Vera Cottrell

Vera Cottrell has died aged ninety-eight. Vera and her family moved to Colonial Heights from Kentucky in 1954 and she raised her two young daughters here. Her husband, Ben, died in 1993. Vera was an RN and worked for many years at Petersburg General Hospital on the post-surgical floor. She attended retired nurses’ lunches with old friends until last year when a broken femur kept her in a wheelchair. She lived at home until March when she moved to Dunlop House, where she had been a volunteer for many years. Vera was the eldest child of Belle and Pete Browning of Fisty, Kentucky. Pete Browning was a coal miner. He and Belle raised Vera and her five brothers and sisters, and three half-sisters from a marriage that ended with his wife’s death in the 1917 flu epidemic, on a hillside farm on a mountain creek in Appalachia. Pete was determined that his children would get an education. They all graduated from the Hindman Settlement School, a day and boarding school for mountain children, in Hindman, Kentucky. Vera worked her way through nursing school at University of Kentucky in Lexington during the depression. She met her husband Ben at the VA Hospital where she worked when he returned from a Navy commission after World War II. Vera was a member of the Church of Christ in Colonial Heights. She is survived by two daughters, Brenda Riddle and her husband Bill of Colonial Heights, and Kay Cottrell who lives in Key West, Florida; two grandchildren, Beth Heavrin and her husband Chris of Midlothian and Bobby Goodwin and his wife Brittany of Dinwiddie; and six great grandchildren, Abby and Bailey Heavrin, Emily and Brody Goodwin, Abby and Cameron Hoffman. Her remains will rest at Colonial Heights Chapel of the E. Alvin Small Funeral Homes & Crematory, 2033 Boulevard, Colonial Heights, Virginia 23834 on Thursday, May 28, 2020 from 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Interment will be private.  In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the Hindman Settlement School, for mountain children, PO Box 844, Hindman, Kentucky 41822 or online at www.hindman.org. Condolences may be registered at www.ealvinsmall.com.