THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, September 5, 1996 TAG: 9609050359
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARIE JOYCE, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: 121 lines
Sister Rose Marie Gerace moves quickly and purposefully through the lobby of DePaul Medical Center, sensible black shoes barely lifting off the floor. In the elevator, she skims a list of cancer patients. Oncology is her ward.
Like the eight other Daughters of Charity working at the hospital, Sister Rose Marie will spend her day comforting patients, praying with those who want prayer. The sisters' light-blue summer habits are a familiar sight in the halls of the hospital.
But starting Friday, the sisters will disappear, ending a 141-year-old tradition in Norfolk. DePaul is being sold to another Catholic hospital chain, affiliated with a different religious order, the Sisters of Bon Secours. The Daughters of Charity will move on to other assignments in other towns.
The two orders have much the same goals - providing love, help and comfort to those who need it. Bon Secours is a French phrase that, roughly translated, means ``good help.'' But they have different leadership. The health-care chains with which they are affiliated are based in separate cities and own separate facilities.
And because the new order has fewer nuns, it's unclear whether there will be a large contingent living and working at the hospital again. Bon Secours leaders say they want a ``mission presence'' at the hospital, but haven't decided how large it will be.
The Daughters of Charity began tending the sick in Hampton Roads when a yellow fever epidemic hit the city in 1855. Eight nuns, who ran an orphanage, began nursing the sick and dying, using the house of a wealthy patron. The patron willed them her home, and the Hospital of St. Vincent de Paul was incorporated in 1856. The first hospital had eight rooms.
The modern DePaul Medical Center is at Granby Street and Kingsley Lane. Although several sisters from Daughters of Charity serve on the hospital board, they aren't based in Norfolk. Sister Rose Marie and her eight colleagues are here all the time, living in private quarters on the fourth floor, working six days a week. There were 10 sisters, but one left earlier this summer for her new assignment.
And the matriarch of the group, Sister Agatha Cadogan, died in March, having given 23 years to the sick at DePaul.
It was Sister Agatha who tutored Sister Jean Farrell on the job. Like the others, Sister Jean has held a variety of posts, including teaching school. When she came to DePaul, her in-service training involved watching Sister Agatha at work. Sister Agatha taught her how to handle tragedy.
Sister Jean remembered that lesson when she first had to comfort a family who had decided to take a relative off life support. She prayed with them as they gathered around the bed, then, not wanting to intrude on a sacred time in the family, she waited in the hall in case they needed her.
She watched as a young woman entered the room. When the woman left, Sister Jean asked if she was the doctor. The young woman said yes, and that it was the first time she had ever been called to cut a patient's life support. Suddenly, the young doctor threw her arms around Sister Jean and broke into sobs. Sister Jean held her.
Since then, there have been many, many patients. For those who die, the sisters hold a memorial service for families every two months. But Sister Jean has seen a lot of recoveries, too. She spends some of her time working in physical rehabilitation, working with those people who need to relearn physical movements as simple as getting in and out of bed.
The nuns begin and end each day with prayer in a small, plain chapel in their living quarters. Before they begin rounds, they meet to discuss their patients. Each has her particular wards, except for one sister who works in finance.
Prayer is a central component of their work, although they must handle the matter tactfully, since most patients are not Catholic. Sister Jean favors ``The Lord's Prayer'' because it's well-known. Sister Rose Marie carries cards in her pocket with prayers for different denominations. Sister Maria Cincotta, who doesn't feel comfortable praying from a card, simply tailors what she says. For a Jewish patient, she avoids mentioning Jesus.
When patients don't want to pray, the sisters hold their hands and talk about the skill of the medical staff, says Sister Maria. They never insist on prayer. But even those who say they don't practice a religion seem to want prayer when they're facing surgery or a serious illness, say the sisters.
Sister Rose Marie says: ``I think people are beginning to realize the importance of prayer in healing.''
Sister Rose Marie enters the room of cancer patient Stanley Collins, seated next to his bed. Collins, who lives in Norfolk, has non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. He has needed several hospital visits, and he and his wife, Jane, have come to know Sister Rose Marie quite well. Sometimes when she bakes rolls, she brings some in to him.
``Put your head back,'' she says to him, almost briskly, as she adjusts the pillow behind his head. Then she launches into a prayer for his health and for the skill of his doctors and nurses: ``Faithful Healer of the Sick, hear Stanley's prayer. . . ''
Collins will miss Sister Rose Marie. ``She's always so pleasant,'' he said. ``She is so upbeat.''
Then it's down to Mass in the first-floor chapel, where, with members of the public, the nuns pray for the recovery of their patients, for those who have gone before, like Sister Agatha, and for their new missions.
Afterward, Sister Maria, who leaves Friday, strolls the fourth-floor living quarters. She apologizes for the boxes in the bedrooms, dining room and community room, where a statue of the Virgin stands in an alcove along a wall.
Today, there will be a farewell reception for the sisters. All nine will be gone by the official transfer ceremony on Sept. 23. The sale will become final sometime in October.
The community will feel the loss, says John Dailey of Norfolk, who stopped by the hospital to attend Mass and to offer a prayer for the departing sisters. He was born in the old DePaul hospital, where a Daughter of Charity helped arrange for his baptism. She helped his family in other ways, too. He has seen the work the sisters do when he has visited friends in the hospital.
``It's almost like they see Christ in every patient they meet,'' he said. ``Their presence here has affected not only the city, but also the Tidewater community and the whole state.''
Sister Maria will go to a home for children in Maryland, to tutor teen-age mothers. Sister Rose Marie, who at 84 says she is ``not ready for retirement,'' will tend to retired nuns at a facility in Maryland.
Sister Jean, who loves this job so much, has been allowed to go to another hospital, in Washington, D.C.
People think that because the sisters accept God's will, they don't regret leaving, she said.
``Just because it's the will of God, it doesn't make the pain go away.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by Beth Bergman\The Virginian-Pilot
[Sister Rose Marie Gerace prays with Stanley Collins at Depaul
Medical Center on Thursday...]
[Sister Rose Marie hugs Jane Collins...]
KEYWORDS: DEPAUL HOSPITAL NUN SISTER RETIREMENT TRASFER by CNB