A rotating blue star on Birmingham’s skyline. A nurse walking into night shift with steady hands and a pen that won’t sleep. Kathleen Fentry joins us to share how a life in emergency rooms, ambulances, and volunteer firetrucks turned into poems that honor grief, grit, and everyday grace.
We trace the path from her first EMT classes in the early 90s to the front nozzle on a training burn, where a fire chief taught her to feel the split between safety and danger with one ungloved hand. Kathleen opens up about the family she found at Caraway Hospital, why that iconic blue star became a beacon for tired night-shifters and homebound travelers, and how closing those doors reshaped a community. She reads the heart of her Caraway poem and explains why nurses aren’t just task-doers but advocates, translators, and witnesses who hold a family together when the room starts to tilt.
Kathleen also takes us behind the lines of her book, Inspired Thoughts: waking in the night to write, turning a coal miner’s lost sunlight into a prayer, and capturing a great-granddaughter “chasing mommy’s feet” across the kitchen floor. We talk about her recognition at the International Society of Poets in Las Vegas, the next poetry collection on the way, and outlines for new novels and short stories—including a nudge to help a grandson publish his own. Along the way, we explore resource gaps between hospitals, why she trained for field medicine after a head-on crash, and how first responders learn to compartmentalize without going numb.
If you care about nursing, EMS, firefighter life, Birmingham history, or how ordinary moments become timeless lines, this conversation will stay with you. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs a beacon tonight, and leave a review to help others find these stories.
