It was a bittersweet Valentine's party at St. Francis Hospital on Friday, Feb. 15 as her many friends gathered to bid farewell to Sister Jean Pignone, who has lived and worked at The Heart Center for 61 years. Sister Jean, 85, would have liked to stay but she is a member of the Sisters of the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary who has taken vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. In this case, obedience means leaving St. Francis and moving to the order's assisted-living facility in Rhode Island. Although many of Sister Jean's friends have suggested that, if she is frail, there could be no better place for her than at the hospital she has served so faithfully for so many years, one administration member pointed out that she is a resident, not a patient, at St. Francis.

In any case, there was a fond farewell party for her on Friday. On entering the area, guests found a banner saying goodbye to Sister Jean and as her friends came in they wrote affectionate messages to her. Around the room there were pictures of Sister Jean, always in her white Franciscan habit. Although many members of her order now wear civilian dress, Sister Jean has always retained the habit. There was even a video of Sister Jean but the focal point of the room was the old nun herself who still speaks with the French accent of her native country.

Sister Jean is the last of those then young nuns who came out to Flower Hill in 1941 to start a camp for inner-city children with rheumatic heart disease. Sister Jean recalls that there were 200 children and 55 nuns. The nuns did all the work. "We did everything," she said. "One day you would be in the kitchen, another in the laundry, one day you would clean and the other days you would nurse the children. Than on Saturdays, we would beg." By "begging," she meant going around to the local farms and asking for contributions of produce they could use to feed the children.

No one denies that Sister Jean will be missed. Alan Guerci, M.D., president and chief executive officer of St. Francis said that because of her fragile health it is no longer safe for Sister Jean to work at St. Francis. "She came to symbolize the hospital in ways that have been critically important in the development of St. Francis as a leading heart center." Many of her friends find it hard to imagine St. Francis without her.