She overcame cancer and Katrina, but Charlotte nurse succumbs to COVID-19
READ MORE
Remembering those lost to COVID-19
The story of a life can’t be told with numbers. As more people die from complications of COVID-19, The News & Observer wants to tell their stories. Those lost were friends and neighbors, grandmothers and uncles, people now missing from communities and families. If you’ve lost a loved one or friend in North Carolina to the coronavirus, please tell us more about them. Email jdjackson@newsobserver.com or call 919-829-4707 and leave a message. Here are their stories.
Expand All
When the coronavirus outbreak first began to spike in March, Rose Liberto’s family urged her to take a break from her job as a critical care nurse at Atrium’s Cabarrus County hospital.
They knew her immune system had been compromised years ago by intensive chemo treatments.
“We were actually begging her to quit work or retire but she wanted to (go back),” her daughter Jennifer Liberto, told the Observer Friday. “She felt so morally obligated. She kind of wanted to see all this through.”
Rose Liberto, 64, died Thursday at Atrium Health Cabarrus, the hospital where she’d worked for over a decade.
Liberto, who lived in Charlotte, is the area’s first reported health care worker to die from the virus that as of Friday had killed 527 people in North Carolina and 60 in Mecklenburg County.
It was on April 15 that Liberto had fallen sick with a fever, headache and difficulty breathing. She told her family it was allergies. They suspected worse.
“No one wanted to say it because we were all afraid of what it would mean,” said Jennifer Liberto.
Her mother went to the hospital the next day where she tested positive for COVID-19.
It’s unclear where she got the disease. Rose Liberto worked on a floor that didn’t normally treat COVID patients. Even so, Jennifer Liberto said the family believes their mother somehow acquired the disease at work. In a statement, Atrium said it has had no “workplace-related fatalities related to COVID-19 among our teammates.”
For a few days it appeared Rose Liberto was going to be able to fight the virus. She had fought tough battles before.
When she was in her early 40s, she was diagnosed with Hodgkins lymphoma, a cancer of the lymphatic system. She underwent rounds of chemotherapy that left her with lingering lung problems.
A mother of four, Liberto had worked in a high school development office. But after her bout with cancer she decided to become a nurse as a way to give back. She went to nursing school in her hometown of New Orleans.
Then in 2005 Hurricane Katrina hit.
Liberto, who was divorced, lost the house she shared with her daughter Shannon when floodwaters reached the second floor. Two years later, she, Shannon and her daughter’s two boys moved to Charlotte hoping for a fresh start. Not long after they arrived, Liberto found a job at the Concord hospital.
She always retained her love of Cajun cooking, regularly whipping up meals of jambalaya and red beans and rice in the house she and her daughter’s family shared in northeast Charlotte.
Her daughters describe her as feisty, even stubborn.
Liberto spent much of her time at the hospital training other nurses. One day last month, a nurse trainee was trying to draw her blood and had trouble finding a vein. “They kept missing and she said, ‘Give me that,’” and did it herself, Jennifer Liberto recalled. “She was . . . really feisty.”
On April 22, Rose Liberto went on a ventilator. She never came off. When she died, her daughter Katy Janssen was at her side holding her hand, clad in full protective gear.
Jennifer Liberto is the deputy economics editor at the Washington Post. She has edited many stories about the economic toll caused by the pandemic.
“I see the economic devastation of this and I understand this push to reopen the economy,” she said. “On the other hand it has got to be the worst death ever. It was so devastating not to be there by her side.”
In a statement, Atrium called Liberto “a nurse whose work life was defined by the work she did with her patients — improving health, elevating hope and advancing healing — for all.”
“We extend our deepest condolences, our thoughts and our prayers to Rose’s family and friends during this difficult time,” the statement said. “Our teammates share in their grief for a co-worker they deeply cared about.”
Shannon Liberto, who also has been diagnosed with COVID-19, calls her mom her “best friend.”
“My hope,” she said, “is that one day I can be the parent to my kids that she was to me.”
This story was originally published May 8, 2020 at 5:13 PM with the headline "She overcame cancer and Katrina, but Charlotte nurse succumbs to COVID-19."
