Page 8 - BusinessWest September 4, 2023

“Every role
I’ve had in the community is the best role I’ve ever had.”
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Caritas
pital in Holyoke. After seven years in that role, she was told she would become CEO of St. Luke’s Hospital in Pittsfield, where she would eventually oversee a merger with Pittsfield General to create Berkshire Medical Center. And just as she settled into that role, she was elected to be president of the Sisters of Providence, a role she served for eight years before taking the helm at Mercy Hospital.
“Every role I’ve had in the community is the best role I’ve ever had,” she told BusinessWest. “It always came about as a surprise, and not a happy one. But it always turned out to be the best time I had.”
Sr. Popko agreed.
“She oftentimes says that we understand God’s providence only in the rearview mirror,” she said of her colleague. “She had her plans, and life, meaning God’s providence intervened. She took on those roles, she educated herself and learned how to do them, and then moved on with her own personality, courage, daring, energy, and enthusiasm, and made a success of herself — and them.”
Still a Driving Force
Sr. Caritas told BusinessWest she had no real plans for her 100th birthday — beyond retiring her driver’s license.
There was a large party for her, hosted by members of the Trem- ble family (owners of Valley Communications) early this month, and hers was one of the August birthdays celebrated at Providence Place on Aug. 16. Another party will take place at Mercy Hospital in September. It will take the form of a benefit for establishing a nurse’s scholarship in her name.
“How could I say no to that?” she asked rhetorically, noting that she didn’t want a party. “Nursing was my first love.”
And it still is, some 70 years or so since she left that role to become a dietitian. There have been many positions and many set- tings since, but as she turns 100, Sr. Caritas displays only a few signs of slowing down. Her driver’s license is one, but that won’t keep her from being
active, especially with
the Sisters of Providence
and its many initiatives;
Continued from page 6
the governor, Congress, making sure hospitals in this region were adequately reimbursed for Medicare, or her lengthy battle to win approval from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health for a cobalt unit for cancer treatment at Mercy Hospital.
These fights have earned her a number of honors and accolades over the years — too many to mention in this space — including several from BusinessWest. Indeed, she and the other Sisters of Providence were honored with a Difference Makers award in 2013, while Sr. Caritas was the first to earn a Healthcare Heroes award in the Lifetime Achievement category in 2017. And last year, she was honored by the magazine as a Woman of Impact.
The awards offer testimony to not only her fighting spirit, but other traits as well, from perseverance to entrepreneurship to innovation, all of which were on display in many settings and in many posts, most of which, as she’s fond of saying, were not of her choosing.
One that was of her choosing was nursing school, specifically the one at Mercy Hospital, this after her parents had convinced her that the best path was to become a secretary — she went to school for the vocation, but failed at it (one of the few times she’s really failed at anything) and went into nursing instead.
She started in that field in 1945 at Mercy — she was going to become a nurse in the Navy, but World War II ended before she could enlist — earning $48 a month. After joining the Sisters of Providence, she was sent to St. Vincent’s Hospital in Worcester
as a nurse. But upon making her final vows after her fifth year, in 1949, she was sent back to Mercy Hospital, a move she was thrilled with until she learned that, instead of nursing, she would focus on dietary services.
After receiving a master’s degree in nutrition education at Tufts University and undertaking a dietetic internship at the Francis Stern Food Clinic at the New England Medical Center in Boston, she was assigned to be administrative dietitian at Providence Hos-
Caritas
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Michael Barbara-Jean James Ryan Henry “Hank” Joe Doug Candace Lynch DeLoria Montemayor Hess Downey Kulig Gilbert Pereira
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8 SEPTEMBER 4, 2023 << FEATURE >>
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