Sisters Servants of Mary Immaculate

Endowment Fund in Memory of Sr. Amelia Kuska

Service with love: the sisters of Slavic Village

Saturday, March 31, 2007
Brian Albrecht
Plain Dealer Reporter

On a street of pit bulls and boarded-up houses, a Polish accent met an Arkansas twang and nothing got lost in the translation.

"Good morning, Margaret," Sister Marianna Danko greeted the frail woman who gripped her front door for support. "Give me a hug."

On another street, in a tidy brick house near the area of southeast Cleveland known as Slavic Village, Maria Kozlowski, 76, knelt next to her stroke-disabled husband as both took Communion from Sister Anna Kaszuba in the language of their mutual homeland.

"I am sick. My husband is sick. Who's to help?" Kozlowski later asked, then answered herself. "The sisters help."

For the past 31 years, the Sisters Servants of Mary Immaculate, a Polish order founded in 1878, have ministered to the ethnic elderly of Cleveland - the shut-ins, the abandoned, the ailing and lonely.

Each weekday, five sisters of the group make their rounds to meet the spiritual, emotional, psychological and sometimes basic survival needs of more than 200 people.

The group was originally invited here by former Bishop James Hickey to serve the Eastern European immigrants of Slavic Village.

The sisters also are on call during weekends for their mostly Polish-speaking or Eastern European clients, though neither a person's religion nor ethnicity is a requisite for aid.

Some clients have outlived the days when they could rely on a close-knit community of merchants and professionals who shared their language and customs but moved out of the neighborhood over the years, according to Kaszuba, program director of the sisters' Special Ministry to the Aged based at the Immaculate Heart of Mary Church.

So the sisters fill the gaps, helping these people shop, obtain needed medical and social services, arrange legal affairs, translate or transport.

And sometimes they are just there for companionship and comfort.

"It's unbelievable work and a very needed service that the sisters are performing," said Gene Bak, executive director of the Polish American Cultural Center in Slavic Village.

"The community is getting older and a lot of the younger people have moved to the suburbs," he added.

"But the older people still stay in the area because the churches and halls are here, and the sisters serve a very important function by helping them do that."

Kaszuba noted that the number of clients has stayed fairly steady over the years, as the children of earlier immigrants got older, in need of the sisters' services but still adhering to such ethnic traditions as a fierce independence and reluctance to seek help.

The program stresses aid for independent living, and Kaszuba said the toughest part can be getting the social services for their clients, who may not be aware of the help or have a language barrier. She said the sisters also are working with a limited budget. They receive help from Catholic Charities, an endowment fund and an annual fund-raising dinner.

But the payoff goes both ways, beyond the home-grown vegetables that clients like the Kozlowskis give the sisters in gratitude.

Kaszuba said when considering the ordeal that some of her clients went through in just getting to this country, "your own problems disappear. They teach us perseverance and deep faith."

And doing this kind of work teaches and requires "patience, patience, patience, and a lot of love," said Sister Danko before visiting one of her clients, Margaret Cooley. "It comes from the heart."

As Danko settled in for a chat, she reached over to grasp Cooley's hands, which twisted a handkerchief over and over into knots of frustration as she talked.

Cooley, who was raised a Catholic but became a Methodist after getting married, knows what it's like to be a caretaker. She moved here 15 years ago from Arkansas after her husband's death to tend to her sister-in-law and then her brother until they died.

She remembered when the infirmities of age didn't keep her from cooking, arranging flowers and painting. She remembered when her knees didn't throb like jolts of electricity were shooting through them. She remembered what life was like before two men broke into her house and robbed her.

The handkerchief twisted and knotted, twisted and knotted.

"When you get old, it's bad, you have to depend on people," Cooley said. "I don't know too many people. I can't go anywhere, anymore. I don't know what I'd do without her [Danko]. I believe I'd just die."

But she wouldn't die alone. Nobody does when the sisters are there.

Three years ago, Sister Ce Ann Sambor found Ben Kula living in a neighborhood of abandoned buildings, in a house on the verge of being condemned with steps so steeply canted that even Kula joked that they seemed just right for him in his former drinking days.

Sambor said it took time for Kula to accept her help. First, she would just drive him to the coin-operated laundry. Then grocery shopping. Then the big move to a new home in a senior housing complex.

The nuns remind him of his own sister, Kula said. Somebody to depend on, like family. "They're great. Just beautiful. They make me feel better," he said.

The sisters have taken him to the hospital for treating numerous broken bones, plus cancer of the prostate and colon.

"I'm doing great! Better than Muhammad Ali," Kulas proclaimed, the epitome of spry, who will be 91 this year. "If I make it," he said.

But during her visit, Sambor and Kula matter-of-factly talked about the inevitable. He wants to be buried with the ashes of his wife.

He will, because the sisters are there to the end. They will help with independent living or referral to a nursing home, through illness and hospitalization, with hospice and funerals. As Sambor said, "We follow them until God takes them home."

She added, "The rewarding part, for us, is just to be part of their lives. Sometimes, we are their family."

She paused before leaving Kula and asked, "Ben, did you eat yet?"

He sheepishly shrugged.

"Go eat," she said, and closed the door.

Additonal information about the Sisters Servants of Mary Immaculate can be obtained by calling 216-441-5402