By Msgr. Noel C. Burtenshaw

Sister Loretta and the other nuns at the Cancer Home will tell you it was nice to have their brand new building in December 1973, but they hated to see the old one torn down.

“It held such wonderful memories,” said Sister Loretta. “It had served our apostolate so well and for so long. And before us it was a house of service, too.”

Sister Loretta Purcell came to Atlanta in April 1939, just one month after the Cancer Home had opened. The famous Atlanta center for incurable cancer had begun its ministry in a building that had once served as a Jewish orphanage. “The orphanage went back to 1870,” said Sister, “and it must have been a wonderful place. It closed about 1929, but Jewish people still come to see the place where they were raised. They remember it fondly.”

The sisters are known as the Hawthorne Dominicans but their official title is the Servants of Release for Incurable Cancer. One of the founders, Mother Rose Huber, opened the Atlanta Home in 1939 at the request of Archbishop Gerald P. O’Hara. “The Archbishop had seen our work in Philadelphia,” said Sister Loretta, “and when he arrived in Atlanta, wanted a home here. We got lots of requests but since Mother Rose was from Kentucky she was really pleased to open a foundation in the South.”

So on a spring day in March 1939, Mother Angela Bott and the first band of nine Dominicans arrived to begin their apostolate to victims of cancer, an apostolate that would become so famous throughout Georgia.

“It looked like the home was sitting there waiting for us,” said Sister. “The dormitories became our wards and it suited us just fine. We even had enough room to have wards for black people. Segregation was the law and we had to obey it at the time. But we changed as quickly as we could. We have only one goal – to serve the victims of incurable cancer.”

And that’s how it all began for the Hawthorne Dominicans – service. Two young women who had witnessed the merciless savagery of this dreadful disease, around the year 1880, decided to devote themselves to its victims. Rose Hawthorne, youngest daughter of American novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Rose Huber, an artist from Kentucky, came together in a New York tenement to serve the dying victims. They had both watched close friends die and both decided to reach out to cancer sufferers. Other women gathered around them and the first house of their new order was set up in New York, near the East River opposite the Brooklyn Navy Yard. That was in 1890. Ten years later, the Motherhouse of the community was set up in Hawthorne, New York about 30 miles from New York City. The work of the Sister Servants was spreading.

“We have a precise rule about our service,” said Sister Loretta. “We accept only patients declared incurable. Patients still under treatment or therapy cannot be admitted to our Home. We do not ask any questions about religion. All ministers and rabbis are most welcome to come and minister to patients. We cannot accept payment of any kind, nor can we accept donations from the estates of those who have been with us. Bequests are often sent from patients’ will. We always return them.”

Then how can the home exist? “Without ever asking, we receive contributions from the general public. They are very good. For example, in the new home we set aside a place for a beauty parlour and someone volunteered to come and pretty the patients for us. Barbers take care of the men for us also.”

“And we have fine medical help,” said Sister. “We used to have many doctors volunteering but we have found it best just to have one. He accepts only a very nominal fee for all his work. So many volunteer so often do so much – it is wonderful.”

But volunteers are only allowed so far. “The Sister alone must tend the patients,” Sister Loretta reminds us. “The helpers iron and clean and make bandages, but only the sisters can directly tend to the patients. Male orderlies help with the men, but the sisters alone must be at the bedside.”

The Cancer Home is down there, just a fly-ball distance from the Atlanta Stadium and since March 1939, the Sister Servants have been involved daily in bringing the tender ministry of a loving Savior to ravaged bodies. Their only goal is to ease this final suffering and testify by their lives and ministry that a new life is promised.

When the new home was planned in the early seventies, some felt the sisters and the home should move, like so many institutions, to the Atlanta suburbs. But the decision to stay, on the site of the old Jewish orphanage known and loved for its service, was firmly made.

And how did Sister Loretta Purcell, from Long Island (“it’s an island about 10 miles from New York”) become a nun with the cancer sisters? “I always wanted to be a Sister,” said this young at heart, happy and bright lady.

Any other reason? Really there are two. “When I was 16, my mother died of cancer. And then it was the will of God.”

In December 1973, the new Diocese of Atlanta was 17 years old, the new Cancer Home was opening and the Sister Servants for Incurable Cancer had been in the same place close to Atlanta Stadium for over 30 years.