Picketing OSF–2003--December 2019

 

OSF-SFMC, Peoria

(Photo by John Carroll)

My brother and I met with Monsignor Rohlfs and Patricia Gibson in Rohlf’s office in December 2002. I had worked with Gibson during 2002 discussing a Church Tribunal. Both Rohlfs and Gibson helped dictate a letter that my brother transcribed (in his Franklin Planner) requesting a petition for a Catholic tribunal court against OSF. This is a Church court that does not seek a financial settlement. It searches for the truth and Bishop Jenky would be the ultimate judge. As I discussed with Gibson, I thought there were significant issues related to OSF that were pastoral care issues that the Bishop should address.

Even though OSF administration had withdrawn all of their economic support of Haitian Hearts on July 12, 2002, Haitian Hearts had been able to raise 445,000 dollars for Children’s Hospital of Illinois in 2002.  Paul Kramer, executive director of CHOI had advised us not to build a house to sell, but we did anyway. After the house sold, Kramer badgered us for the money verbally and with letters. We donated all of the house funds (177,000 dollars) to CHOI in December 2002, like we said we would. (Paul Kramer even made the comment, when he was asking the house contractor for the money, that there was no such thing as “Haitian Hearts”. This statement would become very important as I will document in another post.)

In December, a week after our meeting with Rohlfs and Gibson,  I received a certified letter in the mail from Doug Marshall, OSF’s attorney. The letter stated that OSF had called the American Consulate in Haiti (Paul Kramer, Director of Children’s Hospital of Illinois, made the call), and advised the American Consulate not to grant more visas for sick Haitian kids to come to OSF for heart surgery.

When I read the letter, I was angered that Kramer and OSF would do this. Our fundraising efforts were excellent, even after I was fired at OSF in 2001. The Peoria community believed in Haitian Hearts and the good we were (and still are) doing. Sister Judith Ann had told me a number of times that OSF “would never turn down a child”. Now Haitian kids were going to die.

OSF’s spokesman Chris Lofgren had told the Journal Star immediately after I was fired that Haitian Hearts would do just fine. But OSF cut all of their funding for Haitian kids in July 2002 and in December Paul Kramer called the American Consulate in Haiti to stop the Consulate from issuing visas for kids to travel to OSF for life-saving heart surgery. This did not seem just fine to us.

I needed to do something, but what? I had learned that there were no checks and balances at OSF. The Sisters were saying one thing and the Administrators and Corporate were doing another. The Sisters had lost control of their hospital and now Haitian kids were going to die.

I decided to picket OSF. This action seemed so foreign to me because of my loyalty to the place where I had worked during four different decades.  But after a year of appealing unsuccessfully to OSF’s Ethics Committee and my inability to get a meeting with Bishop Jenky, I did not know any other way to express my concern for Haitian kids who were going to die under these circumstances.  Even though the Haitian Hearts kids had great support from within the medical center from the doctors, nurses, social workers, custodians, and many other people, OSF’s administration was doing all they could to keep Haitian kids outside the walls of the hospital. I had to let others know.

On a cold Sunday morning, January 7, 2003, I drove to a place in Peoria that makes signs. In the car, I decided the sign should say, “OSF Administration: Respect for Life Includes Haitians”. The guy at the sign company charged me nothing for the sign. His disagreement with OSF for their actions was obvious.

Getting out of the car that morning was a lonely and painful experience.  I did not want to picket the hospital that I had loved and spent much of my life inside its walls. But I felt I was forced to dissent this way.

As the hours went by that morning, the media appeared and did interviews regarding my sign and OSF’s actions that prompted my action. A nephrologist friend of mine brought me a hot cup of coffee.

Patricia Gibson went to my mom’s house and stayed for several hours and commented that my picketing was the right thing to do.

My brother Tom joined me in front of the hospital and as we picketed on the sidewalk, OSF administrators panicked inside. They called the Peoria Police who came but did nothing. OSF sent the Chief of Security (who is a friend of mine since high school) and he invited me inside, but I declined.

