Friday, June 21, 2002 | 3:05 a.m.
There are very few constants in Southern Nevada -- change being the most prevalent and Hoover Dam the most enduring.
St. Rose Dominican Hospital is one of the best examples of both change and endurance.
Its original campus of St. Rose de Lima on West Lake Mead Drive in Henderson has grown, and eight other Dominican-sponsored medical buildings have popped up at other Henderson sites, including its second full hospital, the St. Rose Dominican Siena campus.
Today St. Rose Dominican Hospital celebrates its 55th anniversary under the auspices of the Dominican order of Catholic nuns. Actually, the original one-story facility is 60 years old if you count the five years it was operated by the federal government to serve the medical needs of nearby World War II plant workers.
"When the community grows, a hospital also has to grow to meet the greatest needs of its patients," said Sister Monica Stankus, a Las Vegas High School graduate who after finishing college in Utah got her first job as a medical technologist at what was then St. Rose de Lima.
"Without the hospital's growth, people will seek services or live elsewhere."
In 1959 Stankus joined the Adrian Dominican Sisters of Adrian, Mich., and over the years worked in medical administration and at teaching posts before returning to St. Rose Dominican in 1998 as vice president of administration integration.
"You can see how constant we are being ranked No. 1 and No. 2 in the valley for overall community satisfaction," Stankus said, citing a recent study by the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Center for Business Research.
Stankus attributes the hospital's success to its never losing its focus on putting the needs of its patients first. The facility has pioneered treatment in everything from cancer in the 1950s to improved maternity care to its first open-heart surgery last year.
And, she said, a hospital run by nuns gives patients the confidence that they are in caring, loving hands. While the sisters no longer wear their habits -- they haven't since the early 1970s -- they still run a facility where virtue and the dignity of the ailing is championed and preserved.
"Because we don't wear habits anymore -- I don't even own one -- some patients believe that the sisters no longer are working here," Stankus said. "I can assure you, we are."
For Henderson natives like Tammy Klein, who today works at St. Rose Dominican in the communications department, the hospital has been a part not only of her health and wellness but also of her fond memories of growing up in the community 15 miles south of downtown Las Vegas.
"My mom would bring us to St. Rose de Lima for the annual Easter egg hunt that we still do today," said Klein, who in her first year of working for the hospital helped coordinate that annual children's event. "St. Rose has always been a big part of the community, and I believe it always will be."
Sister Molly Nicholson, vice president of mission and spirituality, who has been at the hospital three years, said every facility that St. Rose has built, including the Barbara Greenspun WomensCare Center of Excellence, the Parkway Plaza and the St. Rose Dominican Medical Services Green Valley South Building, had responded to the needs people have said they most want addressed.
Now, she said, St. Rose Dominican is spreading its wings from Henderson into southwest Las Vegas with a third campus planned for Warm Springs and Durango roads.
For its 55th anniversary, the festivities will be on a much smaller scale than for the milestone golden anniversary five years ago. The hospital is requesting photos of babies born at St. Rose over the past decades to post on a huge collage.
The hospital's transition from the government-run Basic Magnesium Hospital to a religious- affiliated health center got its start precisely at 1:30 a.m. on June 27, 1947, when the original seven sisters/administrators got off the train. It was the same year mobster Bugsy Siegel opened the Flamingo hotel on what would become the Strip.
They took over a medical facility that was losing $15,000 a month. Four months later their management skills turned the losses into profits.
Over the years celebrities have been treated at St. Rose, including actress Clara Bow--who owned a ranch near Searchlight with her actor husband and former Nevada Lt. Gov. Rex Bell -- and Henderson resident and legendary athlete Jim Thorpe. Among the celebrities to visit patients were comedian Bob Newhart and singers Wayne Newton and Elvis Presley, who visited a terminally ill cancer patient.
Between 1947 and 1956, 2,500 babies were born at Rose de Lima. Last year alone, more than 2,500 babies were born at St. Rose Dominican.
The first nonprofit and only religiously affiliated hospital in Southern Nevada today has 279 beds at its two campuses.
Three of the founding sisters are still living and retired at the Mother House in Michigan. Nicholson said that to honor the seven founders, an artist has been commissioned to design a stained glass window for the chapel, featuring seven roses.
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