The soul of Kalaupapa’s St. Francis Church would always lead the congregation in song

By Valerie Monson | Special to the Herald

KALAUPAPA

Nellie McCarthy, the soul of Kalaupapa’s St. Francis Church who saved many lives as a house-call nurse for the settlement’s hospital, died Sept. 24 with her friends and family close by. She was 86.

“Her voice was the one that always led the church singing,” said Kalaupapa resident Meli Watanuki of the woman she considered to be like her mother. “Nellie was a very special lady. I feel empty without her.”

McCarthy was born Nov. 11, 1920, in Keanae, the remote East Maui community halfway to Hana. After graduating from the eighth grade, Nellie enrolled at a girls’ school on the outskirts of Makawao to study home economics. A semester later, she was so homesick she returned to the people and place she loved, taking care of her younger siblings and a niece, and maintaining the hope of learning to play the piano through correspondence school.

Already, her family had been torn apart by leprosy. Nellie’s father, uncle and a brother had all been sent to Kalaupapa. She tried to visit them, but wasn’t allowed, adding to the pain of permanent separation. When she was just 20, Nellie herself was diagnosed with the disease. Once in Honolulu, she asked to be sent to Kalaupapa where she could at last be reunited with her ohana. She arrived in April 1941 — only to find that her father had died.

Nellie’s caring nature soon caught the eyes of the Sisters of St. Francis who served as the nursing staff at the Kalaupapa Hospital. As an orderly at the hospital, she often worked seven days a week, earning $1 a day. When the supervisor’s job at a dining hall opened up, Nellie said goodbye to the hospital, but not for long.

The tsunami of April 1, 1946, left Kalaupapa without running water and the hospital short-staffed. Aware that nurses were needed in other parts of the islands devastated by the wave, the sisters realized they would have to find their own talent among themselves. They quickly remembered Nellie’s kind heart and strong work ethic.

At age 25, Nellie was hired as a “house call nurse,” assigned to provide home care for seven patients at a time. She changed their dressings, cooked for them and cleaned. If they were blind, Nellie would read and write letters for them. If they were immigrants who wanted to learn English, she would help teach them. She was also on-call 24/7.

“Nellie was a very dedicated woman and a wonderful Christian,” said Sister Rosanne LaManche, who became nursing supervisor at Kalaupapa shortly after she arrived in 1949. “As a resident of the settlement, she became a self-trained nurse taking care of other residents. In a sense, she was considered part of the hospital staff because we always could rely on her to give assistance and go beyond the call of duty.”

Nellie learned how to change tracheotomy tubes, give insulin and eventually do home dialysis so a close friend wouldn’t have to leave her house.

Even the physicians at Kalaupapa became admirers of Nellie, who had communications skills many of them lacked: she was able to convince those who were afraid of entering the hospital to come for treatment.

“Sometimes, the doctor would say to me, ‘I don’t know what you do, but all these old people who need to come to the hospital, they come because of you,’” remembered Nellie in an interview several years ago.

For some of the Kalaupapa old-timers, the hospital was a scary place that people rarely left alive. Nellie managed to persuade them otherwise. Once they agreed to be admitted, she would stay by their side to keep them calm. Many would later tell her that they were so grateful that she had talked them into going in for medical care.

“What Nellie did for the community was so important,” said Sister Rosanne.

It should come as no surprise that, when the sisters needed someone to sit atop a float and portray Mother Marianne Cope during a celebration at Kalaupapa, they chose Nellie.

During the exhumation of Blessed Mother Marianne’s remains in early 2005, the sisters were looking for something appropriate with which to drape the casket.

“The residents said, ‘Let’s ask Nellie,’” recalled Sister Mary Laurence Hanley, director of Mother Marianne’s cause for sainthood.

Once again, Nellie had the answer. She provided a Hawaiian quilt that had been given to her by a daughter and her classmates at Kamehameha Schools. The quilt covered the casket during the farewell ceremonies in Kalaupapa and Honolulu and, later in the welcoming home service at the Franciscan motherhouse in Syracuse, N.Y.

The Kalaupapa community also depended on Nellie for her wisdom and sense of fairness in other matters. Even into her mid-80s, she was vice-chairwoman of the Kalaupapa Patients Advisory Council and a newly elected member of the board of directors of Ka Ohana O Kalaupapa.

She loved parties and having her house decorated with lights at Christmastime.

But Nellie was known mostly for her dedication to St. Francis Church. She served as parish president, helped decorate the altar with flowers, selected the hymns for Mass and led the choir in singing. She could read Latin and, in earlier days, was often asked to sing solos in Latin.

In 1995, she was one of four members of the Kalaupapa Catholic community (and the only woman) chosen to help seal the reliquary of Blessed Damien de Veuster. Four years later, when the St. Francis Church was asked to select its first “Island Treasure” for the Diocese of Honolulu, they picked Nellie.

“Nellie was so faithful, she always went to church, even when she was sick,” said Meli Watanuki. “She said that as long as she can walk, she’s going to church.”

And when Nellie no longer could walk, the church — and the community — came to her. During her last few days at the Kalaupapa Care Home, residents gathered around her to sing hymns and pray. The room was filled with sweet maile and Maui protea. Because of her great faith, probably no one has been as prepared for death and the hereafter as was Nellie McCarthy.

Earlier in the month, Meli Watanuki had been summoned to her native home in Samoa for the funeral of a nephew. When she left, she had no idea how sick Nellie was. Meli managed to get back to Kalaupapa to say goodbye to the woman she loved like a mother.

“When I came in the room, she hugged me and said, ‘I was so afraid I wouldn’t see you again,’” said Meli. “I said, ‘God knows that we want to see each other.’”

A few days later, early on a Monday morning, Nellie died, leaving Meli — and all of Kalaupapa — feeling empty. But there was solace in knowing that, in heaven, God had a new Island Treasure who could be called upon at anytime to sing solos in Latin.