Although Patrick Stack (an Irish immigrant) and Freddie (a horse) did not have much in the world, they did have each other, the Holy Cross Sisters and the old Holy Cross Hospital in Salt Lake City.
Turns out they did not need much else.
The Holy Cross Sisters first arrived in Utah on June 6, 1875. Sister Raymond (Mary) Sullivan and Sister Augusta (Amanda) Anderson traveled to Salt Lake City via train and stagecoach from their convent in South Bend, Indiana, at the invitation of Father Lawrence Scanlan (soon to be Utah’s Catholic bishop).
Scanlan hoped the order of sisters — originally from France but soon full of hardworking and devoted Irish Catholic nuns — would help him build schools and meet other human and spiritual needs. With their trademark energy and industry, within just a few months the Holy Cross Sisters had started a school and a hospital in Salt Lake City.
Over the next 150 years, they also would establish a dozen other Utah schools, found two other hospitals, launch an orphanage, form a nursing school, build a college, and begin numerous other social service ministries. They also would serve at or support almost every other Catholic institution in Utah.
One of those places they started was the old Holy Cross Hospital, nestled on a Salt Lake City block between South Temple and First South from 1000 East to 1100 East.
I don’t know exactly how Patrick (Pat) Stack first got there.
His arrival in Utah
(Michael O'Brien) Screenshot of Holy Cross Hospital, where Patrick Stack and Freddie lived, from Salt Lake Herald Jan. 1, 1884.
Born in County Kerry, Ireland, in 1871, Stack arrived in America in 1894 in his early 20s. He started working at the Holy Cross Hospital a few years later.
My guess is that, like so many Irishmen in their 20s in the 19th century, Stack came to Utah looking for fame and fortune in the Park City mines. Instead, he likely got hurt or injured.
The Holy Cross Sisters probably cared for him at their hospital and then, in their spirit of caring for the whole person, offered him a job and a place to live. Stack accepted and stayed there for the next four decades.
The woman in charge of the hospital at the time, Holy Cross Sister Lidwina Butler, was born in Ireland’s County Carlow. She understood the Irish nature and how to help a lad down on his luck.
Stack more than earned his keep after Sister Lidwina’s act of compassion. Folks admired him for the delicious peaches he carefully cultivated in the Holy Cross orchard. His roses were so admired that Salt Lake City planted a huge municipal rose garden on the acres Stack tended and gave the Sisters a bouquet of roses as rent each year.
Stack supplied hospital staffers with boutonnieres and left freshly cut flowers in patient rooms. Newspaper reports indicate that everyone appreciated his kind, friendly, generous nature.
The archived papers also say he grew a large circle of friends, including nurses, doctors, patients, priests, nuns and fellow gardeners. They all were so fond of him that, for 20 years, the hospital celebrated his November birthday with a gala.
Despite all those connections, Stack’s best friend and constant companion at Holy Cross Hospital was a broken-down horse named Freddie.
The best horse
(Michael O'Brien) Screenshot from Salt Lake Telegram on April 22, 1936, of Patrick Stack and Freddie the horse.
Freddie got there the same way Stack likely did — through an illness. While working as an ice wagon horse for Salt Lake City’s parks commissioner, Freddie got pneumonia.
He recovered but was weak. Calling Freddie the best horse he’d ever had, the parks commissioner donated him to the hospital.
Freddie pulled the hospital lawn mower and linen cart. When Freddie got distracted, Stack got him back on track with a few firm but kind words spoken in Stack’s native Irish.
I love how the Salt-Lake-City-born-and-bred horse apparently understood Gaelic instinctively.
Freddie’s main duties, however, consisted of what one newspaper called a form of “retired pension.” Freddie spent many happy hours grazing contently in the hospital’s orchard or delighting schoolchildren.
Children loved the horse that papers described as “sad eyed” and “swaybacked and wheezy.” A little boy told the hospital that his father would pay “a million bucks” so the boy could take Freddie home with him.
When his daily chores were done, Freddie waited by a fence that separated the hospital grounds from a nearby school. After the bell rang, the children rushed over and lined up to ride Freddie.
Freddie stood patiently — or laid down — while the kids climbed aboard his concave back. Newspapers say the 25-year-old horse then walked the grounds with “methodical and dignified pacing” and “no one ever guided him and no one was ever bucked off.”
Tearful goodbyes
In April 1936, The Salt Lake Tribune, the Salt Lake Telegram and the Deseret News all reported that Freddie had died peacefully due to old age. Forlorn and tearful youngsters mourned at the schoolyard fence where they had met Freddie so many times before.
Stack, Freddie’s caretaker and best friend, was inconsolable, too.
In November 1937, Stack died at the Holy Cross Hospital where he had lived and worked for 41 years.
It was his 66th birthday, but there was no gala that day. Instead, newspapers reported the sad news from Holy Cross Hospital.
A few days later, esteemed community members joined the Holy Cross Sisters and hospital staffers for the funeral at the Cathedral of the Madeleine. Stack was laid to rest at Mount Calvary Catholic Cemetery.
Neither Pat Stack nor Freddie had much, but I suspect the Holy Cross Sisters saw a little seed of something in both lives. They cultivated and nurtured it. It’s what they do.
The Sisters probably understood the Irish language, too. Given Stack’s and Freddie’s story, I’d guess the Sisters’ favorite old Gaelic saying may have been this one: Is minic a rinne bromach gioblach capall.
It means, “Many a raggy colt made a powerful horse.”
(Utah State Historical Society) The old Holy Cross Hospital, where Patrick Stack and Freddie lived.
Note • The CommonSpirit health system chose to honor the legacy of the Sisters of the Holy Cross by naming their Utah hospitals after them. The current Holy Cross Hospitals in Utah are no longer affiliated with the Sisters. The Sisters’ only remaining sponsored social justice ministry is Holy Cross Ministries of Utah, a nonprofit organization that provides health, education and justice services to underserved communities.
(Michael O'Brien) Writer and attorney Michael Patrick O'Brien.
Michael Patrick O’Brien is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City who frequently represents The Salt Lake Tribune in legal matters. His book “Monastery Mornings: My Unusual Boyhood Among the Saints and Monks,” about growing up with the monks at an old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, was published by Paraclete Press and chosen by the League of Utah Writers as the best nonfiction book in 2022. He blogs at https://theboymonk.com.
