Images from The Hallmarks of Mercy Historical Display at Mercy Medical Center, Oshkosh, WI
“HALLMARKS of MERCY”
celebrates over one hundred years of quiet heroes inspired by faith, goodness,
and the gift to heal.
Oftentimes history is discovered, not in headlines, but in dusty desk drawers and closet corners and long unopened scrapbooks. It lies buried in library microfiche, yellowed newspaper clippings, and plaques – no longer noticed – that line the walls and the halls of timeworn buildings.
Often the pressing needs of the moment take precedence, and the telling of history has to wait. That is how it was with the history of Mercy Hospital, founded as St. Mary’s Hospital mission in 1891 by a small group of remarkable women who later would call themselves “The Sisters of the Sorrowful Mother.”
The history of Mercy was a story of remarkable deeds done quietly out of faith and love over a century. Delivering health care to the Oshkosh community left little time to record the doing of it. It took momentous change, the move to a new hospital building , and the pending demolition of the old, to yield up the tales from the closets and the desk drawers and the scrapbooks and the plaques.
The result is a monument.
“HALLMARKS of MERCY”
is a tribute not only to the past, but to the people who created it.
“The reward of a thing well done is to have done it”
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson