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Daddy Jack and His St. Joseph's Nuns

Writer's picture: Diana McDaniel HampoDiana McDaniel Hampo

Daddy Jack and His Nuns

 


In the 1920s through the late 1940s, my grandfather, Dr. Jack Stell, was a surgeon, then Chief of Staff, at St. Joseph's Hospital, on Whittington Avenue in Hot Springs. He was a good Baptist boy who studied and played football in a leather helmet, at Ouachita Baptist University, then attended medical school at Tulane, in New Orleans.

 

When I was a little girl, in the 1960s, my mother and I would visit friends or new mothers at the old St Joes Hospital, which first opened to the public in 1888. 

 

For years it had been my grandfather’s hospital, he ruled the hallways and examination rooms.  I was never allowed to forget that.


 Every single time my mother and I visited, the ancient nuns, in their heavy black habits, found me and swarmed. I was just a scrawny six year old girl with buck teeth, but the nuns wanted to make sure I knew they had served and loved my grandfather years earlier. They had been “his” nurses. As they closed in around me, black habits swishing like raven wings, they smiled and touched my thin, wispy hair as though they thought I was pretty.

In reality, the nuns kind of spooked me. I thought they wanted to scoop me up in their big black dresses and take me away, to some secret nun place. And I knew I would be forced to wear their enormous black dresses, even in the summer.  How did they survive the Arkansas summers without air conditioning in the old hospital?

 So, I clutched my mother’s thin hand, hoping she wanted to keep me. I was never quite sure.

The sisters talked to my mom so politely, saying exactly what she wanted to hear, then they asked if they could take me to the clerical office. “We have candy there!” they said, and Mom instantly let me go. “Of course! Go with them Pooh Bear.”

Quiet and pretty, the younger Sisters didn’t have much to say, but the older nuns had a plan. They always told me stories about my grandfather, Daddy Jack, who died in the 50’s, before I was born.

The sisters put me in a hard wooden desk chair, gave me a couple pieces of hard candy and started talking. Collectively, they told me the same story, over and over.

 

 In the early 40s, when America had just joined the war effort, my grandfather had a dilemma. He knew he should retire because he’d recently been diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease. But there was a sudden shortage of doctors and surgeons at the time. Most medical men had been drafted or enlisted to serve overseas.  Daddy Jack was too old to serve. So, he stayed at St. Joes and because he was desperately needed and he was only in the early stages of Parkinson’s, he continued to perform necessary surgeries. 


The nuns and my grandfather knew it was risky, but he was the only surgeon available, and an appendix, about to burst, wouldn’t wait. A stabbing victim still needed to be sewn up. Some babies refused to be born and C-sections were necessary. The hospital still needed a true surgeon to sew people up.


The Nuns, young and old, wanted me to know in those days, before every surgery, Daddy Jack and his nuns joined hands, around the operating table. They prayed, Baptist and Catholics together, for the trembling to stop.  And it did. Over and over again, my grandfather, who couldn’t cut his own steak, successfully performed surgeries and saved lives.

The nurses and Daddy Jack, I think, had a profound and unique relationship. The nuns loved and respected Daddy Jack and he loved and admired the sisters. But they were very Catholic, and he was very Baptist, and times were different in the United States back then. Still, the sisters and my grandfather had a job to do.  And they all managed to put their differences in a drawer and worked together to save lives.

As soon as other doctors returned to Hot Springs, Daddy Jack retired. He handed over the hospital and operating room to younger, able bodied surgeons.

Of course there was never any documentation of these surgeries, of their miricles.  But when I was a little girl, just six or seven years old, the old nuns made sure I understood the profound

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