Generose Gervais

About a month into my husband's complicated and difficult hospitalization in the fall of 2004, some good friends, Stewart and Kathy Laird of Minneapolis, came to visit us at St. Mary's Hospital of Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, where Larry was in the Surgical Intensive Care Unit.

Stew, a former hospital administrator in Wisconsin and Minnesota, wanted to visit a friend of his who lived at the hospital, a Franciscan nun, and he and I set out to find her while Kathy stayed behind in Larry's room to pray.

We wandered down the halls of the Mary Brigh Building to the corridors of the older Domitilla Building, until we were past the main visitors' cafeteria and just outside the sisters' dining room, where we came upon an older woman in hairnet and apron putting jars of homemade pickles on a cart.

"Excuse me," Stew asked. "Do you know where I can find Sister Generose?"

It was Sister Generose.

Despite her unassuming appearance on that particular occasion which might have given rise to any patient, visitor or unknowing staff passing her by, Sister Generose is the life and heart and history of St. Mary's Hospital and the Franciscan alliance with Mayo Clinic.

Not everyone knows that Mayo Clinic, a world class health care institution, came to be because of a tornado in a cornfield in August of 1883, a tornado that wiped out much of the town of Rochester and left many seriously wounded and in need of medical care. The Sisters of St. Francis were called upon by a local physician, Dr. William W. Mayo, to take in the sick and wounded and care for them. The sisters, trained as teachers, not nurses, cared for the patients through the crisis, and when it was over, Mother Alfred Moes, the spiritual leader of the Rochester Franciscans, recognized the need for a local hospital and enlisted Dr. Mayo to help her in creating it. The sisters would work to acquire the land, and open the hospital, and provide nurses for it, she explained, if Dr. Mayo would staff it with doctors.

It was then that St. Mary's Hospital, and Mayo Clinic, were born, and an alliance was formed between the Sisters of Saint Francis in Rochester and the Doctors Mayo, an alliance that continues to this day.

From the time of Mother Alfred Moes, there began an unbroken chain of Franciscan sisters who were administrators of St. Mary's Hospital--Sisters Joseph, Domitilla, Mary Brigh,

and Generose.

Generose Gervais.

Sister Generose Gervais was the last Franciscan administrator of St. Mary's Hospital.

Like the great women who went before her, there is a building a St. Mary's that bears her name, the most recent addition, which houses Mental Health and Addiction Services just across from the main hospital.

There are fewer than two dozen Rochester Franciscans who continue to live in community in the convent at St. Mary's Hospital of Mayo Clinic in Rochester. They wrapped their arms around me during the difficult eight months that we were there for Larry's prolonged hospitalization and fight for his life, took me in, prayed with and for me and him, and gave me strength I would not have had otherwise. Some of these women were at St. Theresa's College in Winona, Minnesota, at the same time my husband Larry was a student at St. Mary's, and some knew him later at a time he served on the boards of both St. Mary's and St. Teresa's. When I needed them, they were there for me, and I will never forget their loving presence, or underestimate the power and strength of the Rochester Franciscans.

Sister Generose Gervais continues to be a larger than life presence in the Mayo/St. Mary's/Rochester community. She works tirelessly for the efforts of the Povarello Foundation, which enables those who are less fortunate to be able to receive health care at Mayo despite an inability to pay.

And she makes world class pickles.

King Fahd

I've long said that Rochester is the great leveler.

When people come to Mayo Clinic in the cornfields of Minnesota for treatment, they come from all corners of the world and all walks of life, kings and presidents, priests and paupers. I recall being in town many years ago when then Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in Rochester to meet with Jordan's late King Hussein, who was undergoing treatment for cancer at Mayo Clinic at the time. There were banners across the main downtown street, Broadway, welcoming both men to town.

Around that same time, several years ago, my husband and I were in town for routine medical care and staying in a hotel which was hosting several members of the Saudi Royal Family on its top floors, including King Fahd. As only Rochester can do, it brought us face to face, in a way that would not have been likely, or even possible, in most of the rest of the world. My husband and I went into the Concierge Lounge that morning for breakfast, prior to our planned checkout later that morning, and there were only two other diners in the room--King Fahd, and a male attendant. The all too young manager of the hotel was standing over the pair fussing to try to discern what it was that was required. Two female employees from the concierge staff also busily stood at the ready. But no one could understand what it was that His Majesty wanted, and there was clear and present frustration.

I stood up, begged pardon and asked if I might be of assistance, then explained to the hotel manager what it was that His Majesty wanted.

"Sweet milk," I explained.

King Fahd nodded at me in appreciation as I explained to the hotel staff what this was. His companion thanked me most graciously.

Anywhere else, that act of assistance, that encounter, might never have taken place, but in Rochester, we were all children of the Almighty at the mercy of our quest for competent and compassionate medical care, in the cornfields of Minnesota.

King Fahd bin Abdul Aziz al Saud.

I felt a special sadness later when I read of his death. Our paths had crossed, if only briefly, in this life in a simple act of compassion for a fellow traveller on the journey.