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| Sandra Clisham holds a picture of St. Damien De Veuster and Christ, painted by Henry, a leper patient she treated in Hawaii. St. Damien cared for leprosy patients in Hawaii. (Catholic Herald photo/Pat Casucci) | |
BELOIT — Perhaps Sandra Clisham, an Our Lady of the Assumption (OLA) parishioner in Beloit, could be described as being rooted in service and sacrifice.
Clisham is a licensed LPN and is now retired. She spent the better part of 10 years working in Hawaii, the last four of those at Kalaupapa Hospital, which served the leper colony on the island of Molokai.
The leper colony itself is located on the remote, windy, north shore of the Kalaupapa Peninsula. Some of the highest cliffs in the world surround the peninsula. Supplies arrive by barge. Food is flown in.
She shrugged her shoulders and said in her calm, humble manner, “I never considered it that important” when she was asked about her experiences in Hawaii.
Adventurous spirit
Her adventurous spirit led to her work of service and care for the few remaining people who chose to continue living at the former leper colony on Molokai.
On a trip to Hawaii in the early 1980s, Clisham visited the leper colony and was impressed with the contrast between the beauty of the area and its history.
She explained, “While I was there on the trip, I jokingly said to a hospital official, ‘If you have any job openings at the hospital, let me know.’” She admitted, “I knew it would be a challenge. But life has always been a challenge for me.”
Not long afterwards, the hospital called and told her she had a job there. At first she worked in a larger hospital on the island of Kauai until there was an opening at Kalaupapa.
So began Clisham’s odyssey.
How lepers were treated
She pointed out that leprosy is now called Hansen’s disease. By the 1800s, it had spread rapidly throughout the Hawaiian Islands and by mid-century, lepers were exiled to the Kalaupapa Peninsula.
The disease was not understood, and the lepers were left to fend for themselves. Walled off from the world, they bonded together, living their lives out in what histories describe as sad, demoralizing, neglected conditions.
For more than a century, hundreds of people were forced to live there. After 1969, the quarantine ended when the disease became better understood and could be treated with antibiotics. The colony is now designated as a National Historical Park.
