A Nun with a Gun, Sister Stanislaus: A Biography

By Eddie Doherty

THIS is the story of a rare human being, a dynamo of a woman who devoted her life, joyfully, humorously, expertly, uniquely, to others.

Orphaned at 3, brought up by the Sisters of Charity in Nevada, a nun herself at 20, Sister Stanislaus, after several months of nurses’ training in Baltimore, was sent to work in New Orleans. She never really left. Her first, last, and only assignment was Charity Hospital, New Orleans. In time, the two became virtually synonymous.

She spent over fifty years there. When she arrived, Charity Hospital comprised one antiquated building; modern medicine was in its swaddling clothes; nursing was an even more hit-or-miss affair. When she left, Charity Hospital was one of the finest in the land and nursing had become a highly professional career.

Sister Stanislaus played a large part in the development of both. She brought to nursing a great and joyful zeal, an originality, and a love which affected everyone she came in contact with. Constantly perfecting herself as a nurse, she became one of the best known nursing-sisters in the country.

But she did not stop there. Changing, innovating, wheedling money from a string of politicos—from Huey Long and his predecessors by Earl Long—she built Charity Hospital into the great modern institution it is.

Yet her fame and her influence were not a result of her public achievement; they were based upon something more immediate, more spiritual. They grew from her all-embracing charity, her lifetime of devotion to the sick and the troubled. She was beloved as a person; the rest, an incredible array of activities and duties, accomplishment and concern, simply happened. Or so she pretended.

An extraordinary personality merges from this brisk, expertly written biography, a lively and highly original nun, nurse, and human being, full of surprises but indefatigably on the job, bringing relief and consolation to thousands who passed in and out of a great hospital.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Papamoa Press
• Release date: Mar 12, 2018
• ISBN: 9781789120677

Eddie Doherty

Edward J. “Eddie” Doherty (October 30, 1890 - May 4, 1975) was an American newspaper reporter, author and Oscar-nominated screenwriter. He was the co-founder of the Madonna House Apostolate, and later ordained a priest in the Melkite Greek Catholic Church. Born in Chicago in 1890 to Police Lieutenant Edward Doherty and Ellen Rodgers, he was the eldest of ten children in an Irish Catholic family. At the age of 13 he entered a Servite monastery in Wisconsin. After two years he left the seminary, returned to Chicago, and went to work at the City Press. Starting as a newspaper copy boy, Doherty worked at various other Chicago newspapers, including the Examiner, the Record-Herald, the Tribune, the Herald, and the American, where he began writing columns. At the Tribune, he helped establish the Joseph Medill School of Journalism. In 1944, Doherty’s screenplay for the World War II film The Sullivans was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Story. He and his third wife, Baroness Catherine de Hueck, moved to Combermere, Ontario, Canada and started a new apostolate called Madonna House in 1947. Here they founded their own newspaper, Restoration, which has remained in continuous circulation. In 1969, Doherty obtained permission to transfer from the Latin Church to the Byzantine Rite Melkite Greek Catholic Church (which allows married men to become priests), and on August 15, 1969, Doherty was ordained a Catholic priest at the age of seventy-eight by Archbishop Joseph Raya. Doherty died in Combermere in 1975 at the age of 84.

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Text originally published in 1960 under the same title.

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A NUN WITH A GUN

SISTER STANISLAUS

A BIOGRAPHY

by

EDDIE DOHERTY

NIHIL OBSTAT:

JOHN F. MURPHY, S.T.D.

Censor librorum

IMPRIMATUR:

William E. Cousins

Archbishop of Milwaukee

August 19, 1960

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DEDICATION

TO

HIS EMINENCE

RICHARD CARDINAL CUSHING

ARCHBISHOP OF BOSTON

WHO HAS DONE SO MUCH FOR

THE AMERICAN CATHOLIC NURSE

FOREWORD

THERE is a story told of two old men lying in a ward at Charity Hospital, New Orleans, on a hot June evening in 1949, when Sister Stanislaus Malone was reported dying.

The Sisters of Charity, who have charge of the ward, say the story is more fable than fact, but might contain some truth. The nurses say it is pure fable, but some add that a fable is only truth in fancy clothes.

