Jewell (a/k/a Polka Dot, Miss Witty, Mother, Mrs. Speedy, Mater, Nana, Mrs. Jewell, Memaw and other affectionate names) was born on September 5, 1925, in Metter, Georgia. Her mother passed away before she could walk and she was raised by her “Granny” (her paternal grandmother), father and older sisters.
At seven years old, Jewell had her tonsils taken out and met a nurse who was very kind to her. She said she wanted to be just like that nurse one day and never wavered in her commitment to be a pediatric nurse. After graduating from Metter High in 1943, she boldly left home to come to “the big city” in Atlanta and attend Piedmont Nursing School on a Nurse Cadet scholarship program. At Piedmont, she met many young women from all over the Southeast who had come to help with the war effort. They became a close-knit group and remained lifelong friends. She even moved next door to one of those classmates, Catherine Russell McCoy Toole, in 1963, and they stayed very close until Catherine passed away in 2016.
After nursing school, Jewell began working as a RN at Egleston Hospital where she worked for about five years. She took time off to give birth to her only son, and later was employed at Scottish Rite Hospital on Hill Street in Decatur. Soon after Scottish Rite moved to its new home off Ashford Dunwoody, she opened the Outpatient or Day Surgery Center that has now become the norm for care across the country. She retired after 35 years with Scottish Rite and even then continued working in the gift shop for more than a decade. All combined, she had almost 55 years of service to what is now Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. For that service, Children’s nominated her and she was awarded an 11-Alive Community Service Award. An article written about the time she received that award labeled her “A Priceless Jewel”--which indeed she was!
Jewell was preceded in death by her parents, Paul Cornelius Williams and MelRae Council Williams; her husband Donald Albert Brannen; two brothers, Roy and Guy Williams; and five sisters, Ila Howard, Myra Holloway, Pauline Williams, Martha Lanier, and Marge Barrow.
Surviving are her son and daughter-in-law, Donald Albert Brannen, Jr. (“Bert”) and Linda, of Greensboro, Georgia; a sister Mary Courson of Panama City, Florida; three grandsons, Donald Albert Brannen, III (“Bo”) of Los Angeles, CA, Robert Harrison Brannen (Mary Bryant) of Chattanooga, TN; and Benjamin Massey Brannen (Lily) of Atlanta, GA; and two step-granddaughters, Sonya Lynn Shelton of Burbank, CA and Lana Sue Shelton of Decatur, GA.
Jewell always loved children and considered many as her adopted grandchildren including, among others, Catie McCoy Miller, Chad McCoy, Cassie McCoy Moody; Alexia and Natalie Graves; and Tristan and Cooper Shelton.
A graveside service and internment will be held at 2:30 p.m. on Sunday April 23, 2023, at Arlington Memorial Gardens, followed by a visitation and reception at H. M. Patterson and Sons’ Arlington Chapel at 173 Allen Road, N. E., Atlanta, Georgia 30328.
The family requests that, in lieu of flowers, memorial gifts be made to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. Gifts can be made online at choa.org/tribute or mailed in “memory of Jewell Brannen” to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta Foundation, 1575 NE Expressway, Atlanta, Georgia 30329.
