Nancy Smith

Nancy Smith was a stay-at-home mom then a teacher, a hospital volunteer and a full- time hospital employee when she decided to follow her calling and retrain as a hospital chaplain. She was the chaplain at Memorial Hermann Memorial City Hospital for almost a decade.  She was ordained as a Baptist minister in 1998 but through her studies and her work in multi-faith situations, she moved beyond the confines of the church to work in spiritual healing in its widest sense. She has been married to Joe since 1967 and has two children, Jennifer and Michael and two grandchildren, Ben and Clare.

What’s your story, Nancy?

I am a fourth generation Houstonian and I feel like I have followed a thread of learning my whole life. One of my great-grandparents on my father’s side traveled to Kansas in a covered wagon as a child and then came to Houston. She had one child and after she was divorced, she became the Dean of Jeff Davis High School even though she hadn't had a college education.  When she retired, she went to the University of Houston even though she was in her late seventies. So to me being a lifelong learner is something that has always been in my family and I just never thought of it as unusual.

My own path was really chosen for me, I wasn't the one who chose it. Like all of us, we have circumstances that happen which turn out to be fortuitous. I had grown up the granddaughter of a physician and though I thought I might be a nurse – I would have been Nurse Nancy! – I actually majored in education.  I was a stay-at-home mom until the mid-1980s doing all sorts of volunteer work with the kids like scouting and with the church. 

I went back into teaching when there was a bad economic turn and my husband was struggling to hold on to his real estate business, but I soon realized what I wanted to do was work for MD Anderson, the cancer hospital here in Houston.  I had been volunteering there for many years and had just spent two weeks as a summer camp counselor at Camp Star Trails with MD Anderson kids who were being treated for cancer. It was just a fabulous experience and the spirit of MD Anderson just called me.  So I resigned from my teaching job and was lucky enough to get a job there as a Patient Care Coordinator. We would meet a new patient when they first arrived, escort them around and show them the ropes. We were there to help them and to walk alongside them throughout their time in the hospital. So I got to meet so many well people whose bodies were not so well, and it seemed to me like the person kept getting “weller and weller"!

I realized then that we are all on such a spiritual journey. It had broadened my life so much to see people who had come from all over the world, patients and healthcare professionals, people who had taken such different paths from mine. One time I looked up at a Code Team – the team that comes from all over the hospital to perform CPR – and of this team there was not one face that was the same color as the one next to it, or even from the same religious tradition.  The sense of strong human spirit there totally amazed me, So I decided that I really wanted to support people's spirituality as they go through life.

To me, religion is humankind's way of making sense of life and the spirit which provides it so I began going to seminary at night after I worked all day. My sweet family didn't mind. I would get up at 4am and write my papers for my next class that night and a kind woman at work would type them for me.  I took three years of seminary over ten years and I just knew that there was a thread for me to keep following. I could see it in the scriptures I was reading or in whatever theology I was studying and I could see it come to life in people. It sent me on a journey that went deeper into the church and then it took me away from the church again.

I struggled with the church as an institutional structure and the way that people believe in literalism. It seemed to me that for them faith became such a limiting factor.  Take healing, for example since that’s what I was all about.  In the Bible there are stories of healings. You can take them literally and it won't ever apply to your life because you can't really believe that could happen to you. But what if you see the metaphorical ways that healing happens, like the concept of resurrection?  When you see over and over again people being borne up from the ashes of what they have experienced, you realize that if you believe it too literally, it keeps the truth of it at a distance. It was good for me not only to intellectualize all this but also to integrate what I was learning with what I was experiencing at MD Anderson.

I have had people say to me, "So, what are you?" Well, I went to four different seminaries. I graduated from the Houston Graduate School of Theology, which is a Quaker seminary, because it's here in Houston. I couldn't pick up and go to another location because my family was here and my job was here. I also took lots of classes at Perkins, the Methodist seminary and even at the Catholic seminary.  I actually took one class at Houston Baptist University but discovered that my male peers were not open to women and it felt very oppressive, maybe not from the professors, but from certainly the young men, so that wasn't for me.

