Clarabelle C. Sittinger's Obituary
Clarabelle C. “Clara” Sittinger, long-time chief operating room nurse at St. Vincent Charity Hospital in Cleveland who assisted in the groundbreaking open-heart surgeries conducted there during the 1950s, died peacefully on June 13 at St. Mary of the Woods in Avon. She was 91.
Miss Sittinger graduated from North Ridgeville High School in 1942 and from St. Vincent Charity Hospital School of Nursing in 1948. Upon earning her RN degree, she joined the St. Vincent staff as an operating room nurse and retired 36 years and 40,000 operations later as the hospital’s operating room supervisor.
During the 1950s and 60s Cleveland was renowned as a world leader in heart and vascular surgery. Surgeons at St. Vincent Charity and the Cleveland Clinic developed heart-lung machines permitting open-heart surgeries that were then unprecedented and that paved the way for procedures such as heart valve replacements that today have become nearly routine.
At St.Vincent, Dr. Earle B. Kay received international acclaim in 1956 when he successfully performed the third open-heart surgery ever conducted. Recalling her key role in that event, Miss Sittinger wrote at her retirement in 1984: “It was my privilege to scrub on the first open heart case and the next 3500 that followed. I was probably one of the first nurses in the world to hold a live, beating, human heart in her hands.”
St. Vincent’s open-heart team was much in demand to demonstrate its groundbreaking techniques throughout the world. In his autobiography, Dr. Kay recounted an operation performed by the team in Rio de Janeiro at the invitation of President Kubischek of Brazil, during which the Brazilian President, himself a doctor, stood at the operating table together with his bodyguards. Dr. Kay observed that Miss Sittinger was having difficulty working because of pressure on her back from the President’s security men, but then watched her “put both hands on the edge of the table and push, taking the two bodyguards back three feet.”
Miss Sittinger was the daughter of August “George” and Ruth Sittinger of Avon-Belden Road in North Ridgeville. A lifelong resident of the area, she lived in the family homestead until she retired from nursing, when she moved to nearby Mills Creek and, more recently, to St. Mary of the Woods. She was predeceased by her parents and by her sister, Coletta Wildauer. Among the many who will miss her friendship and good humor are Ronald Wildauer, Art and Sherry Keller, Lynne Eastman, and Leslie and Harvey Wilcox.
Miss Sittinger was a member of St. Julie Billiart Church in North Ridgeville. In remembrance, her friends are invited to a funeral mass that will be conducted there at 11am on Monday July 20. Fr. George Vrabel, Pastor, will be the celebrant.
Internment will be near her parents and beside her sister Coletta at St. Peter’s Cemetery at 12:30 PM Tuesday July 21. It was her request that, in lieu of flowers, donations be made to the St. Julie Billiart Educational Fund, 5500 Lear Nagel Rd., North Ridgeville, OH 44039.
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