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St. Joseph's Hospital Recognizes Haverty, Spalding
PAGE 9 — The Georgia Bulletin, May 31, 1990
As part of Saint Joseph’s Hospital of
Atlanta 110th Anniversary celebration,
two Atlanta families were presented the
WINGS of Mercy Award to honor those
families for their contribution to the mis
sion of the Sisters of Mercy and Saint
Joseph’s Hospital.
The awards were given to the family of
Rawson Haverty, Sr. and the family of
Hughes Spalding, Jr. during the Mercy
Magic Gala held at The Ritz-Carlton,
Buckhead. The awards, presented by the
Auxiliary’s WINGS, Workers Involved in
New Growth for Saint Joseph’s Hospital of
Atlanta, underscore the hospital’s ap
preciation for the interest and enthusiasm
shown by the families since the hospital’s
earliest days, The recipients of the award
have devoted time, funds, expertise and
leadership to Saint Joseph’s.
In 1864, Atlanta was a smoking ruin, the
population was 10,000. By 1880 the city had
begun to build anew and the population in
creased to 37,000. With what amounted to
50 cents of capital, Sister Cecilia Carroll
and three other Sisters of Mercy traveled
from Savannah to Atlanta to minister to
the sick. In the spring of 1880, they opened
Atlanta’s first hospital, Atlanta Hospital,
later to become Saint Joseph’s Infirmary.
Over the years as the Sisters served the
growing health care needs of the com
munity, the people of Atlanta contributed
time and money to help the hospital grow.
From its beginnings in a small house on
Baker Street, it grew to a three-story
facility on Courtland Street in 1885.
In 1896, Dr. Robert D. Spalding donated
funds for construction of a new wing at the
Courtland Street facility complete with
operating room, reception and waiting
area and chapel. Following the turn of the
century, the hospital used funds from Dr.
Spalding, which had been held in trust, to
build a new surgical wing.
Dr. Spalding’s nephew, Jack J.
Spalding, funded the south wing of the
hospital in 1909 to house nurses.
In 1929, the surgical wing originally
funded by Dr. Spalding was refurbished
with a donation from James J. Haverty.
This added operating rooms and Haverty
Hall, housing additional patient rooms to
serve the poor. Haverty Hall was named
for James Haverty’s wife. Clara.
During 1938, a diagnostic outpatient
clinic was begun in order to serve rural pa
tients unable to obtain medical treatment
in their communities. The clinics covered
a broad range of special treatment in
cluding obstetrics, orthopedics, pediatrics
and dentistry.
A campaign to significantly expand the
hospital was begun in 1946. Hughes
Spalding, Sr., son of Jack Spalding, and
Clarence Haverty, son of James Haverty,
agreed to serve on the Campaign Ex
ecutive Committee and were co-chairmen
of the Campaign Organization Subcommit
tee. After seven years of committed in
volvement by the two men, Saint Joseph’s
Infirmary opened its $4 million expansion
in 1953.
“Clarence Haverty and Hughes
Spalding, Sr. were the principal in
dividuals involved in the two campaigns to
build the new hospital,” said Sister M. Cor-
nile Dulohery, RSM, head administrator of
Saint Joseph’s from 1942-51. “They really
carried the hospital during this period.”
During this expansion period Saint
Joseph’s Auxiliary was begun by
Katharine Haverty Bellman and Mdry E.
Haverty (Mae), Clarence Haverty’s
sisters; Elizabeth Rawson Haverty,
Clarence Haverty’s wife; and Bolling
Spalding, Hughes Spalding, Sr.’s wife.
In 1955, Clarence Haverty and Russell
Bellman, who was married to Clarence’s
sister Katharine, served on Saint Joseph’s
Broader Ethical Issues Urged
In Health Care
BY TRACY EARLY
NEW YORK (CNS) — Catholic institu
tions that care for the elderly must go
beyond the current issues of artificial
hydration and feeding to consider a
broader range of ethical questions involv
ing patients with limited capacity to make
decisions for themselves, a priest
specializing in medical ethics said May 22.
Father Dennis A. Brodeur, vice presi
dent for stewardship at the Sisters of St.
Mary Health Care System in St. Louis,
said respect for patients’ dignity and
autonomy meant letting them participate
to the extent they can in deciding on their
treatment.
However, he said, patients cannot be
judged simply "competent” or "non-
competent,” but have to be evaluated on a
“continuum” involving “a sliding scale of
competencies.”
Health care providers, he said, must ask
not only, “Who’s not competent?” but also
“For what are they not competent?” They
may be competent for making some
choices and not others, or may become in
creasingly competent according to the
help they’re given, he suggested.
Father Brodeur spoke as part of a
weeklong seminar at St. John’s University
in Queens, with co-sponsorship by the
Catholic Medical Center of Brooklyn and
Queens. Regarding home care, Father
Brodeur said, a basic question is determin
ing whether a patient is capable of making
a valid, rational decision to leave the
hospital and go home.
Father Brodeur said some elderly pa
tients may be misled by the familiarity of
the home environment to imagine they can
Of The Elderly
care for themselves when they really can
not.
However, he said, they may be making
rational decisions in terms of their own
values if they decide they prefer living at
home even if they cannot care for
themselves as well as an institution could.
Father Brodeur said human welfare in
volved not only physical health, but par
ticipating in valued activities and social in
teraction with family and friends.
