The O’Toole Building, where St. Vincent’s Comprehensive HIV Clinic was located. Photo by John Barrington Bayley; found on <http://www.docomomo-us.org/news/news_albert_ledners_national_maritime_union>
Sister Miriam Kevin Phillips has lived in Greenwich Village her entire life. She worked at St. Vincent’s Hospital, a place dear in her heart, from 1966 until its closing in 2010. During her time there, she had worked as one of the Sisters of Charity and held numerous positions in the hospital. Each position marked a different stage in the hospital’s history. Indeed, when AIDS hit New York City in 1981, she directed the School of Nursing at the hospital. On a balmy Friday in May, Sister Kevin Phillips sat down and shared her memories and experiences during that turbulent time with an interested undergraduate student. What came from that interview was a better understanding of St. Vincent’s role in the fight against AIDS and how integral it was to Greenwich Village.
What follows these paragraphs are major excerpts from the interview. If you wish to learn more about St. Vincent’s Hospital’s fight against AIDS, I’ve written a paper titled St. Vincent’s Hospital- A Paradoxical Combatant Against HIV/AIDS during the 1980s. I continue to quote Sister Kevin Phillips in the paper and if you wish to read it please contact me via email. My address is vmyszko@hunter.cuny.edu. I ask that you do not reproduce these quotes without my permission out of respect for Sister Kevin Phillips.
What were the first signs of AIDS in the hospital and when did you, the staff members, and the sisters?
“AIDS seemed to be around, from what we could gather, at the end of the 70s. It became full blown epidemic especially in New York City, which was considered to be the epicenter”
“1981 we began to see in the emergency room large numbers of seemingly healthy young men, coming in acutely ill with symptoms of that were causing them to lose weight, to develop other kinds of infectious diseases and processes. And nobody could quite figure out what was happening because it was on a scale that was unprecedented; that you would have at this age-group this many people who were [undergoing] manifestations of similar disease, which, initially, was thought to be airborne… which, you know, is scary”
“Of course we began to do clinical studies to try to find the similarities, where they could have possibly picked this up, because it was kind of termed the ‘Black Plague’ of the 20th century. We had a microbiologist by the name of Dr. Pearl Ma and she was very brilliant and astute at picking things up … She was the first one to identify that the similarities in this, well, it seemed to be a bacterium, a viral type of thing. But it occurred primarily in homosexual men and that’s where the bulk of the infections were taking place… in her studies, she realized that what was happening was this bacteria or virus was killing and it was destroying the person’s immune system. Which then set them up for all types of [diseases and infections]… and she also identified that the only way it was transmitted was either through semen, blood, saliva, tears, or blood products”
“Once that was identified… you had not only these young men dying… there was nothing you could do for them [because] we had no treatment, we had no drugs. You treated them symptomatically but then you could only allay some acute symptoms”
Where people fearful of treating patients with AIDS?
“We did have some fear among our own personnel, but no to the extent that ever anyone refused to care form [the AIDS patients] or to be there”
“The one problem we did have, because at that time I was in the School of Nursing, was that many of the parents of the students were reading about [AIDS] because it began to be public. They didn’t want their daughters or sons to be assigned to [AIDS patients] and we really had to take a stand on that and say ‘Wait, they want to be nurses. They don’t get to pick and choose who they care for and this is a patient who needs their help, and if they don’t want to do that, you’re free to take them out’. We had only one real episode when the student was taken out. Other than that, all the others fell in line”
“The most important [ethic at St. Vincent’s] was acceptance, that nobody was preaching to them, nobody was condemning them. Our staff was only interested in helping them because our mission at St. Vincent’s was to carry on the healing ministry of Christ. We weren’t there to pass judgment and to lecture. I think, initially, the gay and lesbian populations were wary of coming [to the hospital] because they knew we were under the umbrella of the Catholic Church, which they knew, by and large, didn’t approve of the homosexual lifestyle and so why would we? You know, not treat them poorly, ‘we don’t want to care for them’ or whatever, and that never happened. To the credit of the nurses, the employees, the doctors, everyone, all we cared about was helping”
What do you remember most about this period of time and the epidemic?
“When I look back on it now, it seemed like a normal day’s activity except that the population was so young, so sick and that you had nothing to help them with except for one big thing that we started at St. Vincent’s. One time we had a hospice care for dying cancer patients … when [AIDS] happened, we changed our focus and it was called Supportive Care. Supportive Care’s philosophy was that ‘we are not here to just help them die, we are here to help them live as normal, productive, and comfortable as long as they had to live. That program became so much a part of the gay and lesbian community that they got those influential in art and on Broadway to come together. They then ran benefits for St. Vincent’s for their Supportive Care program because we not only embraced the patients, but their lovers, their parents, their friends, and siblings. To this day… [the gay and lesbian community] are trying to make an AIDS memorial park, but what I think is wonderful is how many of the gay action groups have stood up and said ‘we want St. Vincent’s to be a part of that because they are the only ones who really reached out to us… they didn’t just wait for us to come in, and we will never forget’ ”
“ I remember at St. Vincent’s we had a mission statement, but then we asked how are going to carry it out, and I think this is something that did – we called it our RICE values. It stands for respect, integrity, compassion, and excellence and that’s the way we tried to treat every patient regardless of what their diagnoses was, regardless of what their socio-economic status was. I think I can honestly say that the people who worked there were an outstanding group of individuals who really would follow the RICE values and put them into action, whether it was the way we treated our employees, or treated each other, or treated the patients. And I feel that St. Vincent’s is a big, big loss for many reasons because it was a place where patients were treated with great respect… everyone was on board and it was like a family”