My husband and I belonged to a moderate, smaller Baptist Church and there was a wonderful pastor there who believed, as I did, that women could do anything men could do and in the Bible when it said that women don't teach it was more a cultural thing. In 1998, when I was ready to be ordained, he led the church through a study and put me before the church so they could ask about my calling.  When they voted and only four people voted against me from a membership of around 120.  I was so indebted to that beautiful congregation for doing that, but still, four people did leave the church over it.  I know though that it wasn't just good for me, it was good for the church too!

By that time, I was already a practicing chaplain having taken two years of clinical pastoral education. I worked at CanCare and then took on a full-time ministry at Memorial Hermann Memorial City Hospital which was a wonderful experience.  A licensed professional counselor has to go through lots of supervision and if my supervisor, Leanne Rathbun, were in Houston I would nominate her as an Inspiring Houston Woman too. Leanne gave me permission to be messy inside because at that time I felt I knew a lot less than I had known before, and I know even less now than I have ever known. You have all those absolute certainties about life when you're young, in your teens and 20s, but then you start thinking, “Wait, there's more!”  That's what happened to my religion. I could see that there was more and I really wanted little girls in the Baptist Church to know that they could do anything. In fact I wanted little girls everywhere to know that if they follow what's inside, they can “Go for it!”  That for me is what it's all about and teaching and healing are all part of the same thing, part of becoming who you really are.

It has felt rather like coming out of the closet in a way for me because I have hidden it from some people I knew in my previous life as a hospital chaplain or as a church person, because I don't want to disappoint them. But I have moved on and I think I would never call myself a Christian in the traditional exclusive sense anymore because I appreciate that there are different paths of different streams which all come off the same river. I’ve worked out that I can’t use anymore the religious language I used to use, because I know that there is more to it.  I’m not saying that I go through a cafeteria line and choose only what I want, but I feel that we can really expand each other’s understanding of where we came from and where we are going just by listening to each other.

That stood me in good stead in the hospital community because a hospital is a microcosm of the world which is why I love it, and the hospital chapel is not a Christian chapel, it is a place for all to go to.  I was the lead chaplain at Memorial City for almost ten years and in our chapel there was a symbol.  It was a cross.  Now, many of my friends were Jewish, the patients and the volunteers were Jewish and I became very close with a rabbi who is in our area, and they would come and light the Hanukkah candles.  At the time of the Jewish high holy days in September, I wanted to cover that particular symbol so that they could come into the chapel and maybe have a service there. So I went to Hansen Galleries and they gave me a beautiful piece of fabric, a tapestry that was so colorful it looked like a stained glass window. I hung that up over the cross but when it came time to take it down and return it to Hansen Galleries, I felt so uncomfortable about it. It felt like we were putting up Aunty Mable’s picture on the wall just because Uncle Henry was coming to visit, only to take it down again when he left.  I thought this doesn’t feel right. We are acting as if we are the owners of this house and we are not. So I went to my supervisor and we agreed to take down the Christian symbol.  Of course, a lot of people were not happy but another chaplain and I worked with a quilter in Pennsylvania who made us a beautiful quilt to hang there instead.  She told us about why she had put this thread here and that thread there, it was all about the story of life’s journey.

   

Faces of Faith - by Ed Hankey

We had interfaith services in the chapel and one year when all of the Festivals of Light – Hanukkah, Christmas, Diwali and Ramadan – all overlapped we organized Sharing the Light of our Faith.  People from different faiths brought pictures and other things to hang outside the chapel and I loved it.  Later the volunteers gave us the gift of a sculpture for the niche outside our chapel and I helped design it.  We called it Faces of Faith, a group of men, women and children of different faiths at different ages.  It’s still there although there is a new chapel.

I retired in 2006 because my mother was very ill, so I got to spend some time with my mother at the end of her life and I wouldn't take anything for that.  I didn't go back to the hospital after she died because my father developed Alzheimer's.  That was another little turn in the road, but you know, all along the way, while you are following that thread, I think there is such a responsibility to tell your own truth.   Though you don't want to squash anybody else's truth, I truly believe that there is a built-in salvific force that our creator has put inside us which moves us towards whoever we are. I don't want to put a name to it.  Most people call that creator God but to me, that's a limiting word. Theologian Paul Tillich said that it’s the ‘ground of all being’ and I believe that. I believe it's more than religious language can describe. I wouldn't deny my Christian faith because of course it brought me to where I am. I believe it all but I also believe there’s more.

