Eula Hall

A biography of Eula Hall, entitled Mud Creek Medicine: The Life of Eula Hall and the Fight for Appalachia, was written by Kiran Bhatraju and published by Butler Books on November 15, 2013.

Highway 979, which runs through the Mud Creek area, was named the Eula Hall Highway in her honor during October 2006.

In 2004, the Appalachian Ministries Educational Resource Center presented Hall with the Annual David S. Shuller Spirit of AMERC Award. She has received personal letters from President George Bush, Senator Mitch McConnell, and Representative Hal Rogers, among other notables who have recognized the amazing work and the ongoing effort Hall has devoted to the health and well-being of eastern Kentucky.

The new clinic opened its doors in 1984 as a modern 5,200 square feet (480 m) brick building. It is still the home of the clinic today. The clinic houses its own laboratory, X-ray machines, and pharmacy. The clinic has expanded to include an adjacent 1,800 square feet (170 m) building that houses a dental clinic, clothing room, and a food pantry that serves more than 100 families per month.

In 1982, Hall and the Mud Creek community suffered a great loss when the clinic burned down at the hand of a mysterious arsonist. The next morning Hall and the clinic doctor pulled a picnic table under a willow tree and treated patients who had scheduled appointments. She had the telephone company place a telephone on the tree so that patients could call the clinic. Hall then had two used trailers joined together to use as a temporary clinic. A few months after the fire, Hall received a letter from the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) stating that they would donate funds for a new facility for Mud Creek Clinic. One of the conditions of the funding was that the community would be required to provide $80,000 in matching funds. She called a public meeting and more than 400 people showed up and pledged their support. People gave money and items to be raffled off at auction, Hall organized a two-day radiothon that raised $17,000 and multiple chicken-and-dumpling dinners that earned $1,300 apiece. With Eula's leadership, the community raised $120,000 - $40,000 more than the necessary $80,000 required by the ARC. The extra money paid for new X-ray equipment for the clinic.

In 1977, she divorced her first husband and the next year married Oliver Hall, a retired miner.

By 1977, the patient population was so great that Mud Creek Clinic was struggling to meet the needs of the community. Patients often came from as far as Tennessee, West Virginia, and Ohio to get medical care. Mud Creek Clinic then joined forces with Big Sandy Health Care, Inc. (BSHC) a local nonprofit health care organization that operated another community clinic in neighboring Magoffin County. This merger allowed Mud Creek to receive some federal funding and widen its patient care. After the merger, Hall stayed on as a patient advocate for the Mud Creek Clinic and continued to work in that capacity.

In response to the failed OEO health program in Floyd County, in 1973, she established the Mud Creek Clinic in Grethel, Kentucky.

In 1973, Hall opened the doors to The Mud Creek Clinic in Mud Creek, Kentucky, for the uninsured and the under-insured. The clinic was part of the nationwide community health movement, as conceived by the Medical Committee for Human Rights (MCHR). Hall attended one of the early MCHR meetings in 1971, where she met Elinor Graham, one of the first doctors at the Mud Creek Clinic. In the same year, Hall connected with medical students through the Student Health Coalition and organized a one-week health fair in Floyd County, when medical students examined around five-hundred patients. In the summer of 1972, the EKWRO Health Committee began a summer health project that helped lay the groundwork for the future clinic. With a $1,400 donation by the Appalachian Volunteers and the commitment of two local doctors who volunteered from Our Lady of the Way hospital in Martin, Kentucky, the clinic began in a rented trailer on Tinker Fork. It soon outgrew the facility and Hall decided to move her own family into a two-bedroom mobile home and use her own house as the new location for the clinic. She converted the three bedrooms into six exam rooms and the rest of the house into waiting rooms and offices. At the time, the clinic didn't have its own pharmacy and medications had to be delivered from the local hospital after the clinic had closed. Hall would spend half the night delivering medication to patients who had been at the clinic that day.

Eula Hall (October 29, 1927 – May 8, 2021) was an Appalachian activist and healthcare pioneer who founded the Mud Creek Clinic in Grethel in Floyd County, Kentucky.

A self-described "hillbilly activist", Eula was born on October 29, 1927, the second of seven surviving children of Lee D. and Nanny Elizabeth Riley, tenant farmers living in Joe Boner Hollow near Greasy Creek, Kentucky. At the age of nine she attended Greasy Creek Elementary School in Pike County and graduated from the eighth grade in five years. The local high school, over 20 miles away, was too far away for her to continue her education.