SUFFOLK, Va. — Paulette Butler didn't know what to say when she walked into the surprise we planned in her honor. But when this typically quiet lady does make a sound, people take notice.
"I can feel, when I go in there, what the person is going through. I don't know whether it's a gift or what," Butler said.
If you ask the patients she's touched over her 35 years at Sentara Obici Hospital, she is the real gift.
"She was my constant. She's my angel," said Lisa Nowalski, who spent weeks in intensive care. She tells me every time Butler walked into her room humming a hymn, she could feel her heart rate slow down.
"Very encouraging, very caring, very loving, and we built a relationship so much so that when I finally left the ICU almost five weeks later, my husband gave her my cell phone number, and we stayed in touch," Nowalski added.
I should note: Butler is not a doctor or a nurse. She's a custodian who rarely sticks to her job description.
"She will feed them. She will get them ice. She would give them a bath, whatever it took to do, although that wasn't her job, she would do it," said colleague Sandra Smith.
"I call her my little songbird, because she's always singing. She has a special way of bringing joy to the work day," Tamara Spires, another colleague, shared.
Even as she dealt with the loss of her husband, Butler maintained her comforting presence.
"She would cry a little bit about what she was going through, then she'd go into a room and pray for someone, speak a word or sing a song," said Kathy Pickett, a chaplain at the hospital. "And when she hummed, it just changed the whole atmosphere of the room."
And to think this almost never happened. Butler had two job interviews the day she started working at Obici.
"The bus came to this one first, and when I come here, they said, 'Can you work today?' I said yes," Butler explained. "I've been here ever since," she added.
Here, volunteering at nursing homes and the Salvation Army, always helping, our surprise had some help for her — a $300 Visa gift card from our community partner Southern Bank.
"I love the Lord, and I follow my heart," she said. "Anything I can do for anyone, I just try to do it."
