Kerry Milton by Mimi Greenwood Knight
photo: CANDRA GEORGE mycreativereality.com
Senior Vice President/ Chief Nursing Officer St. Tammany Health System AS A GIRL, Kerry Milton had a heart for seniors. “I loved spending time with the older folks at church, just listening to them and being around them,” she says. “My parents recognized and encouraged it.” When she was old enough, she accepted a nursing assistant position at the charity hospital in her hometown of Bogalusa. “I still remember buying that seafoam green uniform and showing up my first day. I was so proud.” Clearly, she’d found her calling. On to LSU and their nursing baccalaureate program in New Orleans, working at Baptist Hospital, during school, and her first “real” job as a medical oncology nurse at East Jefferson. But Milton and her husband, Danny, knew they wanted to live on the Northshore. So, after a brief stint in New York for his job, they landed in St. Tammany and Milton accepted a job at St. Tammany Parish Hospital in 1982. What a different facility it was then. “Covington had two hospitals, at the time,” says Milton. “I interviewed at Highland Park. Then, I interviewed with Shirley Brown at St. Tammany. She hired me on the spot and quickly became my mentor. We were just a small-town hospital with five or six critical care beds, a tiny emergency room and little technology. We didn’t do any outpatient care. That was almost unheard of at the time. But Shirley taught me that, at St. Tammany, the patient always comes first, >>
July-August 2020 43