The meditation garden at Bon Secours St. Francis Hospital is a quiet place, tucked beside the main building and the Cancer Center and shaded by oaks draped in Spanish moss. On most days, patients, families and the teammates who care for them wander through to find a moment of calm. The wind seems to carry their prayers.
For Clinical Manager of the Mobile Resource Pool Cathy Williams, a nurse who has dedicated three decades to Roper St. Francis Healthcare, the garden has long been a refuge. She wept there after hard days, comforted teammates through loss and, on rare breaks between shifts, sat in silence beneath the trees.
It is also, now, where she was married.
She and her fiancé, Jonathan, had been planning to marry at the courthouse, a pragmatic choice for two people with eight grown children between them. But one afternoon, as she looked out her office window toward the garden, she realized there was a more meaningful setting.
“This job is such an emotional one,” she said. “I’ve had so many of my life’s biggest moments here. My babies were born here. It just made sense.”
Her long career of care
Williams has spent her entire career inside this health system. Raised in Mount Pleasant, she started as a candy striper volunteer at Roper Hospital before joining the nursing staff on 4 West, a unit she calls “the Wild, Wild West.”
“It was the catch-all floor,” she recalled. “We cared for patients in restraints and isolation, even some of the first in our community diagnosed with HIV and AIDS when no one really understood it yet.”
Those early years taught her how to navigate challenges with compassion. Over time, she rose through the ranks, helping launch programs that still shape nursing at Roper St. Francis Healthcare. She helped establish a bedside vascular access team and co-created the Pipeline Program, which hires new-grad nurses before they are fully placed and gives them a chance to explore specialties across the system.
Now, she spends most mornings rounding before sunrise, visiting night shift nurses to check in and say hello. “I started on nights,” she said. “We never saw anyone back then. I want them to feel seen.”
Finding love in a pandemic
In 2020, when the world shut down, Williams was managing a COVID-19 unit, enduring long days, masked faces and uncertain times. That’s when she met Jonathan.
Their first date was at an outdoor restaurant on Shem Creek. The third was at church.
“It was easy,” she said. “No stress, no pretending. I could just be my absolute self.”
When Jonathan proposed five years later, they agreed to keep things simple.
Then she looked out that window.
She emailed Regional President of Bon Secours St. Francis Hospital and Mount Pleasant Hospital Matt Desmond and asked, “Do you mind if I borrow the oaks for ten minutes?”
A wedding among teammates
Jonathan met Williams at the hospital one day after work. She changed into a $24 white cotton dress and freshened up in her office. Her teammates made sure the moment matched her spirit: humble and full of love.
Director of Pastoral Care Amanda Jones performed the ceremony. Mandy Corbett fixed Williams’ hair. Hallie Thompson turned a bundle of Costco flowers into a bouquet and a boutonniere. Erin Kelley filmed the ceremony while the others peeked out from behind the trees. The landscapers were mowing nearby, but Williams didn’t mind.
“Seeing Jonathan there and hearing Amanda tell him, ‘You may now kiss the bride.’ That was everything,” she said.
Back inside, her teammates surprised them with cupcakes as well as birdseed and kazoos for a sendoff. A passing security guard congratulated them.
“It was perfect,” she said.
A place of healing
The meditation garden where she married is not a typical wedding venue. It’s a patch of peace on the hospital campus, bordered by walkways, labyrinths and benches, designed for prayer and reflection. Williams has long considered it sacred. You go there to pray, cry and release everything, she said.
For her, the ceremony marked more than a marriage. It was a moment embodying the convergence of her work, her faith and her life’s greatest joys.
“People ask how I’ve stayed here for 30 years,” she said. “There’s never been a reason to leave. I love my job. I love the people I work with. And I love what this place means to our community.”