What advice would you give to someone new to spiritual healing?

Well, whether it’s someone new to teaching or healing, in healthcare, as a mom or as a friend, I would say that you must listen to that still small voice inside, and if something out there isn't congruent with your experiences don't just jump into it. Keep on listening to yourself and to your experience because each of our experiences, every one of them good or bad, is part of our wholeness.

Who or what has been the greatest influence on your life?

My husband, Joe, has been my greatest enabler in the best sense of the word. His acceptance and encouragement of my evolution is life giving.  There have been other people too, all along the way, who have influenced me and I lament that I am not in touch with every one of those people still. But we were there for each other, influenced each other and inspired each other even if it was only for that one day or even that one hour.  There were my friends that I ran with, there was my great friend Polly, there were people I worked with at MD Anderson, and there were the patients too.  And there’s Rabbi Rabinowitz and my nephew Blaine who has cerebral palsy.  Really, there are so many of them.

How do you find, or seek to find, balance in your life?

When I was younger I ran marathons and even now my physical fitness is very important to me.  So I go over to Trotter YMCA every morning and do my exercises.  That gives my day structure, and I experience the YMCA as a place of great diversity and faithfulness.  I know lots of lovely groups of people over there.  We have a birthday club and on Sundays I go to what I call ‘yoga church’.  It's wonderful!  It's like a ritual for me and it keeps me grounded. There are people in that class from all over the world and it feels just like a beautiful little church for me, with all the people from different places.  I used to be on the board there years ago when the Y set up a Women’s Center because many women don't want to exercise with other people, especially the Muslim women because they have to be dressed. So in the Women's Center they don't have to be. It's a separate space, smaller than the big one and I thought that was just very understanding and empathic, especially for a Christian organization.

Jerusalem International YMCA

I traveled to Israel in November and it was so good. We stayed in Jerusalem in a hotel called the King David Hotel which was absolutely fabulous.  Right across the street was a YMCA housed in a historic building and when you walk in, their mission statement is there on the wall and it says we are a place of peace amidst a time of religious diversity.  It was special to me to come across that.

What does Houston mean to you?

It's a whole different city than it was. The little house I grew up in is long gone.  It was on Norfolk Street and now it’s under Greenway Plaza!  Then we moved out to Briargrove when that was the furthest you could go.  I love when I go to the Heights because that's where my father's family originated and I love going over to the Montrose area because that's where my mother's family came from. I see places that aren't even there anymore, but they're so real in my mind.

Where is your happy place in Houston?

On my patio. On a pretty day I just sit tight there and wherever I look I see green in any direction.

What is your favorite restaurant?

It’s Pondicheri. I love the big breakfast plate because I love the way they balance their tastes. Another place I love is a neighborhood restaurant called Joyce's which has been here forever and ever. It used to be that we would go in there and I would think it was full of old people, and of course, now I'm there! Anyway it's a lovely little retro seafood place.

What is your Houston secret?

One place I love is full of secrets. Glenwood Cemetery was, I believe, the first planned public garden in Houston. People in the 1800s went there for picnics and it is filled with famous and infamous Houstonians and world class sculpture. The monthly tours led by Jim Parsons are really fun and are rich with history and gossip.

If you could change one thing about Houston…

I love the vitality of Houston and I love the diversity, but if there's anything I'd change it would be that we could see each other's ‘otherness’ more readily and be more accepting of it.  We should embrace it more than being afraid of it. I love the things that are organized to foster diversity like the festivals in Downtown.

I also think that in this city it is too easy to become isolated. We go to work and we come home and stay there. So I think we all need to make an effort to get out there and meet more people. I would certainly change that about myself.

Nancy Smith was nominated as an Inspiring Houston Woman by Jennifer Enos

Kristina Hultén

Kristina Hultén moved to Houston from Sweden in 1997.  She is Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine, specializing in research to combat pediatric infectious diseases. She conducts a children’s church choir and has three sons, Jakob, David and Philip.

What’s your story, Tina?

I was born near Stockholm in Sweden and I grew up not far from there in Västerås.  I went to a performing arts school from 4^th through 9^th grade, and played the piano and sang in choirs.  But I was torn between going into natural sciences and music, so I went into a natural sciences high school program but did all the music I could with the performing arts students on the side.  My high school was built in the 1500s and it is one of the very few high schools that has a cathedral on its school yard which I think is pretty cool. 

