STORIES

Sisters Maris Stella and Mary Thomasetta Mogan Retire from St. Mary’s, Knoxville

Knoxville, Tenn. St. Mary’s Health System associates said a tearful goodbye to two retiring Sisters of Mercy, Sister Maris Stella Mogan and Sister Mary Thomasetta Mogan, during a reception held in their honor at the St. Mary’s Medical Center on April 25, 2006.

Sister Maris Stella became part of the St. Mary’s family in 1987, after serving as a teacher and principal at Catholic schools in several Tennessee cities including Nashville, Memphis and Alcoa.

Coming to the “Hospital on the Hill” in downtown Knoxville in 1998, Sister Mary Thomasetta served as the Pastoral Associate at St. Matthew’s in Franklin, Tennessee before coming to St. Mary’s.

Each of these wonderful women brought their own special talents to tending for the patients and their families at St. Mary’s. For several years, Sister Thomasetta visited the elderly poor in the North Knoxville area, continuing a ministry started by the late Sister Laurence Mary Jackson more than 25 years ago.

Bringing emergency food provisions and medicine to elderly citizens who have been recently discharged from St. Mary’s, Sister Thomasetta was often the only contact with the outside world that these members of the “Greatest Generation” had each week.

“There are so many lonely, lonely people by themselves,” Sister Thomasetta said in an interview in 1998 regarding her ministry. “So, I try to make myself available for whatever there needs are at the time.”

Sister Maris Stella helped thousand of people who came to the St. Mary’s Emergency Room as she was the Patient/Family Liaison for the Emergency Department for many years.

Her ministry grew much larger in 1999 when she teamed up with former UT and NFL MVP quarterback Peyton Manning on numerous awarding-winning TV commercials supporting St. Mary’s, the hospital she cared so deeply for.

“He is such a good man,” Sister Maris Stella said of Peyton in a recent United Press International interview.

“I really couldn’t watch,” she said of Manning’s last game of the 2005 season as the Colts lost to the eventual Super Bowl champs, the Pittsburgh Steelers. “He was sacked so many times, I was afraid he’d get hurt.”

St. Mary’s Health System President and CEO Debra London said that all associates will miss these Sisters of Mercy who are also birth sisters. “St. Mary’s is a faith-based healthcare organization which focuses on healing the body and spirit of the patient. These two sisters are an inspiration to us all in the way they have helped to extend our healing ministry of Jesus to so many people in and around the medical center.”

As a retirement gift, St. Mary’s presented the Sisters with two plane tickets to visit the Sisters of Mercy ministries on the island of Jamaica in the Caribbean