Sep 21, 2007 / 05:30 am
Eileen Specchio, a professor at the College of St. Elizabeth, traveled to the Dominican Republic last month to lead an enthusiastic team of nurses, nurse practitioners and nursing students on a mission trip to care for the health needs of the island nation’s desperately poor people.
One of Specchio’s daughters, Emily, was way ahead of the team of 65 people, at least in spirit.
The people shouted, “Emily’s madre” (Emily’s mother) said Specchio, director of St. Elizabeth’s undergraduate nursing program, who brought the team to run the San Miguel clinic of the Randolph-based Foundation for Peace organization, by helping patients manage chronic diseases and by promoting good health practices among the people.
There’s a reason for the wild reaction to Specchio and her team, who from Aug. 4 to 9, treated workers on sugar plantations like her younger daughter Emily, who had twice had done mission work in this poor area. In this place where living is primitive, she captured the hearts of the locals and they, in turn, also touched her heart.