116 3rd St SE
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
Sister Susan O’Connor, the last Sister of Mercy in Cedar Rapids, retires after 55 years of service
How her legacy will carry on through others in a new era at Mercy Medical Center
Dec. 17, 2025 6:00 am, Updated: Dec. 17, 2025 7:40 am
The Gazette offers audio versions of articles using Instaread. Some words may be mispronounced.
CEDAR RAPIDS — Sister Susan O’Connor’s destiny as the last active Sister of Mercy working in Cedar Rapids probably started in grade school.
As she grew up attending Catholic schools in Waterloo, she took note of how her peers experienced a distinct shift in their mentality on religious life.
“In grade school, everybody was going to be a Sister. Then we got to high school, and nobody was going to be one,” she said.
Nobody except for Sister Susan, that was.
“I decided to check it out. Fifty-five years later, I think it’s working,” she said.
On Dec. 18, O’Connor’s retirement marked the end of an era for the group of women who first came to Cedar Rapids 150 years ago.
Today, only 130 Sisters of Mercy remain across North and South America. But after more than 55 years as a Sister of Mercy and 36 years of service to Mercy Medical Center, O’Connor has ensured their legacy will continue at the Cedar Rapids medical institution, even as the way its mission is served pivots.
“If I did my job right, all of you will be ready to step in and make sure our mission continues,” she tells others.
Finding her calling
The Waterloo native’s calling came as she studied to be a teacher at what was then Mount Mercy College in Cedar Rapids. For years, the urge to dedicate her life to serving God persisted.
At 19, the calling to become a Sister of Mercy came as she prayed in the college’s chapel. She entered service in September 1969.
“It really is a calling. I tried to ignore it for a long time, but it was this deep-seated thought that kept coming back to me,” O’Connor said.
The Mount Mercy graduate’s career of service didn’t exactly follow the path of a teacher. But by the time it ended this year, virtually everyone she worked with had learned something from her.
Starting in 1972, she served as a social worker at Mercy Medical Center for 15 years, where she worked with patients in every area of the hospital system, from the general floor and hospice to behavioral health. By 1976, she took her final vows as a Sister of Mercy.
Back then, life for Sisters of Mercy looked a lot different in day-to-day operations. At times, O’Connor served with over 20 fellow sisters in the city.
“Early on, the Sisters were in charge of everything,” she said. “Somebody was over X-ray, somebody was over labs, somebody was over Hallmar.”
But the workforce she retires from has changed dramatically from the one she started in, as Catholic institutions face a shortage of both women and men dedicating themselves to religious service in traditional ways. As she retires, only 130 Sisters of Mercy remain in the Western Hemisphere.
Though she had some doubts at times about how well she lived up to the calling, she never questioned the calling itself.
Today, as Mercy pivots to embrace the Sisters’ mission through the rest of its staff, she said faith remains an important component to the types of institutions that have become much more secular since the Sisters of Mercy came to Cedar Rapids in 1875.
“Regardless of your faith situation ... when you’re facing a situation like illness, there’s a great deal of comfort that can come to people,” she said. “Even to know there’s people praying for you during a difficult time — I think people come here because they know that.”
After pursuing leadership roles with Sisters of Mercy for 13 years, O’Connor returned to Mercy Medical Center in 2004, where she assumed the role of vice president of mission integration. The then-new title required preparation through three internships across the country.
For the last five years, she has served as legacy liaison to the CEO. Her work in Mercy’s archives has reminded the Mercy community, through a column in biweekly newsletters, of its own history — from the hospital’s former “rabbit room” and medical predictions to the statue of St. Joseph that has been holding the infant Jesus on the roof since 1958.
With a quiet strength, her legacy wasn’t seeing to herself, but seeing to others — a defining hallmark of the Mercy touch. The capstone of her career has been instilling that mission in the next generation of leaders and employees.
“Everybody who works here is called to carry out the mission ... as guided by the spirit of the Sisters of Mercy,” she said.
It’s a bittersweet end of an era, she said, but not the end of the mission.
A beloved life of service
Decades removed from her life as a social worker, Sister Susan is one of two faces universally recognized across the hospital. Any quick walk with her around Mercy Medical Center in Cedar Rapids confirms this.
“They could tell you ‘That’s Sister Susan,’ without a doubt,” said Karen VanderSanden, public relations specialist for Mercy Medical Center.
The other face is Dr. Tim Quinn, the president and CEO who has served with Mercy in various capacities for 20 years.
“The degree to which people that work here rely on the mission of the Sisters ... is something you can feel every day,” he said. “(O’Connor) is part of the fundamental staples of this place.”
That reputation was built through O’Connor’s sharp intuition, faithfulness to those she loved, and the ability to accept people as they were.
Sister Susan was a good listener, and in turn, others listened to her. Even when she disagreed with others, her comforting presence had a tendency to disarm those who might otherwise have taken offense, said fellow Sister Peg Murphy.
“Susan had a lot of gifts, but she was very unassuming,” said Murphy, who worked with and lived near O’Connor for over 30 years. “You knew she was going to do what was the good thing. She made great decisions and could see things.”
“There’s a faithfulness there that very quietly happens.”
How she will be remembered
The list of O’Connor’s awards and accomplishments is almost too long to detail.
She created the Catherine McAuley Service award to recognize outstanding contributions. She led development of the REAch program to reward employees who go above and beyond, and established Mercy Connections for retirees to stay connected.
She embodied a culture of humility and practicality while serving as a barometer for strategic decisions, Quinn said.
In recent years, she developed Catherine’s Cupboard and the Employee Emergency Fund to assist employees with everything from food insecurity to broken cars to housing — all of which is voluntarily funded by employees each year.
To employees who make the mission possible, that support is worth more than dollars and cents.
“If somebody works incredibly hard and they go home tired, but they feel that they fulfilled part of their personal mission, that impacts how they treat their kids, their family, their loved ones, their friends, their neighbors — and that’s the sort of impact we want to have on the community,” Quinn said. “That is part of the whole legacy we’ve inherited from (the Sisters of Mercy). It’s not just taking care of sick people, it’s being present with somebody who’s in dire straits of economics, or health care, or whatever.”
But after everything is said and done, O’Connor hopes Sisters of Mercy like her are only remembered for one thing.
“That we were faithful to our commitment here, and faithful in doing our best to work with them,” she said. “That we took that responsibility seriously.”
Comments: Features reporter Elijah Decious can be reached at (319) 398-8340 or elijah.decious@thegazette.com.
Daily Newsletters