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When Brenda Pickett came to work Wednesday morning at Head Start -- the
morning of her ninth wedding anniversary -- she never thought about
what might be awaiting her: maybe a bouquet of flowers from her
husband? maybe a silly little card from her kids? maybe an abandoned baby
in a laundry basket?
A baby?
Yes, a baby!
A little red-headed girl, no more than 18 hours old, umbilical cord
still attached, sound asleep
in what Brenda thought was a laundry basket of freshly-laundered
towels for the day's work with two Head Start classrooms. Brenda is a
Head Start teacher and bus driver for 30-some children who meet each
day high atop the Tennessee
mountains an hour west of Chattanooga in a little community called
Griffith Creek. Brenda arrived just a little while after dawn to
inspect the bus
before the day's run. After she got the bus going, she went over to the
laundry basket and saw what looked like a baby's head poking out of
tightly-wrapped
blankets. "At first I thought it was a doll," she remembers thinking.
But when she picked it up, and it started crying -- well, it was a new
day for both of them.
Sequatchie Valley Head Start Teacher and Bus Driver Brenda Pickett Being Interviewed by Reporters
"I think the mother knew we'd take care of it,"
Brenda told
reporters from the newspapers and TV stations in the area. "I just
thank the Lord that I get to work at a place where people trust
us to take care of their kids -- even kids they can't keep. I really
feel sorry for the mother," Brenda said, because she believes the
mother cared about the child. "Why else would she have gone to the
trouble to wrap her up so well?" The baby was warmly swaddled in
blankets and set atop a soft white pillow in a rather beat-up laundry
basket. One of the blankets was crocheted. "What about that?" Brenda
asks. "What about that crocheted blanket? She was
nice and warm when I picked her up and held her against my chest,"
Brenda remembers. Brenda imagines the mother knew about Head Start;
knew the bus schedule; knew that the bus driver would find her, maybe
within minutes of being left right by the school bus steps.
When Brenda realized what she had, she got nervous, went into the center, and locked the doors to protect
the baby. Minutes later, other staff arrived, and there
was a quick round-robin of baby-holding until the emergency squad got
there. Not long after, a helicopter touched down just outside the
center and whisked the baby away to a nearby medical center. Within hours, the staff had reports that the baby was doing well.
Maybe doing better than the staff. Some staff members were on the
verge of tears for hours, as they remembered holding the baby in their
arms, hearing it yowl in hunger. "You got something to feed that baby?"
one staff member demanded before the medics took off in their copter.
"You better have something for that baby!" Others staff members were visibly shaken for hours afterward. Parents who came to school
with their children started crying when they heard the story, then
turned around and bundled their own children home to keep them close.
Classes were cancelled for the day. The staff, suddenly worried about
the mother, walked the fields and nearby woods, wondering if the mother
might still be close. They turned up nothing, then came back and talked
about their experiences with reporters who kept appearing on again and
off again as the day rolled on. Reports of the incident made the news at
six and eleven.
For Brenda, her day was a great spiritual experience. “I
just thank the Lord that I was able to be here for this baby. It’s what
Head Start is all about, caring for children. I’m glad I get to work in a place where people know
we really care about children, that we take care of children, that we nurture
them. If people didn’t know that, that mother wouldn’t have known she
could leave her baby here. She wouldn't have known we'd take care of it."
Brenda and her husband planned to go out to eat, to celebrate
their ninth anniversary -- as well as an unusually exciting day.
We expect that she'll return to work in the morning, just after dawn,
to fire up the school bus and go get her children for the day's
classes. After all, at Head Start, that's what we do.
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