ALMA MATTERS
EXTRAORDINARY ALUM Sister Maureen Grady, CSC BSN ’65 • Department of Nursing, Saint Mary’s College, Notre Dame, Indiana
Hearing the call • During the time of Pol Pot’s killing fields (1980), I received a phone call from my area coordinator asking if I would go to assist the people in the refugee camps. She told me that she kept seeing my face as she thought about who to send. I didn’t want to go, and I kept wishing she would see someone else’s face.
Change of plans • I was almost finished with my doctoral degree, but I sent a postcard from Kennedy airport saying that I wouldn’t be in class the next week because I was flying to Bangkok.
A whole new world • In Thailand, we lived in an unfinished concrete block building with no windows, no water, and no beds. We’d leave at dawn, rid- ing in the back of a pickup truck. We spent all day in a Cambodian refugee camp, walking over the bodies of the dead and dying. If I could find a truck at the end of the twelve-hour work day, I’d go back to where we were stay- ing. If I was hungry, I’d walk four miles to get food. It was truly a conversion experience.
and counseling and served in the Holy Cross Health System for a decade, concentrating in emergency and intensive care practice. Subsequently, Sister Grady spent 20 years in Asian and Middle Eastern countries min- istering to refugees and victims of war, after which she taught pastoral theology at a nursing school in Beirut. She returned to the U.S. in 2002 and currently teaches communication and pastoral skills in the nursing department at Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame in Indiana.
M
aureen Grady, CSC (BSN ’65), is a religious sister of the Congregation of the Sisters of the Holy Cross. After re- ceiving her nursing degree from Loyola, she obtained Master and Doctor of Ministry degrees in pastoral care
SWAT team sisters • After Thailand, I became very involved in places of conflict. I joined a kind of SWAT team of sisters working for Catholic Relief Services. We went anywhere where there was trouble and we were needed, mostly in the Middle East. I spent nine years in Beirut during the civil war, do- ing emergency relief and rehabilitation work.
A near miss • Beirut at that time [1982–1990] was very dangerous for Americans. When I needed to leave the country, I didn’t go to the Beirut airport, because of all the kidnappings that had taken place on the airport
road. So I would leave by overnight boat. One night, I was coming back into Lebanon, and I had my boat ticket, but, for some reason, I put it in my pocket and bought an airplane ticket instead. That night they blew up the boat.
State of mind • I wasn’t afraid; I be- came accustomed to danger. I was com- forted by my belief that the God who called me to this mission would sustain and protect me in my efforts to respond to that call. But it made me angry that there were people who were deprived of their rights and needs.
Greatest accomplishment • One day in Beirut, the president of the Religious Women’s Assembly came to me and asked for seed money to start a co-op for health care for the poor. I wrote her a check that day. I went back a few years ago, and a man came to see me and said he was the director of this agency—they had become the largest health care insurance provider in the whole country. It’s been amazing to see that blossom and flower and turn into something I couldn’t have imagined at the time.
Favorite place in the world • Beirut. I’d go back in a minute. It gets in your blood—they call it the Lebanon virus. It’s a beautiful country full of beautiful people. The timing of my presence there was terrible, with the war and destruc- tion, but that made comrades of us all.
After Beirut • I came back and taught at a university in Florida, and then received an academic and research fel- lowship from Saint Mary’s College. I am presently with the Department of Nurs- ing, and very much enjoy the oppor- tunity to be teaching in the classroom and following students on the clinical services.
42 LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO
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