Three longtime Mather Hospital staff members with a combined total of more than a century of service to the hospital – Mary Jane Fisher, RN, Quality Management manager; Ted Nilsson, director of Respiratory Services; and Jim Sunyar, director of Patient Accounts, said goodbye recently as they began their new lives in retirement.
Mary Jane, or MJ, began working at Mather in 1985 following a stint as a captain in the Air Force. She started as an operating room nurse and over the years was assistant nurse manager in Pain Management, surgical care improvement project coordinator, infection prevention data quality manager and Quality Management manager. “I’ll miss all the people, the friendliness the family atmosphere, the administration,” she said. “You can call them and see them daily and call them by name and they would have lunch with you. No top executives ever did that in any other place I worked.”
Ted also began at Mather 35 years ago, starting out as a respiratory therapist before being promoted to director of Respiratory Therapy in 2002, responsible for Respiratory Care, Pulmonary Function and the Sleep Disorders Center. He began his career at Southside Hospital 40 years ago. “I’ll miss the people I’m working with,” he said. “I’ve known Eileen Romano, my assistant director who will be the interim director of Respiratory Therapy, since we worked together at Southside. Bonnie White, the Sleep Disorders Center director, and I worked per diem together in the 80s and 90s.”
Jim retired after 36 years at Mather. He was hired by former vice president for Finance Frank Lettera for the job he held throughout his tenure at Mather. Previously he had worked for a Great Neck law firm that did a variety of hospital work. “When you’re with an organization for 36 years you pretty much get to know a large swath of people,” he said. “Some are already retired, and some have many years to go. But it’s the people that I’ll miss the most. There is such a large great group of people at Mather, which is why I loved working here.”