So the little nun is going up to see St. Peter, one of the two men is supposed to have remarked. Wish I had her chances. She’ll tell him what she did for the people of Louisiana. I bet she begged more money for the poor than Jesse James or any of them politicians at the state house ever stole—or Al Capone himself.

Jesse James had a gun, the other observed. Capone and his hoodlums also had guns—tommy guns. But that Sister Stanislaus had a gun none of them guys could work. Man, it was a scatter gun. When she looked at a big shot with them blue eyes of hers and aimed that weapon...Bang! Meat on the table! Kopecks in the till! She brought down more high-flyin’ game than any dame I know.

Fact or fiction, it is true that Sister Stanislaus begged—or bagged—many millions of dollars for Charity Hospital, for a home for the nurses, and for the thousands and thousands of her poor relatives.

Of course she had a gun, one merry Sister of Charity commented—a nun who might have been a Kelly before she put on her habit, or a Keegan, or a Casey, or a Callahan, or a Sullivan, or a Shea—and she knew how to use it. When she drew a bead on a target, you may be sure it wasn’t a single stingy bead. It was more apt to be the full Rosary she drew.

The author has endeavored to cling only to facts, and let the fiction go. He has collected hundreds of facts—more than he could use.

In preparation for the writing of the book, the Sisters of Charity set out to gather material. It came in the shape of letters and notes, and statements taken word for word over the telephone. In addition to this, the author interviewed scores of people, such as the Rev. Caleb B. K. Weed, an Episcopalian minister, Fred Matthews, the hospital’s financial officer (and an old friend of Kingfish Huey Long), the former ambulance drivers Bob Austin and Sydney Harper, many other hospital employees, doctors, nurses, Sisters of Charity, and poor relatives.

Before he began to write, he had amassed more facts than the flowers that fell on Sister’s grave. His job was to snatch the story out from under all these offerings, and make the dead nun live. Too many facts can choke a book, or smother it to death. Too few facts can starve it before it has had a chance to grow.

These are the facts the author thought worth keeping.

E. J. D.

I

FAR DOWN THE STREET an ambulance wailed. Sister Stanislaus rose automatically from her desk, closed her ledger, and moved toward the door, intending to hurry to the emergency entrance. One never knew what the ambulance would bring. It was good to have an experienced nurse there, waiting and ready.

A frightened nurse rushed in without knocking.

Sister, she said, there is a horrible looking little man out there who insists on seeing you. Immediately. I told him how busy you were. But—the way he looks at me, Sister! He scares the wits out of me! Shall I call the police?

He’s probably just one of my poor relatives, Sister said. Bring him in.

The nurse stared at her before she hurried out. Sister had the strangest relatives. Cutthroats. Gunmen. Cripples. Women who made you blush to look at—the brazen things. Rag pickers. Negroes. Bums. All kinds of poor men and women.

The telephone rang as the nurse shot through the door. Sister listened patiently, but not for long. And the smile disappeared from her face. How merciful Christ was, to use nothing but a whip on men like this!

Yes. Yes. This is Sister Stanislaus. And don’t ‘Sister’ me to death. I know what it’s about. It’s about your rent. Now you listen to me. You will take that girl back into her room. Today. Not later than this evening. And you will give back all you took away from her. Every last thing. Security my eye! You give it back. You understand? Everything! You’ll get your rent on the fifth of every month. And if that day falls on a Sunday, you’ll get it on the fourth. Is that clear? And I don’t want any more complaints about you. Understand?

She hung up the receiver vehemently; and turned to greet her poor relative, standing in the doorway with a nurse. She rose and went to him; and the anger one might have seen in the blue of her eyes as she talked to the landlord had disappeared—lost in a gracious smile.

The stranger was a furtive little man. He was not terrifying. He was terrified. Sister motioned to the nurse. She went out, swiftly—gladly!

The man looked around him as though to make sure he had not entered some sort of trap. The twentieth century was in its early teens at this time, and still innocent of such sly and wicked things as hidden microphones; but a guy on the lam couldn’t be sure a cop wasn’t planted somewhere around, with a big ear listening to anything that might be said.

All he saw was a tiny nun with stunning great blue eyes and a tremendous spread of clean white starched wings on her head. She was smiling; but her lamps were looking right through him, seeing everything. You couldn’t fool this dame. She looked, in some ways, like she had just come down from heaven on those wings; but you couldn’t tell by looks. And maybe she would take off again any minute.

