Mary Catherine Bunting, the granddaughter of the founder of the Noxzema Chemical Co., never had to work.
But work she did, as a nurse, nursing instructor and nurse practitioner.
When her father saw her first nursing salary, he joked, “that isn’t going to pay your taxes.”
In October, Ms. Bunting gave Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore the largest gift in its history; she declined to reveal the exact amount. The hospital will name its new $400 million, 18-story tower in her honor.
She knew she was meant to be a nurse at 16, when her boyfriend had a car accident, and she broke her jaw and some bones in her face.
“When I saw what the nurses were doing, I said, ‘That’s really nice,’” she recalled. She began volunteering at Mercy and decided to become a nurse. She laughs as she remembers that her grandmother was appalled.
After graduation from the hospital’s nursing school in 1958, she worked everywhere in the hospital but really enjoyed labor and delivery.
“You never get tired of seeing babies born,” she said. In 1959, she entered the convent – she left in 1974 – and earned a degree in sociology. She came back to Mercy in 1964, which asked her to enroll in a master’s degree program, and then she taught maternal and newborn nursing at Mercy’s nursing school until 1974. But, she realized, “I really like doing rather than teaching.”
She went to work at Mercy’s community center in South Baltimore in what was then a gritty, working-class neighborhood.
“Working in a community is a good experience,” she said. “Where I grew up I was not rubbing elbows with anyone but people of my own social strata, and not with people from the Block. My father said, ‘You’re naïve,’ and I said, ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’”
She loved the work –she worked there for 24 years – but everyone else at the center was a nurse practitioner. Although she’s really not fond of schoolwork, she once again returned to school, completing the University of Maryland’s nurse practitioner program, which prepared her for the highest level of nursing.
After years at the center she was caring not just for patients but for their parents and grandparents.
“If the grandparents were too sick to visit, we did home visits,” she said. The nurses educated the families about all health issues.
“It was a good experience,” she said, adding she bumps into people that she once treated.
She retired in 1996, but still makes home visits as a volunteer for Hospice of Baltimore.
Her faith has always been a part of her work.
“I don’t think it could be separated,” she said, adding her mother was a devout Catholic who taught them to care for others. “My mother was one to serve always.”
When she was a nursing teacher, one of her students urged her to attend St. Vincent de Paul, Baltimore.
“It was so alive and so ahead of where we were – Vatican II had just happened,” she said, adding she became deeply involved in the parish; currently she’s a member of the women’s ministry group.
Making health care affordable and available is a passion for her.
“I’m an avid activist these days,” she says with a laugh. “I’m always calling.”
When she reflects on her career, she says, “I never would have rubbed shoulders with the poor. Jesus’ ministry was one of healing, and that’s what Mercy is about and that’s what nursing is about; the way you do it is with healing and compassion.”
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