'Next Door to Heaven'

Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne mark century of care for cancer patients

By JULIA MARTIN

Sister Lucy Hitchcock, O.P., director of St. Rose's Home in Manhattan, said she's always humbled when she hears patients and families saying the home on the lower East Side is "next door to heaven."

That same observation has been made about the six other homes--including the Rosary Hill Home in Hawthorne and five in other states--operated by the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, who provide care at no charge for patients with incurable cancer.

The homes are often the last station in the dying patient's life.

Mother Marie Edward Deutsch, O.P., mother general of the congregation, said, "One sister put it beautifully--'It is an awesome thing to know that at one minute a patient is looking at you and at the next moment may be looking at the face of God.' "

The Hawthorne Dominicans celebrated their 100th anniversary Dec. 9 with a Mass in their honor in St. Patrick's Cathedral, where Archbishop Egan called them "an extraordinarily good example of how to follow Jesus Christ."

Joseph T. McGirr, whose mother, Josephine, has been at Rosary Hill since last October, would agree. "The patients are already in the company of Jesus there and taking a final step in God's good time," he said.

McGirr, who is chairman of the foreign language department at Cardinal Spellman High School in the Bronx, said he'll never forget the sisters' greeting of "Welcome, sweetheart," on the day his mother arrived at Rosary Hill, on the grounds of the community's motherhouse.

"You knew immediately you were home," he said.

The congregation's founder, Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, was the daughter of the famed American author Nathaniel Hawthorne. A convert to Catholicism, she was baptized in St. Paul the Apostle Church in Manhattan in 1891.

She searched for a practical occupation to fulfill her conversion, and, from a priest, she learned about a cancer-stricken seamstress who could not afford medical or nursing care.

The woman was sent to an almshouse on Blackwell's Island, where the city's prisons and sanitariums were housed at the time. Rose was horrified that individuals could be left in such a state.

"A fire was then lighted in my heart, where it still burns," she later wrote. "I set my whole being to endeavor to bring consolation to the cancerous poor."

At that time, cancer was thought to be contagious, and many of those afflicted were feared and shunned by family and friends.

Undaunted, Rose took a three-month training course at the New York Cancer Hospital, now Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.

One summer day in 1896 she rode a streetcar down to what she heard was the most impoverished part of the city, the lower East Side, and later rented a cold-water flat on Scammel Street to care for the sick.

Calling herself "a servant of relief," she was soon joined by Alice Huber, an art student seeking "a work of perfect charity." In 1899 the two moved into larger quarters on Cherry Street.

They chose as their patroness St. Rose of Lima, who cared for the sick and the poor, and they named their home "St. Rose's Free Home for Incurable Cancer."

Eventually other women joined them. On the feast of the Immaculate Conception, Dec. 8, 1900, they officially became Sisters in the Dominican Order--the Servants of Relief for Incurable Cancer. Rose Hawthorne took the name of Mother Alphonsa.

By that time, they had outgrown the 15-bed Cherry Street home so they purchased a nine-acre tract in central Westchester in 1901.

They arrived at a time when the townspeople were wrangling over what to name their village. Knowing the good works of the nuns, they voted to name it Hawthorne in honor of Mother Alphonsa. She accepted the honor--provided they would recognize that the name really honored her father who, she had often said, was a man full of compassionate insight.

In Manhattan, meanwhile, the Cherry Street home was replaced by a larger facility at the present location, 71 Jackson St. It was rebuilt and expanded as the current six-story facility, which opened in 1966.

Other homes are in Philadelphia; Atlanta; Fall River, Mass.; St. Paul, Minn., and Parma, Ohio. The seven homes have cared for some 92,000 patients of all creeds and races over the years--all of it free.

The sisters do not accept contributions from patients or families, nor do they take government funding or insurance payments. Bills are paid from an endowment fund, investments, and public and private donations.

People also make contributions other than money. For the last 50 years, the Fulton Fish Market, which is practically across the street, has sent enough fresh fish every Friday to feed everyone at St. Rose's--in memory of a market employee who spent his last days at the home.

People also volunteer their time. One of them, William Flower of Yonkers, was impressed with the care given his father-in-law, William Brennan, at Rosary Hill when he died in 1991. "When I retired in 1993, I had to go back and say thank you," Flower said.

"It's a privilege," he said. "The patients are treated like they're at home." They wear pajamas and nightgowns, not hospital gowns, he said, and the women can get their hair done and have a manicure by a volunteer every week and wear make up, if they want.

He said the activity sheet is always filled with recreation, such as table bowling, card games, and Halloween, Mardi Gras and jazz parties.

Annie Fetzer, activities director, said, "It's important to keep them involved."

Flower has been helping out one day a week. A year ago, his wife, Dorothy, joined him in volunteering.

"When I talk to people about the possibility of volunteering, so many say, 'Oh, I can't. It's so depressing,' but I tell them it's not depressing, it's very uplifting," he said. "It's changed our priorities completely and our feelings about what life is all about."

Mother Marie Edward said many patients in the congregation's homes were once in the middle class economically. But "after a lifetime of working and saving, they have been reduced to poverty by the high cost of medical care," she said.

Today's patients are generally sicker and often arrive after having gone through surgery, radiation and chemotherapy, she said.

The congregation now has 78 sisters--38 of them in the archdiocese--three novices and four postulants. They do not have to be trained nurses, but a sister may be sent on to nursing school or for other training if she is interested and qualified.

Louella Borja, 27, a postulant who entered Rosary Hill on Nov. 24, was already a registered nurse. She said her new vocation brings her "closer to God."

"It gives me the energy and strength to go up there and take care of the patients," she said.

Mother Marie Edward remarked that some of the sisters "have to learn a little bit how to be around dying patients, to be at peace around death."

Of herself, she said, "I feel it's a great joy to be with a person when they die--you feel very connected with the presence of God at the time of death."