Sr. Nola Weiner remembers her days as administrator of Loretto Hospital
If you want to know about the history of a place, it’s always helpful to talk to someone who was there. At the age of 97, Sr. Nola Weiner is in great health and full of memories of her days as administrator at Loretto Hospital in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Sr. Nola received her Bachelor of Science in Nursing Education (BSNED) from DePaul University in Chicago. As an registered nurse (RN), she worked at several of the health care facilities owned and run by the Poor Handmaids of Jesus Christ (PHJC), the order of nuns which also ran the Loretto Hospital until it was sold to Health Central in 1984. She was administrator of Loretto Hospital for approximately seven years.
Sr. Nola started the first Auxiliary at Loretto Hospital in 1957. With the help of Msgr. Joseph Ettel, she also established the hospital’s first Board of Directors. She was also responsible for building the structure that is currently the New Ulm Medical Center; although it has gone through many renovations and expansions since the new building was erected in 1962.
Those were just a few of the improvements Sr. Nola made during her time in New Ulm.
“When I first got here - one of my first days - I saw this great big bus pull up and all these people started getting off and I thought ‘what in the world is going on?’” Sr. Nola said. Someone explained the Way of the Cross to her and she asked how many visitors they got each year. Nobody had any idea, she said. “So I decided to find out. I put out a log where people had to sign their names and where they came from. The numbers were in the thousands! And we were shocked to see how far people would travel to visit the Way of the Cross.”
When Sr. Nola arrived as administrator, Loretto Hospital was also still running its own farm – as it had done since the early days of St. Alexander Hospital. Sr. Nola was amazed at this arrangement. A hospital and farm animals seemed an odd partnership. “I wondered what the income was from that part of the business, only to find out we were in the red,” she laughed. “So, naturally I talked to the board about it; we decided to have an auction and that was the end of the farm.”
Some of her changes weren’t so well received, Sr. Nola remembers with a laugh. At that time, Loretto Hospital was still connected with the St. Alexander Home for the Aged. “I decided to raise the rates at St. Alexander and I almost got my head taken off,” she mused. At that time, she said, residents were paying approximately $25 a month for room and board.
The rebuilding of Loretto Hospital was a necessity, Sr. Nola said. “At that time, the whole building was so dilapidated and just falling apart,” she said. “The (PHJC) Mother House agreed and we got the funding to put up a new building.”
A short time after the new building was up and Sr. Nola was marveling at the nice, new office she had to work in, she was transferred by the PHJC to another healthcare facility. “After all that work, I didn’t even get the chance to enjoy it,” she laughed.
Sr. Nola finally retired at the age of 80 from St. Catherine’s Hospital in East Chicago, Indiana and now lives in the Catherine Cottages in the PHJC’s Ancilla Domini Ministry Center in Donaldson, Indiana.
