Barbara Downer recently traveled to Selma from Batavia, Ill., to retrace her mother’s steps in a building in which her mother lived 90 years ago.

The building was then known as Vaughan Memorial Hospital and her mother, a burn patient, lived there for three years.

Downer’s mother later enrolled in the hospital’s nursing school and graduated in 1930 and began her nursing career there.

In a note to Joyce Smith, an assistant museum director at Vaughan-Smitherman, Downer wrote of her visit.

“It was such a thrill meeting you and touring the old Vaughan Memorial Hospital,” she wrote.

Downer’s mother, Sallie Dessa Arrington, was born in Flatwood on Oct. 21, 1909, and moved as a baby to Prairie, about 40 miles south of Selma in Wilcox County.

According to Downer, her mother bent down to pick up some pecans lying on the hearth in front of the fireplace in the front room of their home at age 2 and her clothing burst into flames.

The incident occurred on wash day in the family home, so the child was immediately placed in a tub of freshly drawn water.

She was taken by the only means possible – a horse and buggy –

to the Vaughan hospital in Selma and lived there for three years while recovering from her burns.

“Most of her time there (at Vaughan) was spent wrapped in cotton, lying on a sling, with daily trips into surgery to cut and remove the dead tissue,” Downer said. “Her burns were extensive. She had to undergo skin grafts later in her life. Her hips and thighs were deeply burned and forever scarred….During the course of those three years at Vaughan Memorial Hospital, she decided to become a nurse, her daughter said.

Batavia said that her mother finished high school, returned to Vaughan and enrolled in the nursing program. She finished her training in 1930. She was introduced by a friend to the friend’s brother – Robert John “R.J.” Williams –

who became her husband in 1931.

Sallie died in 1995 and her husband in 2004. Both were buried in the Arrington family plot in Catherine.

Downer told Smith of the many stories her mother had told her about the time spent in surgery, the “birthing room” with the babies.

“Walking those same stairs that Mom walked so many years ago and standing in areas that she had so wonderfully described was sheer joy!”

Downer presented a framed set of photos of her mother taken about the time of her graduation from nursing school, a copy of her nursing diploma and a picture taken at the hospital towards the end of her treatment.

These items are on loan and will be displayed in the museum.