[Magdalen] R.I.P. Gail Shipp

[Jay Weigel]

Prayers, please, for the repose of my friend Gail Shipp, who died on
Thanksgiving Day. Gail and I were longtime friends, going back to my first
days of home health in 1990. Gail was the epitome of Shakespeare's "Though
she be but little, she is fierce." Standing barely 4'11, she was determined
not to be ignored. She was a tireless and fearless fighter for the rights
of her patients, a terrific psych nurse (she took the patients the rest of
us didn't really want and was great with them), and great with hospice
patients also. She was the bane of supervisors as she didn't put up with BS
and would argue with them if she thought they were wrong, which was often.
However, she spoke up for the rest of us, so we liked that! She worked in
home health long after the rest of us had gone elsewhere or retired....and
she was older than the other two of our triumvirate, which I think would
have made her 81 or 82 at her death. Gail had been a lapsed Catholic for
many years and somehow had connected with a large and active Methodist
church about 18 years ago. This led her to become an active and committed
Christian and eventually a lay minister. She did medical missionary work in
Africa and the Philippines for the church and loved doing it. Gail and I
were on opposite sides of the political spectrum but didn't discuss it
much. The only argument we ever had was over pharmaceutical stocks.....I
wouldn't invest in them because I said the companies behaved in immoral
ways and she argued they were profitable and it didn't matter to her what
they did. About a year after she had become a committed Christian, we were
having lunch and she told me she had divested her portfolio of all
pharmaceutical stocks. She said, "You were right all along and I can't call
myself a Christian and support them." I hadn't seen her the last couple of
times I was in Tennessee because I flew down and didn't have a car at my
disposal, but I knew that her health wasn't good. I'll miss my tough,
fierce friend. She's survived by her husband Jim, 6 kids by her first
marriage, an adopted daughter, and innumerable grandchildren and
great-grandchildren.