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Update: Sister Betsy Moyer served as assistant registrar at Brescia University from 2012-15, and continues to serve at Brescia as Curriculum Resource Center and Field Experience Coordinator. |
Sister Betsy, right, visits with Sister Emily Zent at the Mount Saint Joseph Villa.
“I enjoy taking care of older people and their needs and I enjoy taking care of children.”
Sister Betsy Moyer, OSU, Healthcare Administrator for the Ursuline Sisters of Mount Saint Joseph, feels equally comfortable in a classroom with 5 and 6 year olds or in a healthcare environment with elderly patients.
Her caring for the elderly actually began when she was a small child.
“I began helping to care for my grandmother when I was only 12 years old,” says Sister Betsy, “and I began living with her when I was in the seventh grade because she was blind and needed special care. I lived with her until I went off to college.”
The oldest of eight surviving children (one died at birth) born to Max and Virginia (Osborne) Moyer of Nebraska City, Nebraska, Sister Betsy also had early experience caring for young children as she grew up in the community of 8,000 near Omaha in the southeastern part of the state. While she attended Saint Mary’s Grade School for eight years and Lourdes Central High School for four years, she spent many hours tending to her younger siblings when not studying assignments given her by her teachers, Ursuline Sisters from Mount Saint Joseph.
Sister Betsy lends a helping hand to Kim Bullock (l.), Director of Nursing, and nurse Paula Stephenson in the medical records department.
Her father was a job printer for the Nebraska City News Press before owning his own shop – Moyer’s Print Shop. Her mother was an original “stay at home mom.”
After graduating from high school in 1969, young Betsy Moyer pondered her future plans. She enjoyed caring for her grandmother, but she also found great joy in working with youth. “I was good with kids,” she recalls. “I was very good with children and was looking to get into education. Sister Joseph Therese Thompson already thought I had a vocation, but she didn’t push it. She did ask if I was interested in going to Brescia College.”
After learning Brescia was located in Owensboro, Kentucky, Betsy found her parents very upset and distraught because they didn’t want her to go that far away, since she was caring for her grandmother and because she was the oldest child and helping with her seven siblings.
Nurse Mary Wigginton is one of Sister Betsy’s top record keepers.
In the end, her blind grandmother had the final word. Sister Betsy recalls, “Grandmother said to my parents, ‘If I’m willing to let her go and pursue what she’s interested in, you ought to give her the opportunity too.’ And they did.”
“My childhood was a good childhood, but it wasn’t a typical childhood,” Sister Betsy continues, “but I don’t regret any of it.”
During Sister Betsy’s first year at Brescia she visited the Mount almost every other month for a weekend and “fell in love with the Mount, the environment, and the sisters.” She nurtured her vocation that first year and then asked her parents if they would let her come in January, but they said no. Sister Joseph Marian told her she ought to wait until her parents gave their blessing, which they did in May of 1970 and she entered Mount Saint Joseph as a postulant.