Eleven nuns and three lay people made up the entire work force at Everett’s first Providence Hospital. Run by the Sisters of Providence, it opened in 1905 in the original Monte Cristo Hotel.
Today, Providence Everett Medical Center has more than 3,000 employees. Not one of them is a Roman Catholic nun.
In December, Sister Dorothy Klingele retired after serving in health care with the Sisters of Providence since 1953. She’s “older than 80,” she said, and now lives at the St. Joseph Residence in Seattle.
“Sister Dorothy was our spiritual leader and a remarkable presence at Providence Everett for nearly 60 years,” said Dave Brooks, who took over as the hospital’s chief executive on Jan. 1. “One of the things Sister Dorothy has done, along with other Sisters of Providence, is to recognize that lay leaders are going to help run the ministry.”
Tim Serban, the hospital’s director of mission and spiritual care, said that of the Providence Health System’s more than 45,000 employees, only about 10 sisters are still active in health care from Alaska to California.
On Tuesday, Klingele will visit the Everett hospital’s Colby and Pacific campuses, where celebrations will be held to mark her long tenure.
“She is deeply loved by the staff here,” said hospital spokeswoman Cheri Russum. In 2005, Klingele was asked to do a book signing for employees getting copies of a hospital centennial book. “We set up a table outside the cafeteria. People lined up around the corner. She’s an icon here, and will be deeply missed. With that said, I feel very confident in the leadership, that the mission will continue.”
That mission, Russum said, is “showing compassion, charity and love to the people who come here.”
Klingele’s title at retirement was Sister Representative to the hospital’s administrative team. She had offices at both hospital campuses. A native of Yakima and medical technology graduate of Seattle University, she began her distinguished career in 1953. After religious training at the Sisters of Providence Novitiate in Seattle and taking vows, she came to Everett as lab supervisor at Providence Hospital.
In the 1960s, she returned to college. At the University of Notre Dame, she earned a master’s degree in biochemistry and a doctorate in developmental biology. She did postdoctoral research at Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia, worked in medical genetics at University of Oregon Health Sciences Center and was a professor of biological sciences at Fort Wright College in Spokane.
“She’s an explorer of science and genetics. She’s brilliant,” Serban said.
On Friday, Klingele recalled the years when nuns lived at Providence Hospital. “The sisters had a portion of one of the floors, that was the convent,” she said.
Back at Providence after her time away, she had many roles. She was a champion of the hospital’s midwife program, community health clinic, and the children’s center.
The 1994 merger of Providence and Everett General Hospital “was hard for everyone,” Klingele said. “The leadership was all trying to do their best, so we could serve the people of the community with the best possible care.”
The opening of the Providence Everett Medical Center’s Pavilion for Women and Children brought another milestone in 2002. Klingele is now impressed by the new Providence Cancer Center. “Everything there is the very latest,” she said.
At the heart of it all, she sees the mission of the Sisters of Providence. “We were established to help the poor. That carries over in whatever we do,” Klingele said.
Serban said the hospital is following a Ministry Leadership Formation program to help lay leaders carry on the sisters’ mission.
“It’s an intensive three-year program. It helps us understand the perspective of the mission to care for the poor and vulnerable as our first priority,” Serban said. “Coming from different settings, that can be a challenge. Where does the mission begin and the margin end? One doesn’t trump the other.
“When the sisters came west, they didn’t come with a load of money, but a desire to make a difference to this community,” Serban said.
Klingele understands it can take a lot of money to make a difference.
For years, she and Sister Georgette Bayless rode on motorcycles in a fundraising Angel Ride for Hospice. Bayless founded Providence Hospice in Snohomish County. “When they know nuns are on the motorcycle, it kind of opens the purse strings,” Klingele said.
Serban feels the weight of the change to a time when nuns are no longer a presence in hospitals. He’s been through it before, at a hospital in Portland, Ore.
“There used to be sisters,” he said. “Watching that transition, the organization takes a deep breath. We pause. How do we do this well?”
Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlstein@heraldnet.com.
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