Bridgette Cook Startz: A Heart for Service
January 29, 2024
From a cancer research center to historical reenactments, Bridgette Cook Startz ’77 has always found ways to serve her community, and this commitment started in high school.
Reynolds J. Fischbach, DDS, PA, ’48 had a policy of only hiring Cretin and Derham Hall students to work at his Highland Park dental office. He wanted to support their education and teach them about potential dental and hygiene careers. One of those students was Bridgette Cook Startz ’77.
She was interested in a medical environment so she started out as a janitor, but the role quickly evolved into so much more than a high school job. Startz worked there for ten years — spanning her high school and college years at St. Mary’s Junior College (Minneapolis) as well as working part-time even while she had her first full-time job at the VA Medical Center in Minneapolis.
Fischbach passed away this spring, and his funeral was in the midst of a busy week for Startz. But there was no question whether she’d attend; she drove eight hours round trip from her home in Fargo to be there.
Those are the kinds of relationships so many Cretin, Derham Hall, and Cretin-Derham Hall grads talk about, and it’s why Startz has prioritized giving back to the school.
“I had a great four years,” she said. “I met a lot of lifelong friends. I learned a lot of life lessons from the teachers, and I received an excellent, faith-based education. You need to give back to a place that has given you so much.” Startz, and her husband Robert, have gifted CDH with two life insurance policies with their goal to support CDH long into the future.
In many ways, Startz has built her life around giving back. She never became a nurse and instead studied medical records. After a few years at the Minneapolis VA, she got an incredible opportunity at the University of Southern California, Norris Cancer Research Institute in Los Angeles, California. The Norris, as it was known, was opening its door as one of the 21 original Comprehensive Cancer Research Centers in the nation. They needed someone to manage the cancer registry, and Startz got the job.
“I collected mandated cancer data on cancer patients, and I did it all manually,” Startz said. “We didn’t have computers — we used little recipe cards and filed them in little boxes by anatomic cancer sites. While I was there, this facility was going to be computerized and I was able to develop and advise the programmers to write the program to include required American College of Surgeons data elements. Being in on the ground floor of an operation like that — it was incredible.”
Startz spent nine years in California before returning to the Twin Cities to complete her Bachelor’s degree in Health Data Management at St. Scholastica. She continued working in cancer research while living with her parents. Her mother, heartbreakingly, was diagnosed with stage IV small cell lung cancer in 1992 and died a month later at the age of 57.
“Cancer was my world,” Startz said. “I knew when I heard the diagnosis, that the prognosis was ominous. But I wasn’t going to tell her that. I encouraged her to fight, of course, but it was too late.”
Just three months earlier, Startz had married Robert F. Startz, MD, a pathologist she met during a research project at the Norris Cancer Center. The loss of her mother had shaken her faith, but he helped her find her way back.
“I was very angry with God,” she remembers. “She never was blessed with time to develop a relationship with my husband, nor did she ever meet my sons. Sunday would come around and I didn’t want to go to church, but my husband encouraged me. Having faith in something higher is so important and he helped me return to that.”
After their wedding, the couple moved to Robert’s hometown, Oxbow, ND.
A few years later, she had twin boys, now 27, and decided to stay home to raise them. When her boys reached middle school, she began volunteering with the lunch program. Volunteering turned into a job, and she has stayed long past their graduation. “I just love those kids. You get to know them and help them. It’s just a great gig.”
Over the years, Startz has found seemingly endless ways to serve her local community. She was deeply committed to supporting her sons’ school activities and sports teams. She also returned to her healthcare roots, volunteering for 12 years as an EMT/FirstResponder in rural Oxbow/Hickson, ND.
More recently, she spent seven years as part of the Hospital Befriender program at Essentia Hospital in Fargo, providing communion to Catholic patients, including priests and nuns. “I saw maybe 20 patients on a visit. You’d take the time to get to know them, pray with them, distribute Eucharist and simply see if they needed anything else. For me, it was very rewarding and very emotionally gratifying.”
These days, she volunteers at Bonanzaville, a recreated rural North Dakota town in the early twentieth century, dressing in period clothing and serving as a docent in the historic hotel/saloon and printing press.
“Giving back, I guess I’ll credit my mother for that one. She was a life-long member of the Altar and Rosary Society, and was always volunteering at the church or at our schools. She taught me that you can’t put that stuff off. It’s like investing in the market. The best time to start is today.”
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