You Sister Stanislaus? he demanded.

The Sister bowed and said she was.

One of them Sisters of Charity, like the guys said?

Again Sister bowed. She was, she could have said, a daughter of Mother Seton; and a foster daughter of St. Vincent de Paul; and any daughter of Mother Seton or Father Vincent could be trusted.

Sit down, she said, trying to make him welcome. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn you are the man shot last night by a policeman. You look like a man in terrible pain.

Yeah, the dame was hep. Like the guys said; she knew everything.

Terror flashed into his face, then died away and showed nothing but a man in agony.

Yeah, he said. I’m the guy. I’ll level with you. You going to turn me in?

You limped, Sister said. It’s the right leg, isn’t it?

The man was frightened again.

Roll up your trouser leg and let me see the wound, Sister suggested.

The man hesitated. Say! You know that too! You know I croaked a guy? You know I tried to rob a store?

You are suffering pretty badly, Sister said. The sooner you show me the wound the sooner we can do something about it.

It was dark, the man said, rolling up the leg of his thin black pants. I was in the store. And a guy comes in. I was scared stiff. I never done nothing like this before. The gun went off. The guy screamed. And then the cop came. He came shooting. How I ever got away I don’t know.

Perhaps the Lord had something to do with it, Sister said, examining his wound. You could have died with this. If you’d waited another day it would have become infected. You must be half crazy with pain.

She put something in water and gave it to him to drink. He gulped it down quickly. She took the glass from him, for his hands were shaking, and she feared he might drop it.

You haven’t had anything to eat or drink since last night, she said.

I was going to come here, the man said. But I knew the cops would pick me up. I thought I’d be smart and wait until today.

The police are smart too, Sister reminded him, dabbing at the wound with something that smarted. They’ll be looking for you today. And tomorrow. And maybe the next day.

Fear rushed back into the man’s eyes.

But they said you’d help me, he cried. A guy told me about you a long time ago. He said you know everybody in New Orleans. Everybody in Louisiana. And everybody knows you, and knows you’re on the square. You ain’t going to turn me in?

That’s pure nonsense, Sister said, her voice sharp and emphatic. Her voice always sounded that way when she fended off a compliment. I am too busy to know everybody in the city, and they are too busy to know me. Roll down your trouser leg. Somebody’s coming. Sounds like trouble.

Two detectives knocked and let themselves into the room. They greeted Sister Stanislaus, who was just putting a thermometer into the mouth of one of her poor relatives; and the nun made them welcome.

What can I do for you today? she asked.

We’re looking for a man with a bullet in his leg, one of the two said.

Oh, Sister said, knowingly, that affair last night. The man who got away.

That’s the one, Sister. Little fellow. No other description. Young, probably. Damned fool—pardon me, Sister—holed up somewhere. Like a fox that got caught in a trap. Bit his leg off to get away. Not a doctor in town has seen him.

We have no record of him here, Sister said.

He may show up today. He can’t stay holed up long.

I’ll keep my eyes open for him, Sister said, and turned back to relieve her patient of his thermometer. She looked at it, then turned serious eyes toward the police. Nothing you can catch, she said. Nothing you can carry home to your children.

The policemen went out, closing the door gently behind them.

As soon as they had passed from hearing, she knelt down again to the business of tending the wound. The man was crying softly.

How come, Lady? he said. How come? All you had to do was jerk your head in my direction. You didn’t have to say a word. Them cops would have got wise. And then, when they started sweating you I was sure they would start sweating me....How come you do this for a guy like me?

Sister Stanislaus mentioned something about the right of sanctuary, as it was practiced hundreds of years ago. When a man ran into the Church for safety, the Church did not ever give him up. But she was thinking of another man, another hospital, another day—one long, long ago—and of one of her first superiors, the lovely, wonderful, saintly Sister Helen.

Sister Stanislaus was not Sister Stanislaus then. She was known only as Little Sister, or—sometimes—Sister Catherine Malone. She was just out of the convent at Emmitsburg, and hoping to become a real nurse like Sister Helen.

