Nurses at what was then Holy Family Hospital in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, gather around an iron lung in 1940 during the nation's polio epidemic.
One of the Franciscan Sisters of Christian Charity talks with Holy Family Hospital staff in the hospital's X-ray space in 1954.
As Froedtert Holy Family Memorial Hospital marks its 125th anniversary, the Franciscan Sisters of Christian Charity are celebrating their continued involvement with the hospital they founded in Manitowoc, Wisconsin.
The congregation is based in the same city along Lake Michigan about 80 miles north of Milwaukee. Its members still serve as the hospital's sponsor and retain an ownership stake in the hospital.
The hospital's original building, which was demolished in 1973.
"From the beginning, the sisters, as I understand the history, not only helped with and took on a debt for the hospital, when we had our own debt for building our own motherhouse, but also, for the first years, staffed everything, except the physicians,"
says Sr. Kay Klackner, vice president for mission for the Franciscan Sisters of Christian Charity Sponsored Ministries.
Since 2021, Holy Family Memorial Hospital has been part of the Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin health network. Franciscan Sisters of Christian Charity Sponsored Ministries oversees the Catholicity of the hospital along with that of five
other facilities founded by the congregation in Wisconsin, Nebraska and Ohio.
The first addition to the hospital was dedicated in April 1929 and is still part of the campus of what is now Froedtert Holy Family Memorial Hospital.
Sr. Clarence Hennessy recalls in her diary that she and the other sisters at Holy Family Hospital handed out food at its back door during the Depression.The hospital created a video and booklet detailing its founding by the Franciscan Sisters of Christian Charity and its growth. Its anniversary events include
historical displays the week of Sept. 23 and a Mass celebrated by Bishop David Ricken of the Diocese of Green Bay, Wisconsin, in the hospital chapel on Sept. 28. The Franciscan Sisters of Christian Charity will be part of those events, one of which
includes historical reenactors.
The congregation founded Holy Family Hospital in 1899 at the request of community leaders in Manitowoc as the city's port and shipbuilding industries were beginning to thrive. In its first year, the 45-bed facility had 189 patients. Over its 125 years,
as new wings and services have been added, the hospital has grown to a 350-bed facility. Its range of specialty services includes a cancer center, wellness center and sleep clinic. The name changed to Holy Family Memorial in the early 1990s.
Several Franciscan Sisters of Christian Charity serve as "sisters of presence" in various volunteer roles at the hospital, including working in the coffee shop and comforting families in the surgery waiting room. "What's important to us as sponsors is
to have presence in our institutions," Sr. Klackner says.
In addition to the working volunteers, each year the congregation designates a rotating group of sisters to be what Sr. Klackner calls "prayer champions" who offer prayers and sacrifices for the hospital.
A woman identified at Mrs. A.J. Holsen and pictured in 1912 was the first to graduate from the Holy Family School of Nursing, opened by the Franciscan Sisters of Christian Charity. The school was in operation for 56 years. Holsen was active at the
school and hospital until her death in 1975.Sr. Klackner spent 2018 as Holy Family Memorial Hospital's mission leader before taking her current post with Franciscan Sisters of Christian Charity Sponsored Ministries. She was the last employed member of her congregation at the hospital, but a sister
who recently gained credentials as a registered nurse has applied to work there.
Sr. Klackner also has generational ties to the hospital. Her mother and an aunt were both nurses there. They graduated from a nursing school started by the Franciscan Sisters of Christian Charity. The historic displays that are part of the anniversary
celebration will include her aunt's nursing uniform.
Although Holy Family Memorial Hospital is now part of a secular partnership, Sr. Klackner says the network's leaders have held fast to their promise to keep the hospital Catholic. "When we joined with the Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin
health network, it was very important to us as the sponsors and to our system that there was a Catholicity agreement that is a legal agreement as part of the partnership, and that has worked quite well," she says.