HERO
SISTER IGNATIA GAVIN, C.S.A.
FRIEND OF AA FOUNDERS (Dr. Bob S and Bill W)

About a month ago Father Bob Begin, the pastor of Saint Colman Church in Cleveland, asked me to write something about the years Father Vincent P. Haas spent in Akron, Ohio. St. Colman parish was honoring the priests who were sons of the parish and those who had served there, including Vincent Haas who died as pastor in 1977. I accepted Begin’s invitation but told him the only history I had of the Haas years in Akron were stories Vinnie shared with me when I was in residence at St. Colman during the 1970s. At the time I was working as graduate dean at Saint John College in downtown Cleveland.

Often when Vinnie and I would sit in the parlor after dinner he would share stories of how he became pastor of Saint Peter Claver, a storefront church for black Catholics near Saint Thomas Hospital where he lived and acted as chaplain in the evening. The archbishop and some high diocesan officials wanted to build a new Saint Peter Church for blacks in Akron but Haas resisted.

Haas saw that plan for what it was – segregation designed to accommodate white Catholics who did not want their churches to be integrated. He believed the storefront church should be torn down and that blacks should worship in existing parishes in their neighborhoods. Haas won the battle. The storefront church was razed and a new Saint Peter Claver Church was never built. But the battle with the diocese took its toll on his health.

Haas was more interested in telling me about Sister Ignatia Gavin who was born in 1889 and entered the Sisters of Charity of Saint Augustine in 1914. A talented musician, she taught music until she had a health breakdown in 1928. Her community sent her to Saint Thomas Hospital in Akron where she became admissions director.

One day she met a Dr. Bob S. who was trying to get Akron hospitals to admit alcoholics for treatment. At that time alcoholism was looked upon as a moral weakness rather than a disease. Sister Ignatia did not need convincing because in collaboration with emergency intern Thomas Scuderi, M.D., she had been secretly admitting sobering alcoholics since 1934 by placing them in the hospital’s flower room.

Vin was greatly amused at her ingenuity in admitting alcoholics despite the opposition of some doctors who objected to “drunks” taking up beds needed for their patients who were really “sick.”

Sister Ignatia increasingly believed that alcoholics should not be sneaked into the hospital but brought through the front door just like other patients. Her persistence led to the first medical admission in 1935. Soon she provided a ward for men to sober up, and St. Thomas Hospital became the first religious institution to recognize the rights of alcoholics to receive hospital treatment.

It was at St. Thomas Hospital that Dr. Bob S. and Bill W. started Alcoholics Anonymous. It should be pointed out, however, that Alcoholics Anonymous is not a Catholic organization even though it originated at a Catholic hospital.

In 1952 Sister Ignatia was transferred to Saint Vincent Charity Hospital. There she started Rosary Hall which has admitted thousands of alcoholic men and women for treatment.

In 1961 President Kennedy recognized her for her great work but she humbly asked that the presidential citation include all the Sisters of the Community of Saint Augustine.

Sister Ignatia retired in 1965 and died in 1966. Vin Haas told me that her funeral was the largest ever held at Saint John Cathedral. Her death was mourned by thousands throughout the nation.

I do not know who composed the serenity prayer that is said at all AA meetings. But it’s a prayer that can be said by everyone of any faith or no faith:

" God grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference."

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