About all OSF could do at that point was to spin the truth again. Chris Lofgren, the hospital spokesman, told the Journal Star that Haitian Hearts owed OSF 500,000 dollars for Haitian children’s surgeries.  They made up the figure to make Haitian Hearts and me look as bad as possible.

Over the next couple of days in the media, OSF changed the figure regarding what Haitian Hearts owed them multiple times, probably out of their own embarrassment. They brought it down to less than 400,000 dollars and then had Dr. Rick Pearl tell the Journal Star that our “debt was forgiven”. (Over the previous few years, Dr. Pearl had asked me multiple times in private to “bring me some Haitian kids to operate on”. I had asked him to go to administration and ask them to help out with these patients, but I was sure he wouldn’t because he did not want to inflame administration asking them to operate on more Haitian kids.)

We had requested itemized bills in the fall of 2002 of the Haitian kids that were operated and OSF did not comply. As mentioned in a previous post, OSF had charged us $45,000 on donated valves for Haitian kids and OSF bought a $20,000 ultrasound probe using Haitian Hearts donated money.  OSF’s record-keeping was very sloppy.

Caterpillar Foundation was generously donating 10,000 dollars each year for the Haitian kids which showed up on the donor list. However, on April 15, 2001, the OSF Haitian Hearts donor list showed that we were given credit for only 500 dollars from Caterpillar. Where did the other 9,500 dollars go? Henry Holling, Director of Caterpillar Foundation called me AFTER I was fired and told me that Caterpillar still wanted to continue donating to Haitian Hearts. I doubt he was talking about only $500. I think Henry knew what was going on at Children’s but was hesitant to say.

When Haitian Hearts calculated what we owed OSF after I picketed, it appeared that our balance was close to zero even with Keith Steffen cutting away $250,000 on July 12, 2002, which was the entire OSF financial support.

After my picketing, OSF placed Haitian Hearts on “suspension”. I didn’t know what this really meant because Paul Kramer had already called the American Consulate in Haiti and asked them to not to provide any more visas to Haitian kids who needed to come to OSF-Children’s Hospital for heart surgery.

The day after picketing OSF, I left for Haiti and OSF requested a meeting with the Journal Star editorial board and the Catholic Diocese of Peoria. Chris Lofgren described the situation as a “public relations nightmare for OSF” which it was. Haitian Hearts was not invited. No one from the media heard our story at all. The cards were stacked against Haitian Hearts as we advocated for the Haitian kids while others were trying to destroy the program.

While I was in Haiti, the decision was made for Bishop Jenky to “take over” the Haitian Hearts program.  Those of us in Haitian Hearts were worried that Bishop Jenky would not stand up enough to OSF and that Haitian kids would suffer. And this is exactly what happened.

Denouement and Learning Points–2019

1. I did not think OSF had a chance to “win” a Catholic Tribunal court against them. They would have had to defend Keith Steffen’s statements in his office with multiple witnesses, the Executive Director of Children’s Hospital slowing surgeries on Haitian kids suffering serious heart problems, and the missing funds dedicated to Haitian kids needing heart surgery. How could a Catholic bishop not find OSF “guilty”?

2. The OSF Sisters had lost control of their hospital. And when given the chance to better understand what was going on, they refused.

3. Picketing OSF was not something I wanted to do. And I am sure that I turned off many people to “the cause” by doing this. However, I think that the only thing worse would have been NOT to picket.

4. I wanted someone to step forward and try and stop OSF’s ban on Haitian kids coming to OSF. (Some people did try privately, but were unsuccessful.) If there had been a “critical mass” of people, or if OSF was humiliated enough publically, or if money would have been lost by OSF, OSF would have reversed their policy banning sick Haitian kids.

5. Putting the fate of Haitian Hearts in Bishop Jenky’s hands was the only choice we could make. We knew it wasn’t a good choice…but it was our only choice.

6. As it turned out, Bishop Jenky feared OSF’s power in the Peoria community. I am sure when I talked to him in 2003 that he thought OSF could not win in a Tribunal court.  And so he rejected my attempt to petition for a Tribunal court.