Sister Helen was tall and regal, and so extremely beautiful that many wondered why she had hid herself in a convent. She was a perfect religious, a perfect nun, a pattern Little Sister decided to follow.

But one day, shortly after she arrived, she surprised Sister Helen talking to a shaking drunkard. In those days people never spoke about alcoholics. There was no such organization as Alcoholics Anonymous—which has turned many incorrigible sots into inimitable saints and scholars. A man who couldn’t hold his liquor and his job was a drunken bum, a lush, a swill pot, a disgrace to his heartbroken mother, a heartscald to his decent wife and children. If someone said he was a sick man and needed treatment, someone else would say it was the toe of a boot he should be treated to.

The man Sister Helen confronted was an alcoholic, and she was disgusted with him. You have been here many times. As soon as we discharge you, you start drinking again. Again and again. We cannot take you back. It would be a waste of money, a waste of time, a waste of our nurses’ energy. We cannot afford to give you another chance.

Sister Stanislaus was shocked at Sister Helen, and a trifle angry at the drunken man. He took this so meekly, so cravenly. Why didn’t he stand up to her?

But the man did stand up to her, after a few moments. He stopped shaking. And he stood very tall, and he looked calmly at Sister, and with something like pity. He was silent for a long, long breath, then he spoke gently, and with the air of a gentleman.

Thank you, Sister. I understand. It is easy for you to speak as you have, for you never knew my temptation, and never had to fight it. Perhaps you have no temptations of your own, no faults, no weaknesses, no appetites you cannot control by yourself. That is why you are here. To judge poor sinners like myself. Goodbye, Sister. And if you think it was Shakespeare who said ‘judge not lest ye be judged,’ you would be wrong. Thanks for all the times you did help me in the past. Say a prayer for me.

Sister Helen began to shake when he was gone. She shook as he shook. And then she groaned. A lesser woman, the Little Sister thought, might have burst into sobs; and a lesser nun would have tried to justify herself.

I have failed in Charity, Sister Helen said. I have failed in the love of God and neighbor.

The Little Sister ran to her superior and hugged her. Hard. Nobody had ever hugged Sister Helen before. No one had dared. But the Little Sister always did what her heart bade her to do. And she hugged Sister hard, and kissed her cheek.

No, Sister, she said. "You didn’t fail. You acted to the best of your belief, and your experience. You were true to your convictions. And you may have done more for that man than you realize. This may be the rebuff he needed. Did you see how he straightened up? Did you see how bravely he walked away? The whine I expected didn’t come. You cured him, maybe.

And another thing, Sister. It is only a great woman who would humble herself before a little nobody like me.

Sister Helen would not let herself be consoled.

What he said is true. I never was tempted as he was—to drink. But I have had other temptations; and I have not always resisted them. What right had I to assume he would succumb again to the evil of drink? How many battles has he won? Nobody knows. I think only of the battles he has lost—and the battles I myself have won. Pray for me, Little Sister. I have failed most miserably.

The Little Sister grew up. She became Sister Stanislaus. The name of St. Zita was proffered her when it came time to give her a name. But another superior vetoed that. Zita! It sounds fluffy. It sounds worldly. It won’t do for her. Give her a good solid name. One with no nonsense in it. Call her Sister Stanislaus.

She had grown in grace and age and wisdom. She had become assistant superior of the Sisters at the Charity Hospital in New Orleans; now she was the superior—the Sister Servant. But she had never forgotten Sister Helen; she had never forgotten the drunkard who stood up to her, and went away. She had never failed to pray for an increase in Charity—whose other name is love.

She gave the wounded man a clean handkerchief.

We are all sinners, she said. We all do things we are sorry for. We are all God’s children. And we all need help. We must help each other. That man you shot. He had a wife and three children. What is to become of them? You must help them, somehow, if you can.

So help me, the man said. So help me, I’ll do everything I can.

Twenty minutes or so later Sister Stanislaus called her assistant, a nun who idolized her as Sister Stanislaus had once idolized Sister Helen.

Put on your shawl, Sister Mary Ann, she said. We are going for a walk.

The young nun made herself look surprised. That was what Sister Stanislaus seemed to expect. You are going to walk with me?

Yes, with you. It will embarrass me to be seen with the likes of such a silly goose, but it will be good for my humility.

"Am I really such a silly