History & local legend
In November 1963, pianist Liberace became gravely ill while performing near Pittsburgh. He had cleaned his stage costumes with solvent in an unventilated hotel room, and the fumes damaged his kidneys. At St. Francis Hospital in Lawrenceville, doctors began dialysis and a priest administered last rites.
Liberace later wrote that a nun he had never seen before came into his room and sat beside the bed. She urged him to pray to Saint Anthony. He did, and as his condition improved he tried to find the woman who had encouraged him.
No one could identify her. In one version of his account, she wore a white habit, and hospital staff told him their sisters did not dress that way. Liberace understood the visit as part of a miracle and later built a shrine to Saint Anthony at his Palm Springs home. The hospital where he remembered meeting the nun stood on the site later occupied by UPMC Children’s Hospital.
Sources
- Pittsburgh Magazine, Sean Collier quotes Liberace’s own published recollection and recounts the white-habit tradition
- University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, former St. Francis Medical Center site in Lawrenceville
- UPMC Children’s Hospital, history of the replacement hospital’s move to Lawrenceville
- OpenStreetMap, successor hospital on historic site
