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more photosWith a picture of Sister Catherine Hellmann projected on a screen behind them, Peggy Carey, right, shares a hug with Harry Owens at the memorial service in Hellmann's honor Thursday at St. Charles Bend.
Photos by Rob Kerr / The Bulletin
A time and place FOR HEALING
Sister Catherine Hellmann may have died last month, but friends and colleagues gathered Thursday to pay tribute to a woman who won't soon be forgotten in Central Oregon
By Scott Hammers / The Bulletin
Published: October 16. 2009 4:00AM PSTFriends and colleagues gathered at St. Charles Bend on Thursday afternoon to share stories and celebrate the life of Sister Catherine Hellmann, the longtime CEO of the hospital who died last month at age 88.
Hellmann led St. Charles for more than 25 years and was instrumental in the decision to move the hospital in the early 1970s from downtown Bend to its current east-side location.
Former chief nursing officer Nancy Moore recalled how Hellmann's insistence on the site wasn't popular at the time, and how she turned to her faith when the decision seemed to be in doubt.
Moore said that late one night, Hellmann summoned a priest and persuaded him to drive her out to the site near Northeast 27th Street and Northeast Neff Road. While Hellmann and the priest prayed under the moonlight, she took off her crucifix, and hid it under a rock. The hospital's board sided with Hellmann's preferences, Moore said, and the construction began.
The crucifix, she said, is most likely still on-site, presumably somewhere beneath the patients' beds.
Jim Lussier, who followed Hellmann as CEO of the hospital, said Hellmann had a talent for persuasion. Lussier recalled how she convinced all of the nuns from the St. Joseph Center in her hometown of Tipton, Ind., to come to Bend to help her clean the hospital before its grand opening, and how she persuaded a Bend clockmaker to donate a new clock every year — for many years — as the hospital's employee of the year award.
“She was a relationship builder,” Lussier said. “She knew senators by their first names, and they cowered when she walked into their offices, because when she didn't get what she wanted, her last line was, ‘We'll pray for your forgiveness.'”
Lussier said Hellmann, who first came to Bend in 1948 to serve as nursing supervisor for three years, then came back and served as CEO from 1969 through 1995, was driven in her efforts to build and improve the current hospital, and motivated to stop the large number of patients who died while taking an ambulance to better-equipped hospitals in Portland and the Willamette Valley.
Despite her dedication and her vows to the church, she always had a deep interest in how others lived, he said, recalling his surprise when he saw her out jogging or when she insisted in joining in on the tequila toasts to dedicate a new tent she'd purchased for some of the elk hunters who worked at the hospital.
“There is no measure for the worth St. Charles and Sister Catherine have brought to this region, and will continue to bring,” Lussier said.
Current St. Charles CEO Jim Diegel said the hospital is taking steps to see that Hellmann's legacy continues into the future, and will soon be announcing the formation of a Sister Catherine Hellmann Endowment that will help provide care for the impoverished.
“She was a visionary. She was an inspiration. She was a tough but fair negotiator. She was about care and compassion. She was about healing,” Diegel said. “At the center of her world was her faith and patients, their families, and our community. She was about selflessness. She was simply Sister Catherine.”
Nurse Pam DiDente served as Hellmann's driver in 2001, her last year in Bend before she returned to Indiana.
During that year, DiDente ferried Hellmann across town to visit seriously ill women in nursing homes and adult foster care facilities, visits that fell outside the scope of her work as the hospital's president emeritus.
Hellmann displayed an unmatched talent for making people feel cared for on these visits, she said.
“She would be there to see this one woman, but she'd have to work her way through all these others who knew her. It was like an Elvis is in the house kind of thing,” DiDente said.
“She was so unassuming and yet so totally present. It was a remarkable thing to see.”
Scott Hammers can be reached at 541-383-0387 or at shammers@bendbulletin.com.
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