Congregational Moments:
First SSJ-TOSF Nurses & River Pines Sanitorium
Sisters of St. Joseph Third Order of St. Francis
Although the congregation was founded with its ministry centered in education, as early as 1905 Mother Felicia had the desire to expand the ministry of the Sisters of St. Joseph of the Third Order of St. Francis (SSJ-TOSF) to apostolates other than teaching.
In 1934, Mother Sylvester Retkowski sent three sisters for full time nursing training: Sister M. Ernestine (Barbara Matlas) to St. Mary School of Nursing in Madison, WI and Sister M. Margaret (Jeanette Majewski) and Sister M. Bernadine (Lucy Cynoski) to St. Alexis Hospital in Cleveland, OH. All three became registered nurses by 1937.
While the Sisters were in training, as Sister Mary Margaret reported in the story of her nursing career, Polish doctors in the Cleveland area were asking when the Sisters of St. Joseph of the Third Order of St. Francis would build a hospital adjacent to the provincial home. “The need was urgent,” they said. According to the provincial council minutes (Cleveland) from December 30, 1937, Mother Mary Jolanta and her council discussed the desirability of constructing a small hospital. But before acting in Cleveland, Ohio, the congregation undertook a health care project in Wisconsin with the purchase of the River Pines Sanitorium in Whiting, a suburb south of Stevens Point. The sanitorium had been established in 1906 by two Milwaukee doctors dedicated to serving victims of tuberculosis. Even in 1938, the disease “still regarded as a number-one killer,” bore social stigma.
The SSJ-TOSFs purchased their first health care facility in 1938- River Pines Sanitorium in Stevens Point, WI. On September 1, 1938, the congregation entered the field of healthcare at River Pines Sanitorium with Sister Cherubim (Pliska) as first Superintendent; Sisters Ernestine (Barbara Matlas) from Stevens Point and Bernadine (Lucy Cynoski) from Cleveland ministered as the first R.N.s. Described in the Stevens Point Journal (July 1938), the property included an administration building, three dormitories, a clubhouse, and seven cottages on twenty-two acres of land (most of it wooded) with frontage on the Wisconsin River. One of the two doctor’s residences served as a convent for the sisters. The facility had the capacity for sixty-two patients.
This was a defining moment in the direction of the ministries of the SSJ-TOSFs.
Peace & All Good, February 2016: Mississippi Ministry 1945-1996 (70th Anniversary Edition) Reneta Webb, guest editor and SSJTOSF Associate
Josephine Marie Peplinski, SSJ-TOSF, A Fitting Response Part II (South Bend, IN. Sisters of St. Joseph of the Third Order of St. Francis, 1992) pages 298-301
