Caitlyn Nichole Baggett was a small-town girl with a big personality. And she definitely wasn’t one to keep quiet, her uncle said.
“She told you like it was,” Stewart Hooks said Friday afternoon. “She wouldn’t hold her tongue. She’d speak up.”
And that didn’t change when she transferred this school year from East Georgia State College to Georgia Southern University, where she was a junior in the nursing program. Baggett, 21, wasted no time making new friends who loved her spunk.
“If there was a group and no one would say anything, count on Caitlyn,” Hooks said.
On Sunday, family and friends will gather to celebrate the life of Baggett, one of five students killed early Wednesday in a multi-vehicle crash on I-16, west of Savannah. The funeral will be held at 2 p.m. at Oak Hill Baptist Church in Millen, a town of about 3,000 people located about 30 miles north of Statesboro.
Hooks said his family, including Baggett’s parents and younger sister, Makayla, were shocked to lose their niece, daughter and sister so suddenly. Another family called Hooks at work Wednesday and told him to go immediately to be with his sisters.
“I was thinking the whole time, ‘What could it be? What could it be?’” Hooks said he thought to himself as he drove.
He never imagined it was Baggett, involved in a deadly crash as she headed with classmates for their last clinical of the school year at a Savannah hospital.
“You see everybody going through stuff like that, and you never think it could happen to you,” Hooks said. “You’re not prepared for it.”
In a small community, news of Baggett’s death spread quickly, and the family has been overwhelmed by support and prayers, Hooks said.
“She knew everybody and everybody knew her,” he said.
Now, Baggett will be remembered as one of five young women whose lives were cut short while they worked toward their dreams. Baggett had planned to work as a pediatric nurse, Hooks said.
“She loved being around kids, and she loved being around people and helping people,” he said.
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