A Special Blessing for Nurse Nancy

The late Dr. Nancy Anne Faller — lovingly known to the students and faculty of Thomas Aquinas College, New England, as “Nurse Nancy” — was buried last October in Our Lady of Czestochowa Cemetery in Turners Fall, Massachusetts. To honor her onetime service with the medical corps in Vietnam, Nurse Nancy’s friends ordered a special military headstone, but frozen ground and other obstacles prevented its installation until very recently.

The delay, however, proved Providential. Throughout her life, Nurse Nancy had a special devotion to St. Anne, Our Lady’s mother, donating flowers every year on the saint’s feast day to adorn the statue of St. Anne in the vestibule of Our Mother of Perpetual Help Chapel. Today marks the first Feast of Sts. Joachim and Anne since Nurse Nancy’s passing, and Simone (Kelly) and Nathanael Cassidy (both ’22) — who cared for Nurse Nancy in her final months — thought there was no better day to bless the new headstone.

The husband and wife led a contingent of friends from the College to Nurse Nancy’s gravesite, where they were met by parishioners from Our Lady of Czestochowa, Nurse Nancy’s home parish. After the congregation lit candles and sang over the grave, Rev. Greg Markey, head chaplain of TAC-New England, sprinkled the headstone with holy water, imploring St. Anne’s intercession for their beloved friend. “I know she was smiling,” said Mrs. Cassidy afterward. “This is how she would have wanted it done.”