Carolyn Hanna Wetzel, 68, died Feb. 15, 2009 after a valiant, five-month battle against lung cancer. A Memorial Service will be held this Saturday, February 21, at Oakhurst Presbyterian Church in Decatur, Georgia at 4PM.
Carolyn was an amazing wife, mother, friend, and a lifetime promoter of children’s and women’s issues and health. Married 45 years to her beloved Ray, the two of them lived all over the world including England, Colorado, Hawaii, before settling outside Atlanta. Carolyn enjoyed travel and spent time not only in Europe and the US, but also in Israel where her daughter and son-in-law currently live.
An only child in rural South Georgia, Carolyn’s mother Mary Hanna raised her with a great deal of love and Southern pride to become a fierce advocate not only for her family, but also all children in Georgia. Carolyn graduated from Quincy High School where she was one of only a few women from her tiny school to attend college. After graduating from Florida State with a degree in nutrition, she spent two years in the Army as a dietician where she met Ray, an Air Force Lieutenant, on a blind date. Two months later, the two were married in a small ceremony and off to Wethersfield Air Force Base in England where their daughter Sarah was born a year later. While Carolyn relished the adventure, she would often talk about long (unsuccessful) searches in English supermarkets for the southern foods she loved like grits and buttermilk.
After living in England, the family was next moved by the Air Force to Colorado, and it was in the city of Denver that their son John was born. This was in the late 1960’s, during the Vietnam War. While their father was away in Vietnam, it could have been hard for John and Sarah, but Carolyn helped her children to feel the immediacy of their dad’s love and that they were under his protection even though he was on the other side of the world.
After moving from Colorado, while the family was stationed at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii during the 1970s, Carolyn earned her Masters degree in Nutrition and began pursuing her career in public health. Eventually the family moved back to her home state of Georgia. Henceforth, the family would live in either Alabama or Georgia.
In her career over the next thirty years, Carolyn Wetzel would rise to become one of the most effective advocates for women’s and children’s health in Georgia. She worked for many years in the WIC program, a nutritional program for poor women, infants, and children. Ultimately she rose to become the Director of the East DeKalb Health Center. Since retirement in the year 2000, Carolyn continued to work on behalf of children’s health in Georgia. Over the past decade, she worked as a member of the board of Healthy Mothers Healthy Babies, a Georgia organization that has been instrumental in securing and protecting the right of all Georgia children to receive health care. She greatly valued the many friendships she gained through this work, the many wonderful people she met and who came to love her both before and after retirement.
Carolyn is survived by her husband Ray Wetzel, daughter Sarah Wetzel Fishman, son-in-law Danny Fishman, son John Wetzel, daughter-in-law Win Diggs, and three grand-children, Will, Claudia, and Thomas Ray as well as innumerable beloved and necessary friends.
Carolyn requested that in lieu of flowers donations in her name be made to Healthy Mothers Healthy Babies. There is a link on the HMHB website, www.HMHBga.org, to make on-line donations. If people want to send via mail, the address is Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition of Georgia, Inc, 2300 Henderson Mill Rd. Ste. 410, Atlanta, Georgia 30345.
