A Calling to Care
SLIPPERY ROCK — In the early history of one Pittsburgh community, the Sisters of Charity at Seton Hill found a baby abandoned at one of its hospitals. The nuns called the police, and the baby was taken to an orphanage. It died a short time later.
Responding to that tragedy, the nuns in 1891 established the Roselita Foundling and Maternity Hospital for babies. It included a facility for unwed mothers to recover and an orphanage for babies awaiting adoption.
This and other stories will be told in the Sisters in Healthcare exhibit being assembled by John Bavaro, coordinator of the health services administration program at Slippery Rock University.
The exhibit is on display at the Regional Learning Alliance, which is SRU's campus in Cranberry Township. When the exhibit is complete, it will travel to 16 communities from Erie to Johnstown.
The exhibit will feature the history of the region's Catholic nuns who were involved in health care from 1847 to 1969, what Bavaro refers to as their "golden era."
"I thought we should capture the history before it is lost," Bavaro said.
Before coming to SRU, Bavaro was a nurse for 35 years at several of the hospitals formerly operated by nuns. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, he saw several of these hospitals closed.
The Roselita Hospital on Bedford Avenue in the Hill District of Pittsburgh is now the St. Joseph House of Hospitality for homeless men operated by Catholic Charities.
Bavaro said as the needs of the time changed, so did the use of the hospitals and the specialties of the nuns. They became nurses as well as business owners and specialized in one or more areas of health care.
Today, corporations have taken over the running of hospitals, and the sisters have moved onto other issues such as homelessness and AIDS, according to Bavaro."People aren't aware of the hardships sisters dealt with or some of the things they discovered," he said.Sister Louise Grundish, who worked for several years in Providence Hospital in Beaver Falls, said there are some "amazing" stories about how the nuns helped to advance several fields of medicine."A lot of these hospitals were begun by religious women who did very innovative things," she said.The first nurse anesthetist, for example, was from the Sisters of Mercy of Erie, and numerous advances in psychiatry were made by the nurses at Sisters of St. Francis in Millvale.Still other nuns became pharmacists, dieticians, X-ray technicians and other specialists.Now Grundish, Bavaro and others want to gather that history and record it."They (the nuns) didn't write anything down then," Grundish said. "They were too busy doing, not writing."Grundish and representatives from the 16 Catholic orders of nuns have helped Bavaro compile as much as they could for the project. Artifacts include habits, which vary in style between the religious orders; medical equipment and wheelchairs used in the early 1900s; crutches from the Civil War and various other relics.
The project boasts the largest collection of historical clothing of this type in country.Grundish and others in her order contributed some of the artifacts and information."If we didn't tell our story soon, it would be lost," she said. "It is an amazing story. And it's been wonderful to hear the stories of others."Bavaro said he hoped to capture the information before the nuns couldn't tell it anymore. He hopes over the past two years he's collected enough to teach younger generations about the nuns' contributions.SRU students helped to sort the items and put the displays together. One graduate student, Sue Mraz, spent countless hours making mannequins to display the habits, with Styrofoam heads and dress forms."We couldn't afford museum mannequins, which cost $2,000 each," said Bavaro.Once it is all ready, the exhibits will be taken on the road to show those who helped him first hand."It's only fair to take it to where they (the nuns) are," he said.There are 34 former hospitals and other sites he plans to visit during that tour, most of which are in the Pittsburgh area. Information on the dates and locations of the show can be found at the Web site sistersinhealthcare.org, where artifacts and stories can be also be viewed.For more information, contact Bavaro at 724-738-2265 or john.bavaro@sru.edu.