 

Pekin Daily Times--May 2, 2003




The article above is from the Pekin Times. The article reports that in 2003 I asked Sister Judith Ann to remove the embargo on Haitian Hearts patients visas to allow them to travel to OSF for heart surgery. However, Sister Judith Ann did not remove the embargo and during the next couple of years Haitian Hearts patients who had previously been operated at Cbildren's Hospital of Illinois began to die. 

As I type this now in July 2021, Sister still has not allowed Haitian kids to return to OSF for further heart surgery. 

The article above does not state that on July 12, 2002, OSF-SFMC cut all funds for Haitian Hearts patients thus increasing the Haitian Hearts debt for kids in Peoria awaiting heart surgery. 


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Pekin Times--February 20, 2003

1. This article was published the same day as my private meeting with Bishop Jenky in the chancery.

2. The OSF Sisters never allowed the US Consulate in Port au Prince to issue visas to my Haitian Hearts patients.

3.And in the years to come, OSF was to deny multiple kids from returning to OSF in Peoria for repeat heart surgery and some would die. 

4. In July 2003, the Diocese of Peoria and Bishop Jenky quit their symbolic support of Haitian kids needing heart surgery. 

Some paragraphs from the above article--

"Carroll has been bringing children to St. Francis for life-saving surgery since 1995. 

"Sister Judith Ann, president of OSF Healthcare System, said Tuesday that Haitian Hearts can reuse as soon as restructuring is completed." 

On his last trip to Haiti in January, Carroll did not bring children home with him. In December, officials at St. Francis contacted the American Consulate and asked that it grant no more visas to children Carroll wanted to bring to this country, prompting Carroll to picket the hospital. "The reason I picketed was that I knew I would come home with no children." Carroll said. "I knew it was a fragile situation. It had to be brought up." 

My thoughts in 2021--

The general public had no idea how toxic the OSF atmosphere had become towards Haitian kids and towards me. Kids surgeries were being delayed, money that had been dedicated to Haitian children was going elsewhere, and OSF had cut all funding for Haitian Hearts surgeries in July 2002. 

"After Carroll returned home (from a Haitian trip), he met with the bishop on February 7 to work on restructuring the organization." "Bishop Jenky is very pro-Haitian Hearts," Carroll said. "He wants to work with the Sisters and with Haitian Hearts to get the program going again."

This was our only meeting with the Bishop before the Catholic Diocese of Peoria withdrew any nominal support for Haitian Hearts.

I had a private meeting with Bishop Jenky on February 20. I told him that I wanted a tribunal court against OSF. And I described to the Bishop things that Keith Steffen and said and done and he seemed quite appalled. However, it was obvious that he was not going to allow a Tribunal Court against OSF and that he feared OSF and their money. And it was also obvious that he was not going to help my Haitian kids. 

"American Catholic bishops have strong sentiment for refugees, Carroll said. They feel that immigrants should not be discriminated against. We are a nation of refugees." 

"Carroll also referred to the Sisters of the Third Order of st. Francis' Mission Statements, which say," Services will be provided to persons of all ages and social strata with a concern for the disadvantaged and the poor of body and spirit."

"Carroll visited the Consulate right away when he arrived at Port au Prince in January. "I wanted to go early, to see what they would say about granting visas," he said, "Consulate officials couldn't have been nicer. As far as they were concerned, Haitian Hearts status had not changed. They felt bad that they were not going to be able to grant visas (to my sick children.) One official began hyperventilating. Others had to sit her down." 

Carroll stayed three weeks in Haiti, treating children in two hospitals. He identified 17 who need surgery in this country. Had he been able to bring children home, he would have brought five this time, which is all he and his traveling companion can physically handle at once. It was hard to say "No" to 17 kids, he said. "The good news is that no one handed me a blue baby."

Although unable to bring the children themselves, Carroll brought six video echocardiograms, which he reviewed with a St. Francis pediatric cardiologist this week. He has cardiology records of 16 children in all (who are awaiting surgery.)