82-year-old volunteer shares hugs, hope as Atlanta hospital's 'hat lady'

ATLANTA - Most days, you will find Beryl Waters camped out at Shepherd Center's welcome desk, greeting visitors and handing out candy and her hand-knitted caps.

Growing up in England during World War II, the 82-year-old learned to knit at the age of 4.

During German air raids, Waters says, she and her sisters would hunker down under furniture, passing the hours knitting sweaters.

Shepherd Center's Volunteer Services Coordinator Alaina Case says Waters has now channeled her years of knitting to become the rehabilitation hospital's "hat lady."

"You'll always see her with the bag," Case says. "It's either the bag of candy or the bag of hats, giving it to all the patients.  She'll come upstairs and say, 'I don't have any more hats.' And, she started with, like, 25 hats that day."

Waters' camera roll on her smartphone is full of hundreds of patients wearing her hats.

"The deal is they let me put it on, take a picture, and get a hug," she says.

Waters discovered Shepherd Center 5 years ago, while out walking her poodle.

One day, she decided to go inside, and see what the hospital was like.

"It's the most amazing place I have ever been in my life," she says. "It was a place where you see miracles happen."

She signed up to be a volunteer.

Filling in at the welcome desk, Waters would knit to pass the time.

First, she made baby clothes for friends, then prayer shawls for patients, then hats. 

The hats have been the biggest hit.

"I was on the elevator, yesterday or the day before, and there were two guys in wheelchairs," Waters says.  "They said, 'You're the lady that makes the hats, aren't you?' And I said, yes.  'Want a hat!  Want a hat!'  So, I gave them a hat.  When I got off, there were 3 guys in wheelchairs, who said, 'It's the hat lady!'"

She began knitting even more hats after meeting the mother of a young brain injury patient in the hospital's garden one day.

"He had one of these big helmets on.  And she said that, when he took it off at night, his head didn't feel safe, with nothing on it.  So, I started making hats for the brain injured people."

That is when her volunteering began to take an even more personal turn.

Because Waters is also a brain injury survivor, like many of the patients here.

In her late 50's, she suffered a ruptured aneurysm, undergoing emergency surgery to stop the bleeding in her brain.

"I was given a 10% chance of surviving," she says.  "I survived. And I'm very grateful I'm still here.  And, that's why I do what I do."

Her brain injury affected her memory and left Waters with mood swings.

She sometimes struggles with math and finding the right word when she's speaking.

She taps into her experience as a volunteer with the Peer Visitors Association, a non-profit that pairs brain injury survivors with new brain injury and stroke patients.

Waters visits 46-year-old Debra Land of Carrollton, Georgia, a Shepherd Center patient who recently also suffered a rupture aneurysm.

Waters says she understands the uncertainty Lane is feeling about her future.

"I can empathize," Waters says.  "I can say, I was there, but look at me now."

Debra Land's husband Michael says Waters gives them hope Debra, the mother of 15-year-old,  can come back from her brain injury.

"She knows exactly," Land says. "She had the exact same condition Debra did.  Now, she's 82 and volunteering, and out every day doing stuff."

Debra Land smiles as Waters places on of her knitted hat on her head, over the scar from Land's recent brain surgery.

That is Beryl Waters' mission: to spread hope, one hat, and one hug, at time.

"It makes me feel like I'm doing something that people care about, and is worth doing," she says.  "I just think I'm very, very lucky to be 82-years-old and to do what I do."