St. Thomas Hospital · 1939–1950
When another hospital turned his patients away, a nun found a bed and wheeled it into the room where the flowers were kept.
“Doctor, we do not have any beds, much less private rooms, but I will do what I can.”
Dr. Bob had known Sister Ignatia since 1928, when she worked in the admitting office at St. Thomas Hospital, a Catholic hospital run by the Sisters of Charity of Saint Augustine. “Doctor would call and say, ‘Sister, may I have a bed?’” she remembered. She always knew his voice, with its New England accent.
By 1939 his alcoholics were wearing out their welcome at City Hospital. One day another hospital told him, in Sister Ignatia’s words, “to seek refuge for his jittering patients elsewhere.” He came to St. Thomas more discouraged than she had ever seen him. She was wary herself: after she had once admitted a drunk on her own, the night supervisor warned her that next time she could stay up all night chasing him down the corridors.
She took his patient anyway, in August 1939. The next morning Dr. Bob asked for a private room, because some men wanted to talk with the patient alone. There were no beds free, let alone private rooms. Then she thought of the room where patients’ flowers were arranged. She wasn’t sure a bed would go through the door, “but it did, thank God.” Four or five men came to talk with him, and she could hardly believe they were alcoholics.
A young priest, Father Vincent Haas, went to the AA meeting for her, since a sister couldn’t, and came back impressed. With the approval of the hospital and the church, she and Dr. Bob set up a program. It grew from two- and four-bed rooms to an eight-bed ward with a small lounge and a coffee bar.
The rules were strict. No one was admitted twice. Patients could see only AA visitors, sixty to a hundred of them in five days, and newspapers were forbidden. When they left, Sister Ignatia gave each one a Sacred Heart medallion, to be returned before the first drink. Dr. Bob visited every day, without pay, until his health failed. By his death, 4,800 alcoholics had been admitted under his care. Bill W. put it at over 5,000.
It’s August 1939, at St. Thomas Hospital in Akron. Dr. Bob comes to the admitting office looking so low that Sister Ignatia thinks he must be ill. Another hospital has told him to take his drunks somewhere else.
She has been warned about alcoholics. She takes his patient anyway.
The next morning he asks for a private room, so some men can talk with the patient alone. There are no beds free, let alone private rooms. Then she remembers the room where the patients’ flowers are arranged. She isn’t sure a bed will fit through the door. It does.
The men come, four or five of them, and talk with him. That is the beginning.
For years afterward, Dr. Bob visits the ward every day, unpaid, until his health gives out. By the time he dies, nearly five thousand alcoholics have come through.
Side by side
For a decade a surgeon and a nun ran the ward together. Here is how each of them talked about the work, and about each other.
All but one of these lines are Sister Ignatia’s memories, recorded in the 1950s and printed in Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers. His Christmas note is the exception.
A pattern
St. Thomas was the first religious hospital to take alcoholics as a matter of course, and it became a pattern for hospitals across the country. The ward ran on Akron’s rules: AA visitors only, and a doctor and a nun who believed the patients could get well.
For a closer look
Their last Christmas, what the other doctors said, and where Sister Ignatia went next.
After Anne died in June 1949, Sister Ignatia wrote Dr. Bob a letter recalling what the three of them had been through together. On Christmas Eve he answered with a short note, thanking her for the friendship of “one so staunch and true as yourself.”
His last visit to the ward came about then, perhaps on Christmas Day. She played the organ for him and showed him the hospital’s new chimes. To Good Oldtimers, the chimes told how the criticism of ten years before had turned into “complete cooperation.”
Not everyone at St. Thomas welcomed the drunks. Dr. Bob told Sister Ignatia that while he was scrubbing for surgery he would overhear other doctors: “You have to be a drunk to get a bed in this place.” He went right on scrubbing and pretended not to hear.
She heard it too, from doctors and even nurses. “But I would be blind and deaf and dumb,” she said.
In April 1950 Ohio members gave the hospital a plaque honoring the ward. It says St. Thomas “became the first religious institution ever to open its door to our society.” Sister Ignatia, Bill W. wrote, would not let her name appear on it.
In 1952, two years after Dr. Bob’s death, Sister Ignatia was sent to Cleveland to run the alcoholic ward at St. Vincent Charity Hospital. At her suggestion it was named Rosary Hall. The initials carved over the door, R. H. S., “just happened” to be Dr. Bob’s.
By 1957, Bill W. wrote, 5,000 more alcoholics had been treated there. When she asked to be kept out of a magazine article about AA, Bill teased her: “To be anonymous, Sister, you’ll have to take a little drink.”
She died in April 1966. At her funeral the priest said, “The more she tried to conceal her holiness, the more it became apparent to all men.”