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Sister Margaret Meisner has been a warm smile, a spiritual guide and a loving friend to patients and employees at CHI St. Vincent Infirmary in Little Rock for almost 25 years. But her kind eyes and dedication represent something more — a legacy of Catholic health care. Her retirement from guest relations Jan. 4 made her the last of the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth who founded and served at St. Vincent since 1888.
“I guess in a sense it’s a privilege,” Sister Margaret, 80, said of being the last sister at St. Vincent to represent her order. “And if it hadn’t been for the illness I’d still be going. It was not easy to let go … You know people stop by my door just to say, ‘Hi Sister.’ This is all of the sudden and I’m not there. That’s hard.”
Last May, Sister Margaret was diagnosed with liver cancer and because of declining health she moved Jan. 5 to her motherhouse in Nazareth, Ky. Sister Margaret died Jan. 10 from cancer complications.
A Jan. 4 Mass at St. Vincent Chapel was celebrated by Father Mark Stengel, OSB, pastor of St. Benedict Church in Subiaco, who proudly wore a stole with butterflies that Sister Margaret had made him. During his homily, Father Stengel gave her back a framed cross-stitched piece of 1 Corinthians 13 she had made for him years ago, to remind her of home.
Father Warren Harvey and Father Josh Stengel, former pastor and current pastor, respectively, of Sister Margaret’s home parish of Our Lady of Good Counsel in Little Rock, also concelebrated Mass with Deacon Patrick McCruden, vice president of mission integration at St. Vincent, assisting.
“It brings it home for us how important it is we carry on the Catholic identity of St. Vincent,” McCruden said of her retirement. “… It’s our responsibility to continue the healing ministry of Jesus.”
Sister Margaret joined the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth in 1953. The order started Charity Hospital in 1888 in Little Rock and a year later, Bishop Edward Fitzgerald renamed it St. Vincent Infirmary. In 1997, the sisters consolidated the hospital with nonprofit Catholic Health Initiatives of Denver and it became CHI St. Vincent.
Alesa Garner, New Outlook coordinator in the Oncology Care Center, has worked at St. Vincent for 33 years, calling Sister Margaret a “tough old bird” and “a reminder of the past, but also of the future,” to keep up the Catholic mission.
Julie Rochester, parishioner at St. Anthony Church in Ratcliff, also attended the Mass to say goodbye to Sister Margaret, who she has known for about 15 years through the Charismatic Renewal movement.
“She’s always very positive and upbeat, always smiling,” Rochester said. “She’s encouraged me to do more in my faith.”
Shortly after 1980, after spending a year living in solitude, Sister Margaret was assigned to Arkansas as the religious education director at St. Theresa Church in Little Rock. On March 19, 1995, she started working part-time in the surgical waiting room at St. Vincent and “hated it,” she said for the noise and short-tempered people.
But she found God’s true calling in her life when she was transferred to the emergency waiting room.
“That’s where I found that I could actually minister to people, to the needs and to the spiritual way. That’s basically what kind of geared me to staying on because I knew that aspect of me was alive,” she said. “I could minister to people and I often found myself visiting patients in rooms not intending to be there. But for some reason I ended up there when they had a need. And to me that was the way the spirit was leading.”
For the past 15 years, Sister Margaret has worked in guest relations, managing volunteers and the spiritual wellbeing of patients. But her compassion exceeded her job description, made clear by the packed chapel and the countless hugs, promise of prayers and thank-yous she received at the reception.
“Today is bittersweet. On one hand it’s sad to lose that face we’ve had for 25 years, that physical reminder of the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth walking through the halls,” CHI St. Vincent CEO Chad Aduddell told Arkansas Catholic. “Now that legacy is in the hands of the lay people.”
St. Vincent will always be her “home,” Sister Margaret said through tears and that she’s grateful for those who have made it that way.
“Just a very simple thank you for being my friend, thank you for being my family,” Sister Margaret said.
