Marianne Cope
Kalaupapa, Molokaʻi
Nine stops with the nurse who went where nobody else would go
In 1883 the Hawaiian government went looking for nursing sisters to care for people with leprosy. More than fifty religious congregations were asked, and more than fifty said no. A Franciscan superior in Syracuse, New York, wrote back that she was hungry for the work and afraid of no disease. Mother Marianne Cope sailed with six sisters meaning to settle them and come home. She stayed thirty-five years and never saw New York again — thirty of those years at Kalaupapa on Molokaʻi, the settlement under a two-thousand-foot cliff where the sick were put ashore and left, legally dead to their families. She washed wounds that would never heal, and she saw to it that the girls had new dresses with red ribbons at Christmas. Walk this road with her, from a factory floor in Utica to a grave in the yard of the Bishop Home.
The nine days
Day 1 · The Waiting — Nine Years in the Mill
Utica, New York, before 1862
Day 2 · The Ward — The Patients Nobody Would Take
St. Joseph's Hospital, Syracuse, 1870
Day 3 · The Letter — I Am Hungry for the Work
Syracuse, New York, 1883
Day 4 · The Arrival — She Began by Cleaning
The Branch Hospital, Kakaʻako, Oʻahu, 1883
Day 5 · The Children — The Children Who Were Not Sick
Kakaʻako, November 1885
Day 6 · The Guest — The Man Nobody Would Receive
Honolulu, the summer of 1886
Day 7 · The Exile — Down the Cliff
Kalaupapa, Molokaʻi, 14 November 1888
Day 8 · The Beauty — New Dresses at Christmas
The Bishop Home, Kalaupapa, 1889
Day 9 · The Long Stay — She Never Went Home
Kalaupapa, 9 August 1918