NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ –The Woman Who Needs No Introduction was thrust into the role of providing up-to-the-minute information during televised press conferences alongside Gov. Phil Murphy soon after the COVID-19 pandemic began.
In the past nine months, Judith Persichilli has become a familiar, often calming presence as the state has treated some 461,000 cases of COVID-19.
To many around these parts, however, she’s always been Judy from St. Peter’s High School, part of the Mella clan.
The State’s Health Commissioner’s roots run so deep in New Brunswick that she can trace her decision to dedicate her life to nursing – to public service, really – to her time at the school.
Persichilli, who recently spoke to TAPinto New Brunswick after taking a tour of Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital’s employee vaccine clinic just across Somerset Street from the school, said she burst through the door one day and declared she was going into nursing.
“There was a club - I think it was called the Medical Professionals Club, something like that,” said Persichilli. “I joined it and that’s where it all began. I said, ‘I want to be a nurse and that’s it.’ That’s where it started.”
The 1966 St. Peter’s High School yearbook not only reveals a bright-eyed, raven-haired photo of Judith Mella, but also lists the many clubs she had joined. There was the Biology Club, the Latin Club and the aforementioned Medical Careers Club.
In fact, under her name are the prophetic words, “career in nursing.”
“My aunt, who I had never met, she had died before I had a chance to meet her,” Persichilli said. “She was my father’s sister. She was a nurse. I think she actually died of TB (tuberculosis). So, when I said I wanted to be a nurse, my parents were all in.”
Her father worked in a factory in Perth Amboy and her mother was a legal secretary. Although they had moved the family to Dunellen in 1950, they wanted Judy and her twin sister Antoinette to attend St. Peter’s. After all, the family goes back at least another generation, to when Persichilli’s grandmother, Amelia Mella, died at 36 from the Spanish flu in 1918.
To make it through the current pandemic, she’s had to draw on lessons learned during her time as executive vice president at Saint Peter’s University Hospital in New Brunswick.
The COVID-19 health crisis hit while Persichilli was still mourning the death of her husband, Anthony, who passed away in July 2019. Since March, she’s had long days, sleepless nights and she even had to quarantine for two weeks after an employee in the Department of Health tested positive.
Last week, she came under fire after it was revealed that the start of the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine to people in long-term care facilities was delayed until this week because the state missed a federal deadline.
Although she explained the delay was caused because many long-term facilities did not have information systems technology to get in line for the vaccine, it didn’t stop Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Steinhardt for calling for her job.
Through it all, she said the things that have kept her going are quiet reflection in the morning and a good laugh at some point during the day. She said she and her staff find hope in the victories, like when the director of emergency preparedness at St. Joseph’s in Paterson recovered after being in the ICU.
“And just the hopefulness of every single success story,” she said. “We had success stories. When Dr. (James) Pruden was discharged from St. Joseph’s, we basked in the glory of that success story – not up front and person, but from our offices.”
She looks forward to a time when she can get together again with her dear, old New Brunswick friends. She rattles off their names - Paul and MaryLynn Matacera, Joanie Horvath, Michele Donato, Dave and Patti D’Alonzo and others. They can all get together at a restaurant in the city she considers her hometown and celebrate the end of the pandemic.
Until then, she will be busy overseeing the distribution of the vaccine and leading the tens of thousands of New Jersey health care workers out of these dark times.
“I am sometimes on the phone with thousands of stakeholders,” she said. “and I try to end with, especially when they’re professionals or front line workers, ‘You’re not just living through history, you’re making it. You’re making history. Your grandchildren will read about this and you should be proud about that.’”
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December 28, 2020 at 07:02AM
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Persichilli's Dedication to Caring For Others Rooted in New Brunswick - TAPinto.net
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