May 7, 2026 – West Bend, WI – It is the beginning of National Nurses Week, which runs May 6 through May 12. At Cedar Community a group of retired nurses gathered to celebrate Florence Nightingale’s birthday, compare nursing pins and stories which included long shifts, a strict dress code, and flowers removed from a patient’s room at night for fear they would use up too much oxygen.
In November 2017 the 19th annual St. Joseph’s Hospital reunion was held at the Top of the Ridge Restaurant at Cedar Community.
Molly Erickson was a clinical educator at St. Joe’s and Linda Jansen was a RN in 1982. The pair recollected some of their favorite memories working at the local hospital including sightings of ghosts.
Neighbors in West Bend, Wi, will remember the old St. Joseph’s Hospital on Silverbrook Drive and Oak Street. Part hospital, part convent, part small-town crossroads, it was a place where nurses swapped stories at 3 a.m., nuns quietly made their rounds, and the occasional unexplained creak could turn a dark hallway into something straight out of a late-night campfire tale.
Both Erickson and Jansen recalled the hospital’s enduring legend: the feeling that parts of the building were haunted.
After patients moved out of the subacute area, Erickson said many of the nuns had once stayed there. “I saw nuns always,” she said. “But there were no nuns in the building.” The sensation lingered anyway, especially in the isolated sections near the chapel and storage rooms.
“You’d go into storage and everybody was afraid to go into the area where the chapel and whatever was because they were scared,” Erickson remembered.
The old hospital had enough dim corridors and quiet corners to let imaginations roam freely. Jansen said her husband, Al Jansen, who started working at the hospital at age 16 in dietary and housekeeping before later joining maintenance, collected stories constantly.
“He would tell me stories all the time,” she said. “Various things the nuns would do.”
Some tales were humorous, including stories involving communion wine and the sisters serving communion to patients. By the time Linda started there, only a couple nuns remained living in the building, and eventually only one was left before retiring. Still, their presence remained woven into the culture of the hospital like starch in an old nurse’s uniform.
“There are so many stories,” Jansen said. “Sometimes you’re like, things we used, just practical jokes we tried and played.”
But not every story at St. Joe’s felt playful.
One memory the women discussed involved escaped prisoner Thomas Ball, 24, of Hubertus. The incident of his escape on a Sunday, rattled the hospital in October 2000. Ball had been receiving treatment for drugs at the hospital while under guard. According to Jansen, a female officer was with the patient when Ball overpowered her, took her gun, ran out of the building naked, crossed the street, stole a Cadillac from a 77-year-old woman and escaped.
The hospital staff suddenly found themselves in the middle of a real-life emergency unfolding inside an otherwise quiet community hospital.
Jansen explained staff had emergency safety buttons throughout the building. “If you hit the button it automatically called the police,” she said.
Employees and nurses were trained to direct people to the nearest exits during dangerous situations. “We would say go to that door and go down, you’ll be outside,” she recalled.
The incident exposed a side of hospital life many people never considered. St. Joseph’s frequently treated inmates brought in under guard from the sheriff’s department.
Washington County Sheriff Martin Schulteis, who was a deputy at the time, added some more details to the incident. He said Ball had robbed M&I Bank in Allenton, was facing charges, had a heroin addiction, stabbed Deputy Marie Joers to get her gun, she refused to turnover keys so he could removed his shackles, he pulled the trigger on the gun twice – but the chambers were empty. Ball did fire a shot inside the hospital to break the shackles and then fled the hospital where he then stole a car, crashed into a festival in Cedarburg and then was taken down by buckshot from an Ozaukee County Sheriff’s Deputy.
“We had many patients that were prisoners,” Jansen said, noting deputies often remained in the room during treatment and staff never entered alone.
“You think you wouldn’t have that at a small hospital,” she said.
On a side note: I was working at the West Bend radio station AM 1470 WBKV when the Thomas Ball incident happened. I was a bit younger and somewhat daring and talked with my morning co-host Bob Bonenfant about the script/copy. I really wanted to say “Ball was finally captured as police shot him in the ass” and Bob’s mature nature said “NO!”
By the time I got on the air and was reading the piece I could feel Bob’s eyes on me…. The final rendition went something like “Thomas Ball was finally captured as police capped him in the crack.”
I will remember it always.
-Do you also remember the St. Joseph’s statue that was transferred from the old hospital to the new ‘drive-by’ hospital on Highway 45?
