Provena celebrates 100th anniversary with a picnic

Throughout the year, Aurora's Provena Mercy Medical Center has been recognizing its centennial anniversary by celebrating “Something Special Inside.”

On Saturday afternoon, hospital staff took the celebration outside to host a community picnic, complete with live music, food, and face painters.

“Each month of our anniversary year we've celebrated our theme of ‘Something Special Inside,'” said spokeswoman Heather Gates. “So we celebrated our physicians for a month and our patrons for a month and so on.”

This month, the hospital is celebrating the community that it's been a part of since March 1911. That's when the Sisters of Mercy opened a hospital in an old apartment building in Aurora, Gates said.

In 1971, a new 250-bed hospital was constructed on a 160-acre former farm on the city's north side that had grown to become the Mercy Institute of Mental Health.

Fifteen years later, three religious orders — Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, Franciscan Sisters of the Sacred Heart and Servants of the Holy Heart of Mary — merged to form Provena Health, now one of the largest Catholic health care systems in Illinois with 356 beds.

“That kind of growth and history in one community is truly something to celebrate,” Head Chaplain Ed Hunter said. “That will be the focus also of our liturgy celebration in September.”

Gates said Hunter also could be responsible for ordering up the clear 80-degree day for Saturday's three-hour picnic.

“Just another benefit of being a faith-based health care provider,” she joked. “We have a direct line to call in favors.”