B2 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.TUESDAY, JULY 28 , 2020
FAMILY PHOTO
Jeanette B. Iten, who died of covid-19 in Rockville on April 14, is
pictured around 1950 with her future husband, Clemens A. Iten.VIRGINIABY LAURA VOZZELLAJeanette B. Iten — a New Jersey
native, Unitarian and member of
the American Civil Liberties Union
— wound up moving in 1962 to the
small Southern city of Staunton, in
Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. It
was an adjustment.
Iten cringed as her four children
went off to the Confederate-named
Stonewall Jackson Elementary
School and Robert E. Lee High
School. When one of her daughters
objected to the Bible classes taught
in public school, Iten backed her up.
“She wrote me a note and said I
was not going to be taking Bible, so
they sent me to the library and
made me do extra work,” the
daughter, Lois Bostrom of Rock-
ville, recalled recently. “And she
wrote them another letter and said,
‘No, Lois is going to the library and
she’s going to read whatever she
wants.’ ”
Iten eventually found her niche
in Staunton, where she spent the
next half a century raising her fam-
ily, leading a Girl Scout troop, vol-
unteering for a mental-health
awareness group and being a mem-
ber of the Unitarian Universalist
congregation in nearby Waynes-
boro. She made close friends who
offered support in her final years
there as she nursed her ailing hus-
band at home. Some came to visit
her at her retirement community
in Maryland, where she moved as a
widow in 2012 to be near Bostrom.
Iten, 88, died in Rockville on
April 14, a victim of covid-19.
Born in Newark, she was the
only child of Johannes Blanken, an
immigrant from the Netherlands,
and Elizabeth Bittman, a home-
maker. Her father was, in modern
parlance, a house flipper, renovat-
ing homes and then reselling or
renting them out. The family
moved a lot, mostly around the
Oranges in New Jersey.
“Pretty much if he had a house
that wouldn’t rent or sell, they
would move into it,” Bostrom said.
The family finally stayed put
after an aunt moved in two doors
down. That allowed Iten to grow up
with her cousin, Joan. The girls
were as close as sisters.
After high school, Iten attended
secretarial school and got a job
with United Airlines as a secretary.
She met her husband, Clemens A.
Iten, at a dance, and the Swiss
immigrant taught her to ski. They
married in 1953. His job as a me-
chanical engineer took them to
Staunton, where he worked at
American Safety Razor.
Their first three children were
born within 40 months of one an-
other, with the last arriving four
years after the third. In addition toBostrom, they are John Iten of
Pennington, N.J.; Diane Tucker of
Valatie, N.Y.; and Larry Iten of
Greensboro, N.C.
A former Girl Scout, Iten wanted
to get her daughters into the pro-
gram in Staunton but learned at
the organizational meeting that
there wasn’t a leader.
“She raised her hand,” Tucker
said, recalling how her mother
took the troop of about 30 girls
camping and taught them first aid.
Inspired by a relative’s mental ill-
ness, Iten also became a local lead-
er with a group focused on the
issue.
“She’d get things done for sure,”
Tucker said.
A talented seamstress, she made
clothes for the family and taught
her daughters to sew. She was also
a good cook, especially with des-
serts. She would occasionally yield
the kitchen to her husband, whose
signature dish — a concoction of
pasta, boiled potatoes, onions and
Swiss cheese — was affectionately
dubbed “Swiss mess.”
He died in 2011 after a series of
strokes. Iten cared for him at home,
determined to keep him out of a
nursing home. They were married
57 years.
Iten moved to a Rockville retire-
ment community the following
year, and it was a new beginning.
“She was finally at a point where
she didn’t have anybody to take
care of. She would take classes,”
Bostrom said, recalling how her
mother discovered she had a talent
for watercolors and pastels. “It was
like going to college for me.”
A debilitating stroke Iten suf-
fered in 2016 brought that to an
end, but she still enjoyed visits with
family members, including seven
grandchildren and three great-
grandchildren.
“We used to read the books she
read to us [as children], ‘Heidi’ and
‘Little Women,’ children’s versions,”
Bostrom said.
Bostrom regrets that she could
not do that as her mother lay dying
— she had been unable to visit her
mother’s nursing home for weeks
because of restrictions meant to
stem the spread of the virus.
“The home called one morning
saying she was running a fever and
they were sending her to the hospi-
tal. I asked if it was covid, and they
said, ‘Probably,’ ” Bostrom said.
“She was gone within 24 hours.”
The hospital was so busy, Tucker
said, that staff members didn’t
have time to put a phone up to her
ear so the family could say good-
bye.
“On her deathbed, I could have
at least read to her,” Bostrom said.
“In the end, nothing.”
[email protected]After move from N.J.
to Shenandoah Valley,
she found her niche
BY FREDRICK KUNKLEA physician who headed the in-
tensive care at Baltimore’s Mercy
Medical Center has died of the nov-
el coronavirus, a hospital spokes-
man said Monday.
Dr. Joseph J. Costa, who was
chief of the hospital’s Critical Care
Division, died about 4:45 a.m. Sat-
urday in the same ICU he super-
vised. He was attended by his part-
ner of 28 years and about 20 staff
members, who placed their hands
on him as he died. Costa was 56.
David R. Hart, Costa’s husband,
described the moment as painfully
surreal when Costa died in his arms
surrounded by the people he super-
vised and worked with.
“Can you imagine taking care of
your own son, so to speak, or your
brother, if you were a doctor, and
going through this? That’s kind of
what it’s like when you work at
Mercy or any hospital,” Hart, 57, said
Monday. “So that’s the hard part for
me to watch. He was extraordinary.”
Hart, who also came down with
covid-19, the
disease caused
by the virus,
about the same
time as his hus-
band, said he
had been in awe
of Costa’s brav-
ery during the
pandemic. As
the deadly virus spread, Costa con-
tinued to work on the front lines
despite having a rare underlying
autoimmune disorder. The disease
had already sickened another phy-
sician and several staff members in
the ICU before Costa fell ill in late
June, Hart said.
“I begged him not to go to work,”
Hart said.
But Costa, who felt it was impor-
tant to bear the same everyday bur-
dens as his staff — including holiday
or overnight shifts — also felt it was
important to shoulder the same
risks during the pandemic, Hart
said.
Hart said his husband’s death
also brought home the importanceof taking recommended precau-
tions to reduce the virus’s spread —
and makes him all the more upset
when he sees people flouting guide-
lines or refusing to wear masks.
“When you see people without
masks, you think, ‘Are you out of
your mind?’ ” Hart said “This dis-
ease will take you out in a heart-
beat.”
More than 4.2 million people
have been sickened with the coro-
navirus across the country, and the
disease has killed over 145,000.
Maryland, Virginia and the District
reported more than 2,700 new cases
and a dozen deaths on Monday.
The Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention, noting that its oc-
cupation data is limited, reports
that 113,730 health-care workers
have been sickened; 576 have died.
Hart, who operated a cafe in Bal-
timore until retiring a few years
ago, said he and Costa met nearly
three decades ago this summer
through a Baltimore City Paper per-
sonal ad. They immediately hit it
off.“That was it. We were never
apart after that,” Hart said. “There
was just something about him.”
Costa, who spoke fluent German
and Italian, loved to travel and
played the clarinet, piano and man-
dolin. Costa was also a Roman Cath-
olic but struggled with the fact that
the church was intolerant of his
homosexuality, his husband said.
But Mercy hospital was not, and its
acceptance and daily mission
seemed to be the truest expression
of a faith that lays emphasis on
sacrifice and concern for others,
Hart said.
At Costa’s advice, Hart had been
staying most of the time at their
farm in Shaftsbury, Vt., to reduce
his chances of contracting the dis-
ease. But when Hart came to visit in
late June, Costa started to become
ill. When the diagnosis was con-
firmed, Costa told Hart to leave
their Baltimore home at once and
return to sheltering in Vermont.
But as Hart drove north, he be-
came sicker and sicker. He sought
medical care but was told to self-quarantine because the symptoms
still appeared mild. At the farm,
Hart monitored his vital signs and
remained in close contact with his
doctor. But then the disease pro-
gressed so rapidly that he passed
out. Neighbors found him and
called an ambulance.
“I was in denial. I couldn’t believe
this was happening to me,” Hart
said. “You’re getting sicker, and your
whole world is getting smaller.”
Hart recovered. But the disease
raged through Costa with even
more devastating results, Hart said.
Eventually, Costa was put on a ven-
tilator and slipped into a coma.
Costa, who attended the Univer-
sity of Virginia as an undergraduate
and studied medicine at the Univer-
sity of Maryland, joined Mercy
Medical Center in 1997. He became
head of critical care in 2005 and
served a two-year stint as the medi-
cal staff’s president, hospital offi-
cials said. He also chaired the Medi-
cal Morals Committee and served
as a member of the Mercy Health
Services Board of Trustees Missionand Corporate Ethics Committee.
Costa was known for his warm
bedside manner, and the nurses
and other hospital personnel who
reported to him said he acted more
like an older brother than a boss,
hospital officials said. Plans are un-
derway for a memorial service, they
said.
“Joe was more than a trusted
colleague,” Sister Helen Amos, ex-
ecutive chair of the hospital’s
board of trustees, and David N.
Maine, the hospital’s president
and chief executive, said in a joint
statement to their staff. “He was
also a true friend to many. He
dedicated his life and career to
caring for the sickest patients.
And when the global pandemic
came down upon us, Joe selflessly
continued his work on the front
lines — deeply committed to serv-
ing our patients and our city dur-
ing this time of great need.”
[email protected]Magda Jean-Louis contributed to this
report.MARYLAND
Baltimore ICU chief dies of covid-19 after staying on despite rare disorder
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