06-11-2023 HOF - Flipbook - Page 21
Baltimore Sun Media | Sunday, June 11, 2023
M
ary Catherine Bunting might
be retired from her four-decade nursing career, but she
still works at least 40 hours a
week.
On a typical day, she’s up at
sunrise. Weather permitting,
she’ll take an early morning swim or work in the 17
gardens she cultivates at her
Ruxton home. She grows flowers, but also fresh vegetables she donates
to the dinner service for homeless people at St. Vincent de Paul Church,
where she serves food every Friday night.
A former nun with the Sisters of Mercy, Bunting attends 8:30 a.m. Mass
daily.
Then, she might be off for one of her twice-weekly shifts volunteering
at Gilchrist Hospice Care. Or she’ll attend a choir rehearsal or a meeting of
the church’s Women in Ministry group.
“I don’t think we’re in this world to just receive,” Bunting says. “Mahatma
Gandhi said that wealth without work was one of the seven deadly sins.
We’re here to give our talents, our knowledge, whatever else we have.”
Later in the day, she might meet with elected officials, as she has in the
past to urge them to pass an inclusionary housing bill. Or, she could work
on an environmental project involving solar panels or electric cars.
Age: 86
Hometown: Greenspring Valley
Current residence: Ruxton
Education: Maryvale High School; R.N. from Mercy
Medical Center; B.A. from Mount St. Agnes College;
M.Ed. from the University of Maryland, an N.P. (nurse
practitioner) degree from the University of Maryland
Career highlights: A nun in the Sisters of Mercy
from 1959 to 1974; a nurse for Mercy Medical
Center from 1958 to 1996
Civic and charitable activities: Built the
Mary Catherine Bunting Center at Mercy Hospital
and established Loyola University Maryland’s
Office of Peace and Justice; devotes her time
to numerous charitable activities
Rain or shine, you could see her
standing on a street corner with
other volunteers holding signs
expressing support for the Black
Lives Matter movement.
Have we mentioned that
Bunting is 86? Or that she has a
bad back?
“Living saints are never recognized among us, except perhaps
in an offhanded way,” says her
longtime friend, Geri Sicola, 71, of
Baltimore. “But, she truly is one.
She doesn’t stop. There is this
tenacity and strength and rigor
about her that never fails. When
I’m exhausted and don’t want to
attend some activity, I’ll think: ‘I
have to show up because Cathy
will be there.’”
Bunting is the granddaughter
of Dr. George Avery Bunting, who
founded the Noxzema Chemical
Co. and passed along his fortune
to his children and grandchildren. She grew up on 36 acres in
Green Spring Valley with horses
and dogs. “I was always up in some
tree,” she says.
Bunting’s mother was fiercely
devout and raised her three children in the Roman Catholic faith.
“I never had doubts,” Bunting
says. “Even as a teenager, I
couldn’t imagine not believing in
God.”
When Bunting was 16, she
was in a serious car crash while a
passenger in her boyfriend’s car.
“My head hit the dashboard,”
she says. She broke bones in her
face and spent 10 days in the
hospital, her jaw wired together.
The nurses worked hard to make
their patient comfortable, and just
like that, Bunting found her calling.
“I loved nursing from day one,”
she says. “You got paid for trying to
help people. I don’t know how you
can learn about the human body
and not believe in God.”
She began studying nursing while she was still in high
school, earning her RN in 1958.
The following year, she joined the
Sisters of Mercy as a novice. But
while she left the convent after
13 years — she realized her truest
vocation was as a nurse — she
never stopped trying to do God’s
work.
Sicola, 71, says that as a child,
her friend was deeply influenced
“I loved nursing from
day one. You got paid
for trying to help
people. I don’t know
how you can learn
about the human
body and not believe
in God.”
— Mary Catherine Bunting
by the biblical Scripture about
the difficulty of a camel passing
through the eye of a needle.
“She feared being one of the
rich people who wouldn’t be able
to enter the kingdom of heaven,”
Sicola says.
Now, Bunting estimates that she
donates to between 800 and 900
charities every year. In 2007, she
contributed an undisclosed sum
to the Mercy Medical Center to
build the 20-story Mary Catherine
Bunting Center — then the largest donation in the institution’s
history.
She also donated the funds
establishing the Office of Peace
and Justice at Loyola University
Maryland. She contributes to
an Israeli organization that aids
Palestinians and to a Nicaraguan
nonprofit that buys medicines
and hires teachers and provides
microloans to budding entrepreneurs.
But whenever possible, Bunting
prefers getting her hands dirty to
writing a check. Literally.
“I live in a condo so I can’t
compost in my backyard,” says
another friend, Peggy Meyer, 73,
of Baltimore. “So, every Friday
night I bring Mary Catherine my
compost and she adds it to her
bin, and every Sunday morning
she rinses out my bag and brings
it back to me.
“That is just such a kind thing to
do. And it is so Mary Catherine.”
— Mary Carole McCauley
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