Katy Shugart: Dr. Cooley’s operating room to WISD

The following is the first in a three part series covering the 2020 retirees of WISD, honoring them for their service to our community’s children as dedicated teachers, nurses and other staff members.

Katy or Kay McRoberts Shugart has been a fixture around Wimberley Independent School District, looking after children’s medical needs for 33 years. But her medical career almost didn’t happen, as she didn’t want to be one.

“I was expected to be one. My mother was a micro-biologist for the VA and my father was a doctor in Waco…People would ask, ‘are you going to be a nurse?’ I would say ‘no,’” Katy said.

She and her mother lived in Houston where she graduated from Lamar High School, sang with the Chordettes with Dr. Denton Cooley’s daughters. Cooley was one of the first surgeons to master open heart surgery. “I also went to school with Larry Schatt who mixed the Kool-Aid for Jim Jones,” she laughed.

“I didn’t know what I wanted to do, so first I had to find out what I didn’t want to do.” She was on academic probation at the University of Houston and finally woke up and realized that maybe she would be a nurse.

“I knew this will be my course of study when I walked through the Biology Building, smelled those smells. This is home, the right thing.” In her second semester in nursing school she was to observe the operating room at St. Luke’s in Dr. Cooley’s course.

When outside in the hall, she mentioned to a person standing there that she would love to work there. At the time she didn’t realize the person was one of the directors of the school.

Soon she was on her way. “I was a professional student in nursing school in a perfect job. It was excellent in Dr. Cooley’s operating room.” There were 32 operating rooms in the complex of hospitals. For three years she worked in operating rooms.

She moved to Wimberley in 1978 and worked at St. David’s operating room and was Dr. Greer’s office nurse. “In Houston I lived one and a half miles from work and it took me 45 minutes and here I lived 45 miles away and it took one hour, but I was moving instead of a dead stop.” She worked several years at CTMC and then in 1986, Wimberley became a school district, and she was employed as a nurse’s aide.

“I loved working in the operating room. It was my passion… It was so different (at school) and so much. This means so much more. You follow a kid day-by-day, month-by-month, and year-by-year. You can’t put any monetary value on that.” All three of her children went through WISD.

“I felt that this is where I’m supposed to be. It keeps me grounded in this community.” There were bad days, days she would like to forget, especially when a child is lost. “It breaks your heart.”

Then there are good days to remember. “I referred a kid for Lions Camp. He had asthma, a serious medical condition. I always encouraged kids to go to camp. I later got a text message from his mom. They sent him home a changed child. ‘I hope he can go again,’ said his mother.”

Looking forward to retirement she hopes to do more genealogy on her background in the near future to become a Daughter of the Texas Revolution first then a Daughter of the American Revolution hopefully. Travelling to Scotland is certainly on her agenda, when the opportunity rises again.

“I am blessed to have worked for WISD and in the fall I will have three grandchildren in WISD as transfer students. I couldn’t be happier, and it was the biggest blessing in my life.”