Mary Rose and her husband Doug and granddaughter Anika
Before she helped found the Human Milk Banking Association of North America and before there was a training program named for her at UNC-Chapel Hill, Mary Rose Tully was a new mom in a hospital far from home trying to nurse her son and wishing for a little guidance.
She got the advice she needed from other moms and continued the support by joining Nursing Mothers of Raleigh when she, her husband and son moved to North Carolina. Tully probably didn’t realize even then that helping other women and their babies would become her life’s work.
“She loved children and babies, but what she loved more was making sure mothers had support to feed their babies,” said Mary Overfield, who started as Tully’s friend and became her colleague, “Mary O.” to her “Mary Rose.”
“That was Mary’s passion,” Overfield said. “Not just how cute the babies are, but also she’s about the mothers.”
Tully became an internationally known expert on breastfeeding and breast-milk banking. In the months before Tully’s death Jan. 20 at age 63, six students became the first to enroll in what is now called the Mary Rose Tully Training Initiative, the lactation-consultant training program for graduate students she helped launch at the University of North Carolina.
Her priorities were her granddaughter, son and husband first, “and then every other mother and child in the world,” said Miriam Labbock, director of the Carolina Global Breastfeeding Institute at the Gillings School of Global Public Health at UNC-CH.
Born in Minneapolis, Mary Rose Weber was the oldest of eight children. She left home to study at the University of Idaho, where she met a Navy ROTC midshipman whose girlfriend had broken up with him just before the military ball. The girlfriend of a dorm mate set up Douglas Tully with Weber for that dance.
“I came back and told my friend, ‘I could marry that girl,’” Tully said. And he later did.
Douglas Tully left college before finishing his degree, which in 1968 made him a prime candidate for the draft. The couple planned a wedding based on his leave date and honeymooned by driving from Idaho, where they were married, to Biloxi, Miss., where he was training.
They were eventually stationed at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California where Mary Rose Tully taught first grade at the local Catholic elementary school. Their son, Christopher, was born at the military hospital there. When Douglas Tully’s military commitment was up, the young family moved to Raleigh on the advice of a friend who had already relocated east.
Mary Rose Tully continued her own education while teaching Catholic elementary school. Through Nursing Mothers of Raleigh, she met another young mom, a recent transplant from Denver, and invited her to lunch.
Overfield remembers being surprised by the invitation. “I looked behind me,” she said. “I thought she was talking to someone else. I’d just met her!”
But Tully was talking to her, and along with a lifelong friendship, a professional collaboration had begun. Overfield was a nurse, frustrated by the lack of information and support for breastfeeding mothers.
A call to help
Tully’s membership in the Raleigh group led to her involvement in early breast-milk banking, where lactating moms provide milk to be stored for those who need it – often ill or premature babies but also others who are sick and can benefit from the highly nutritious and easily digested milk. Doctors who were conducting breastfeeding-related studies would contact Tully for help reaching out to mothers. Eventually, Tully was hired by WakeMed and established its milk bank, one of a handful in the country.
She and Overfield wrote curricula, made training videos and collaborated with other experts, and Tully gained an international reputation for expertise in milk banking and lactation consultation. She served in the leadership of several breastfeeding organizations and was the co-author of a library’s worth of research and guidance on the topic. It wasn’t the need for recognition that pushed her, however, but a call to help others.
“Everything she did, whether it was teaching school or working with a new mother, she did with such passion and care,” Douglas Tully said. “When you were with Mary, she gave you her full attention, listening to what you’d say.”
Dr. Laurie Dunn, a neonatologist at WakeMed, said Tully had the ability to bring people and resources together in a way that touched both individuals and policy.
“She always went the extra mile for anyone who needed help,” Dunn said. “She was able to answer the questions and make things happen.”
Tully left WakeMed after more than 20 years to work for UNC, where she served on the faculties of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, the School of Nursing and the School of Public Health. She was also co-founder and senior clinical associate of the Breastfeeding Institute.
Tully was speaking at a conference in August when she began to feel ill. She was eventually diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. The doctors were hopeful, but the disease was relentless. In her final days, she asked that friends and family visit her in her hospital room.
“She’d hold your hand and smile,” Overfield said. “And we all got to say goodbye.”
Tully is survived by her husband, son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter, her mother and six of her siblings.
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