Rosetta “Rose” Hughes never forgot the shift she worked at Birmingham’s University Hospital in the fall of 1963.

Klansmen had bombed Sixteenth Street Baptist Church downtown. A little girl was brought and put in Hughes’ care. Her name was Sarah Collins.

The 12-year old child’s body was battered from the explosion. It was Hughes’ job to stay with her.

The two reunited 59 years later and Hughes told Sarah Collins Rudolph how the hospital staff tried to offer comfort to a child whose eyes were covered in bandages.

“It was just joyful to know that she remembered me,” Rudolph told AL.com. “She was the only nurse who I had come in contact with out of all those years.”

Hughes, the retired nurse and longtime Birmingham resident, died this week at age 103.

Rudolph said she appreciates knowing that Hughes and others showed her kindness during an era rife with hatred.

“It hurts to hear that she passed, but she lived a long life,” Rudolph said. “That goes to show you folks live a long life like that they got to be a special person and she was very special to me.”

The Birmingham Times chronicled the reunion between the former nurse and child patient in 2022.

Hughes in the Birmingham Times story recalled her first time seeing Collins when responders brought her to the hospital.

“[It] looked like she was gone. … I thought she wasn’t going to wake up. … She was not moving,” Hughes said.

Sarah Collins was severely injured, losing an eye, but lived. The four other girls who were with her that morning did not survive. A bomb set outside the downstairs bathroom killed her sister Addie Mae Collins, along with Denise McNair, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley.

Sarah Collins Rudolph remained hospitalized for weeks and missed her own sister’s funeral.

Hughes said the staff cared for young Sarah as if she was one of their little girls, bringing her cake and ice cream at night.

“By me being as young as I was in the hospital, she was really one of the nurses who really spoiled me,” said Rudolph, now 74.

Hughes remained active at New Zion Cumberland Presbyterian Church well after reaching her century mark.

“She loved people, and she was always willing to do for others,” said her daughter Rosa Edwards. “She was very devoted to the church, and it was always interesting to see her doing the bookkeeping at 102 when she was still going every Sunday all dressed up.”

Hughes was born in Eutaw, Alabama, in Greene County. She moved to Birmingham in 1948 and completed the Western-Olin Practical Nursing Program in 1958. Hughes was born in 1921, the same year that her church was founded.

“The church is absolutely saddened, and on a personal note, I am saddened to lose the most dedicated member of our congregation,” said Rev. Roderick Royal, the church’s pastor for the last 11 years.

Hughes’s funeral is 11 a.m. Saturday at New Zion Cumberland Presbyterian Church.

“She was quite a remarkable woman. She was a devoted wife, mother, grandmother, licensed practical nurse, a good neighbor and friend,” Edwards said of her mother. “She enjoyed being in charge of her life up until 102.”