Then, at the end of school I was again torn about what to do –sciences or music. I figured that I didn’t want to be a piano teacher and I really liked analytical thinking, so I went into the sciences.  I always really loved medicine, and I wanted to do research so I did a PhD in infectious diseases and clinical microbiology, and as part of that I came over to Houston.  I did a two month fellowship at the VA for Baylor College of Medicine in my PhD research area, Helicobacter pylori, so they invited me to come back when I was done. 

I had never been to Texas before I came here for the first time in 1994.   I had thought I really want to go to Paris and speak French, but my husband Thomas said, “You know, the United States would be fabulous!”  So I came here for two months and was just astounded by how friendly people were and what a great research place I ended up working at.  I really loved it and we decided we would both come back.  I got a grant and we came back in 1997 for a year to begin with and then we stayed. 

I was married before I came but all my children were born here.  Thomas is a trombone player – he plays classical trombone and jazz trombone and he’s also a composer and arranger.  He works with the Houston Grand Opera and the Houston Ballet as Principal trombone and then does a bunch of freelance stuff on the side – jazz, shows, composing and arranging.

I work with a research group in infectious diseases and with two other researchers, more senior than I am, who had started two programs before I got here, relating to Streptococcus pneumoniae and Staphylococcus aureus.  One of the studies is confined to patients at Texas Children’s Hospital and the other involves eight different children’s hospitals in the United States.  They are prospective surveillance studies, meaning that we collect isolates and follow epidemiologic changes over time. We follow changes in antibiotic resistance, we analyze if there are certain strains associated with certain disease presentations, and so on.

What we learn can be used in different ways. In the case of Streptococcus pneumoniae we are interested in knowing what changes occur after the introduction of a vaccine. After one pediatric vaccine had been introduced several years ago we and other research groups noticed that a few strains that were not part of the vaccine became more common and so the vaccine was improved [by others] and now covers for these strains as well. Now we are following the changes after the new vaccine is being used. These vaccines have greatly reduced invasive pneumococcal diseases in children.

With the Staphylococcus aureus research at Texas Children’s Hospital, the research also involves epidemiology and resistance surveillance. There is no Staph vaccine in use, but there are still changes in the types of strains that occur and Staph germs are very adaptable to new challenges. For example, in the early 2000’s we observed a quite sudden increase in methicillin resistant Staph aureus (MRSA) infections in the community, both skin and more severe infections. We hypothesized there must be a particularly virulent gene, or strain, that caused the severe infections. Because of our ongoing study, we had the materials necessary to investigate what was going on in our community here in Houston and we studied a large number of bacterial isolates in the lab using different methods. We looked for specific virulence genes and compared if different isolates were genetically related to each other and we analyzed if there was a difference between strains from different types of infection.

What we found was that there was a particular clone that ”moved in” and took over. This clone was the cause of almost all of the community MRSA infections, regardless of severity. Others reported the same strain causing adult infections as it spread in many parts of the United States at the same time. We sequenced one of the isolates together with scientists at the Genome Center at Baylor College of Medicine to find out what made this particular strain so successful. While a few genes have been identified as ”of interest”, there is no easy answer.  We, and many other research groups in the United States, use different methods and approaches to understand better what makes a Staph germ successful – with the goal of finding better treatments and reducing or preventing disease.

Is there an end point to my field of research?  There are smaller parts of the larger issue that have been completed and that we know, but will there be a day when we completely understand how the bacteria function and change so we can combat them successfully? There is a lot of research yet to be done to reach that point when it comes to Staph infections. But the methods and approaches change as we learn more and as new techniques become available. In the case of Streptococcus pneumoniae it is too early to tell after the latest vaccine.  The research in infectious diseases at Texas Children’s Hospital is really important to me, very motivating. I am absolutely fascinated by the microbes and how they continuously evolve.  I think it’s a great area of research – but then everyone says that about their research interest, don’t they? 

What does Houston mean to you?

