Faces at the Mount

Co-workers say Nada is really something

            Nada Bradshaw got her unusual first name after her mother saw it in a magazine. “It means ‘nothing’ in Spanish, and is pronounced ‘nah-duh’, but she pronounced it “Nay-duh,” Nada said.
Despite the Spanish definition, plenty of people think Nada is something at Mount Saint Joseph.
            “She has an excellent attitude,” said her supervisor, Sandra Elder, director of finance. “She has a really good rapport with the sisters, she’s very patient and understanding with them. She really does enjoy being around them.”
            Sandra jokes that Nada’s most important skill is putting up with her boss’ obsessive compulsiveness.
“She just goes with the flow,” Sandra said. “She’s never the one who’s uptight, even on deadlines. She keeps the mood light.”
            Nada joined the business office a little more than three years ago, and says it’s the best job she’s ever had.
“It’s a good atmosphere to work in,” she said. “The employees have a good working relationship, there’s no backstabbing like in some places.”
            In her job, she makes deposits, handles the sisters’ insurance, licenses all the vehicles, prepares budgets and prepares PowerPoint presentations for Sandra.
            “I like jobs where you get to talk to people,” she said.
Nada never gets too lonely at her desk in Saint Michael Hall. The phone rings all day with employees or sisters having questions about insurance or budgets.
            “I’ve had e-mails on how to have a reunion at the park, to how to get things at the gift shop,” she said.
Her longest tenure at a job was the 18 years she spent working at the McLean County Clerk’s office. Prior to that, she worked three or four years for the Charles Chips plant in McLean County.

            “I took chip orders from the vendors and figured the poundage for the trucks,” she said. “I talked to people all over the United States.”
            After she left the clerk’s office in 2002, she worked at Almost Family Day Care until she joined the Business office in November 2004.
            Sister Barbara Jean Head, a member of the congregational leadership team, said she was impressed with how quickly Nada became part of the team when she started.
            “She’s always upbeat and very helpful,” Sister Barbara Jean said. “Whenever you ask her to do something, she’s ‘Nada on the spot.’”
            Sister Barbara Jean works with Nada because she is responsible for voting the proxies for the congregation’s investments.

            “I tease Nada because she’s always keeping my mailbox full,” Sister Barbara Jean said.
Sister Ann McGrew, another member of the congregational leadership team, works with Nada when she signs financial documents in Sandra’s absence.
            “She’s a hard worker and a very willing worker,” Sister Ann said. “She’s a very happy person, she sort of cheers us on. That’s a good quality to have.”
            Nada said her positive attitude is nothing new.
“I’ve always had a happy disposition,” Nada said. “I just enjoy life. I have very few bad days.” 
            She spends much of her free time with her two grandsons who live in Owensboro. Nada’s daughter Amy was adopted from Korea when she was just four months old, through an agency in Oregon.

            "We were the first people from this area to adopt an international child,” she said.
            A woman she worked with had a brother who’d adopted a Korean child through the Oregon agency, Nada said. Her daughter is now 33 and works at the Family YMCA.
            Nada enjoys photography, especially of vacations and her grandsons. She recently started a class on digital scrap booking. She’s an avid collector of cat knickknacks, as her office area illustrates, but doesn’t own a cat these days.
            She’s considering retirement in the near future, and would like to volunteer more, perhaps with Birthright, the hospital, or more with her church, Bellevue Baptist in Owensboro. She drives the bus on two Sundays a month picking up church members.
            “I’m the only woman who drives the bus,” she said.
            She’s always lived in McLean County. She grew up in Island, where her father was a mechanic and her mother a housewife. She has lived in Livermore and Calhoun, but is happy to be back in Island.
            “I live on a country road with my brother and my mother,” she said. “People are like family there.” She says there’s a similar feeling at the Mount.
            She’d never had much contact with sisters before coming to the Mount, but she said it was an easy transition for her.
            “I enjoy hearing them tell what they’ve done, where they’ve lived.”

-By Dan Heckel

Do you work with someone who others should know better? Each month an employee at the Mount will be featured in Faces at the Mount. Please share your suggestions with Dan Heckel at extension 200, via e-mail at dheckel@maplemount.org, in his mailbox in Saint Joseph Villa or stop by the second floor of Saint Angela Hall.