Decisions, the priest said, should be and
generally in the past have been made with
community participation, and not by in
dividuals acting in solitary fashion.
But he said the community involvement
should focus on the role of the family and
health care providers, and avoid the
“adversarial” atmosphere of the legal
system wherever possible.
Father Brodeur said families were the
natural resource in helping reach deci
sions for people of diminished competen
cy, though he cautioned that family views
were not necessarily to be considered
final.
In some cases, he said, spouses try to
take on burdens greater than the; can han
dle. And at times, he said, a child who has
been neglectful will come in at the end with
a sense of guilt, and try to compensate by
insisting on employing every technology.
He said that although ethical decision
makers disliked the idea of letting finan
cial considerations determine treatment,
economics did have to be taken into ac
count.
With government now paying for many
of the expensive forms of treatment, he
said, society has to consider how much of
its resources will be allocated to care for
different sectors of the population.
HONORED — Hughes Spalding, Jr., (1) and Rawson Haverty, Sr.,
(r) accept the WINGS of Mercy Award for their two families. William
T. Foley, St. Joseph’s Hospital president, and Sister Angela Marie
Ebberwein, RSM, provincial administrator of the Sisters of Mercy, are
also pictured.
Hospital’s first Board of Trustees. Russell
Bellman served as co-chairman with
Hughes Spalding, Sr. to develop a nurses
residence and education building
dedicated in 1962. Mrs. Hughes Spalding,
Jr. served as Saint Joseph’s Hospital Aux
iliary president from 1960-61.
In 1965, Rawson Haverty, Sr., Clarence’s
son, joined the Board of Trustees to later
serve as chairman for 10 years. That same
year, Hughes Spalding, Jr. also joined the
Board of Trustees.
By 1975, a decision was made to move
the hospital to a new location in order to
expand its services. Rawson Haverty, Sr.
and Hughes Spalding, Jr., both on the
Board of Trustees, led the new campaign.
In 1978, the hospital moved to its current
location on Peachtree Dun woody Rd., and
it was at this time that its name changed
from Saint Joseph’s Infirmary to Saint
Joseph’s Hospital.
“All during the time of change
downtown and the move to Peachtree Dun-
woody Road, the Havertys and the
Spaldings always were there with advice,
counsel and expert guidance,” said Sister
M. Brian Anderson, RSM, head ad
ministrator of Saint Joseph’s from 1969-77.
“Sisters and staff always felt that their
assistance was invaluable. They supported
the hospital in many ways including as
leading donors. We always will remember
with great affection all the members of
their "families. ”
Rawson Haverty, Sr. began Saint
Joseph’s Hospital Foundation in 1981, and
Hughes Spalding, Jr. served as its first
chairman.
The recipients of the WINGS of Mercy
Award will have their names engraved at
the base of a sculpture of an angel which
will be on display at the hospital. It was
created by award-winning artist Jean
Williams, who is Professor Emeritus at
the University of Georgia.
Suffering's Value Explored
NEW YORK (CNS) — People do not
need to find ‘ ‘explanations’ ’ for human suf
fering, but ways of responding that make it
redemptive, a theologian told hospital per
sonnel May 23.
“Suffering in itself is no good,” said
Father John J. Shea of St. Mary of the
Lake Seminary in Mundelein, Ill.
“The important thing is what’s happen
ing to people through the suffering.” It can
gain meaning, he said, when it becomes a
way for people to “enter into deeper levels
of solidarity.”
Father Shea spoke on “Redemptive Suf
fering” in a presentation to the Catholic
Hospital Administrative Personnel Pro
gram held at St. John’s University in
Queens with co-sponsorship by the
Catholic Medical Center of Brooklyn and
Queens.
In the face of suffering, he said, people
find that God’s spirit has planted within
them three ineradicable "drives” — to
“alleviate” suffering, to “accompany” it
and to “transform” it.
Father Shea said these drives were per
manent, not psychological traits, and
could not be removed by psychoanalytic
techniques.
People who see others suffering want in
stinctively to alleviate their pain, he said,
and if they cannot alleviate it feel moved
simply to be with those who suffer.
Much of the pastoral care in hospitals,
Father Shea said, is described simply as a
ministry of “presence,” where the impor
tant matter is just being with someone.
This is not a passive approach but
“another way of action,” he said.
“Presence is an active force,” he said.
“It has its own type of healing powers.”
The drive to transform suf fering, Father
Shea said, is seen when someone responds
to a serious illness by reaching out in new
ways to family and friends.
For people living in various forms of
isolation, he said, the illness can become a
disruptive force that pushes them into
“new forms of communion.”
“Suffering is transformed when through
it we enter into deeper levels of
solidarity,” Father Shea said.
In John’s Gospel account of the man
bom blind, he said, Jesus did not respond
with “explanations” when he was asked
whose sin was responsible for the blind
ness. Rather, Father Shea said, he acted to
alleviate the suffering as a means of show
ing the glory of God.
Father Shea also described the life of
Jesus as a ministry of reaching out that
manifested the divine presence with suf
fering people.
And the death of Jesus, he said, became
the means for his union in solidarity with
all of humanity.
Such a belief in the transformation of
suffering is “suspect” in contemporary
culture because “the change takes place
inside,” Father Shea said.
But the reality, he said, is that people
become compassionate on levels they have
not reached before, and enter into “a
wider world.”