Chicago Tribune - September 30, 2006
Mitch Dudek, Tribune staff reporter

She proved to be an iconoclastic leader at St. Joseph, where she dedicated a floor to the treatment of AIDS patients in the early 1980s, when the fear of catching the disease was high, said Sister Theresa Peck, a health-care colleague who worked at St. Joseph.

"She opened her arms to them and the level of care she provided created a model for people in general on how to treat AIDS patients," Peck said.

Sister Juliana, 86, died Tuesday, Sept. 26, in Evansville, Ind., of cancer, according to her family.

Her title of administrator was equivalent to that of president of the hospital and "her stature was just remarkable," said Sister Honora Remes, the head of the Evansville Province for the Daughters of Charity. "Her creativity, her vision, her gift for strategic action made her a cut above ordinary."

Executive decisions were routine as she ran the daily operations at St. Joseph, on Lake Shore Drive just north of Diversey Avenue, from 1981 to 1987, said Sister Juliana's nephew John Culloton.

"However tough she needed to be to run the hospital, it did not compromise the spiritual and comforting side of her," Culloton said. "Everyone around her felt it."

Sister Juliana decided to become a nun when she was a young girl during the Depression, growing up near the area where the Cabrini-Green housing complex now stands.

She attended Catholic schools in Chicago until she was 17, when she began her training to become a nun with the Daughters of Charity in Normandy, Mo., Culloton said.

"When she was in Normandy, it was like nun boot camp," Culloton said. "She would scrub floors. Later in life, oftentimes she would joke after a tough day as a hospital administrator that she wished she was back there scrubbing floors."

Following her time in Normandy, she was assigned to the psychiatric ward of Charity Hospital in New Orleans, where she "worked liked a dog and went to school at the same time," at Louisiana State University, said Remes.

"She started in 1939 and saw everything in her 21 years there. If you ever wanted to be confronted with every possible human disease, it was at Charity Hospital in New Orleans," Remes said.

In addition to her compassion for others, Sister Juliana loved to laugh and was not afraid to poke fun at herself, Culloton recalled. She wore a coronet, and it rained a lot in New Orleans, he said. "When she got caught in the rain, she said she looked like a poodle because the starch would run out of the coronet and the corners would flop down over her ears," Culloton said.

Her sense of humor helped her deal with the sadness she encountered working in hospitals all her life.

Sister Juliana also earned a master's degree in psychiatric nursing at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., and later served as an administrator for Catholic hospitals in Indianapolis and Evansville, St. Louis and Milwaukee, Remes said.

She retired in 1991 to a Daughters of Charity facility in Evansville.

Sr. Juliana had a wonderful ability to be very encouraging and always end a conversation with, "God love you," said her niece Regina Smith.

She enjoyed the company of dogs and took up painting in retirement, especially landscapes, family said. She was also a prolific letter writer and appreciated seasonal colors, movies, poetry, music and language nuances, Remes said.

Mass will be said Saturday in Evansville.
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