We’ve been here for 16 years, so that’s quite a while, and for the most part I feel at home.  When you have had your children somewhere and raise them there, you get your roots there with the kids.  As Europeans coming to the US, we think that there are so many things that are alike, but then you start realizing the things that are not alike.  Things that you think would be simple, like figuring out which toothpaste to use, or which laundry detergent works, because all of a sudden they are not exactly the same.  In Sweden, there are ten brands to choose from and here there are 200!  Then there is the banking system, the social security, the differences in utilities, schools and healthcare etc. So, there are lots of things to learn. When we first came, we were struck by the kindness shown to us by people that barely knew us. One example: when we had our first child, less than a year after our arrival, my first work place threw us a baby shower. That was just amazing – shockingly generous to us Swedes.  The kindness we were offered definitely helped us feel at home.

Also what I think is really neat about Houston are the Arts.  I am so proud of how the whole arts community is growing – just take the quality of the Opera, it is inspiring to read the program and see all the great ideas.  The Medical Center, it’s the same thing, it’s growing.  What I like the best about Houston is that people want to do the best they can.  I think people work hard but they really have a desire for quality, you see that in the research area, at Baylor and Texas Children’s, this wish to improve and I see that in the Arts scene and in other areas too. 

What advice would you give to someone new to the United States?

I believe you must find places where you feel at home and where you connect.  For us, we had connections here already when we came, a brass player and his wife.  He actually used to be a teacher of one of Thomas’s good friends in Sweden.  We had our friend’s sister here too and so having those connections helped us to get established. Our new friends went to First Presbyterian Church and invited us to go there.  So we went and discovered a Christian community we could be part of. The big pull back then was the sermons, believe it or not. But there was also a fabulous choir, which I started singing in, and we found we had something in common.  When you go somewhere as a newcomer, find people with a common purpose and somewhere to settle.  Of course when you have kids, school helps you, but the church has been very important for us to get established and to feel at home.

I still sing in the choir at First Presbyterian Church and I also lead a 3^rd to 5^th grade children’s chorus called the Alleluia Choir.  It’s really, really fun – I have three boys in the choir, otherwise it is mainly formed by girls.  They are all great little singers. 

Who has been the greatest influence on your life?

I think my parents have been very influential in how I approach life.  They were always very unselfish and they always worked really hard but always worked hard for others.  They were both teachers first and education was important to them, but they also worked for the church.  They gave up their teaching careers to go into full time positions – my mom working for a Salvation Army community center where she helped a tremendous number of people, either immigrants or single moms on a fixed budget.  To see how she helped them navigate their tragedies and make a difference was very inspirational to me.  You know, in general, any person who does things for other people, but not for personal gains, really inspire me.

How to do you find, or seek to find, balance in your life?

Ha ha! That’s easy, I don’t have balance!  I think it’s a constant struggle. I would like to spend a lot more time at work, a lot more time for it to feel meaningful and to let me do what I need to get done.  And I would like to spend a lot more time with my kids because they are growing up and they are fantastic, and it is just magical to see them become themselves, to find themselves.  They are their own individuals already when they are born, but to see them discover that personality is really neat.  My boys are 15, 12 and almost 11, and of course I would want to be there with them to see them take every breath.  But they certainly don’t need me there all the time to grow.  It is a balance, right?  And it’s good.  

I guess the struggle to find balance is, in itself, a good thing too, if you reflect upon it, because you have to remind yourself constantly what’s important.

Where is your happy place in Houston?

I have lots of happy places, but really I carry happy with me. I am happy when I go to work and I’m happy when I go home to see my kids, and I’m happy with I sit down in choir and I get to sing. I’m happy when I get to go to the opera and hear a great performance, and so it continues.

What is your favorite restaurant?

OK, if people come from Sweden, we want them to go to Pappasito’s because we want them to have those fajitas, or to Goode Company because they need good Texas Barbecue.  But I like to go to Café Rabelais because they have great mussels and I like to go with the kids to Skeeters because I think it’s just so nice and friendly.  Otherwise we love to eat at home.

What is your Houston secret?

I try to make everybody go to the Opera. I know I am repeating myself, but I think we have a great arts scene here and people aren’t aware of that.

If you could change one thing about Houston

First, I would end all the senseless shootings. Then, I would make people stop texting when they drive and become more patient as drivers. I think there is an intolerance and rudeness about driving in this city, and everybody seems to be putting themselves first.