morgues outside the hospital in refrigerated trucks; what you are hearing [on the news] is true.” The video currently has about 2,000 views.

Amanda felt so fortunate to have many of the nurses she works with attend her wedding.

(Photo by Meagan Rachman)

But even amidst hardship and tragedy, people find pockets of hope. Holocaust survivor Dr. Victor Frankl wrote in “Man’s Search for Meaning” that “a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved.” The Coney Island Hospital nurses shared with each other the details of their lives, learning about each other’s loved ones waiting for them at home. When her fellow nurses learned that she had canceled her wedding, they began joking about flying Ronnie north for a wedding in Times Square. The jokes quickly morphed into “Why nots?”. “All the frontline heroes needed something positive to look forward to at this point in our journey,” Amanda said. “So, off to wedding planning I went, while working the frontlines of this crisis.”

Through a web of small-world connections, the Stuart-Dooley wedding was planned in one week. “It was a multitude of friends, friends-of-friends, and strangers who orchestrated this epic wedding that I’d thought would be just me getting married in scrubs,” she said. Friends from Texarkana and Ashdown called in favors, as did members of the Krucial Staffing team. Peri-Gay Cauthron-Walker, an Ashdown native, contacted Alex Render of Krucial Staffing, who played a huge role. Stephanie Anderson, one of Amanda’s Texarkana friends, introduced Amanda to Kerry Botensten, a New York native, who also helped make this all happen. Someone knew an editor at People Magazine; someone had an in with a NYC local news station. As word spread, everything fell into place; the cake, wedding dress, shoes, jewelry, music, and flowers were all donated by various entities. Mark Ingram Atelier, a NYC fashion designer, donated an iconic white shawl.

Many members of Amanda and Ronnie’s family attended their wedding in Times Square, including Ron Stuart (her father), Nancy Stuart (her mother), Melissa Kilgore (her sister), Kaden Stuart (oldest son), Easton Turner (youngest son) and Makenzie Dooley (daughter). (Photo by Meagan Rachman)

The most meaningful piece of wedding attire, however, was crafted by Amanda’s fellow Coney Island nurses. Using scrubs and a Coney Island Fire Department patch, they created a leg garter, which then served as Amanda’s “something new,” “something borrowed,” and “something blue.”

On the evening of May 10, 2020, Amanda and Ronnie had their “first look.” It was 7 p.m., and city residents were participating in the nightly cheer for healthcare workers, a custom that has been adopted by communities all over the world. “When they realized we were getting married, it turned into a dance party,” Amanda said.

After taking photos at the New York Public Library and inside an empty Grand Central Station, the couple was driven to Times Square, where their families were waiting for them, alongside the nurses who had so quickly become a family in and of themselves. As Amanda and Ronnie approached the scene, tears began to flow.

“I asked myself, ‘God, what have I done to deserve this?’” she recalled. “The feelings were overwhelming. I was, before the world, marrying a man I fell in love with years ago, with my family and my frontline heroes beside me. I saw nurses, whom I’d cried with days before, dancing (while practicing social distancing and in their masks we’ve all grown accustomed to)—and laughing. We realized how much we all needed that moment. I stood there saying my vows with a smile on my face I’ll never, ever, ever forget.”

After a surreal night of respite and rock ’n’ roll, Amanda and the other nurses are back on the frontlines, doing one of the hardest and most important jobs on the planet. Though Amanda’s name has changed, her routine is the same: every day, she serves her patients, their families, and the greater good.

Amidst the turmoil, a wedding celebration might seem out of place or insignificant, but, in order to survive crushing tragedy, human beings create joy. It is what sustains us. As Nietzsche wrote, “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” Amanda and other frontline workers are able to bear the unbearable because of their love for other people. Surely there is no brighter reminder or depiction of this than the glamorous, potlucked wedding of Amanda and Ronnie Dooley.