A health center in California that provides services to women and families was dedicated to and named for a woman who grew up in Watertown.
Marsha Moeller donated funds to build the Helen Caloggero Women’s and Family Center at the Providence St. Joseph Hospital in Orange, California, which opened in 2024. Moeller said her mother, who was one of 14 children in a family in Watertown, influenced her giving spirit.
“Each of her siblings had after-school jobs, and she would say, ‘I want a little portion of your paycheck, because Mom and Dad want a dining room set.’ So she saved up enough to buy my grandmother the dining room set she wanted all her life,” Moeller said, according to a piece on the Providence St. Joseph Hospital Foundation website.
Helen died from complications of tuberculosis when Moeller was 7. Moeller recalls visiting her mother in hospital after her first communion. Children could not visit people in hospital at that time, according to the piece, but the nurses helped Helen see her daughter in her communion dress by having Moeller go out on a roof that was visible from Helen’s hospital room window.
Moeller also has a lot of memories of her mother from the stories told to her by her aunts and uncles who still live in Watertown and the Boston area. Moeller grew up in Massachusetts and moved to Southern California in the late 1970s, according to the video on the Providence St. Joseph website.
Moeller and her husband both received treatment at Providence St. Joseph and she wanted to give back. When she decided to donate for the women’s health center, Moeller did not want it to be named after herself and instead chose to name it after her mother.
“When I look at her life, everything she went through, I know how pleased my mother would be to know that something like that: where women can go and feel safe and cared for,” Moller said in the video. “It’s just my way of saying to her, you were a good Mom.”
The Caloggero family has deep roots in Watertown. Helen’s parents, Antonio and Mary Caloggero, lived on Keith Street, and Antonio owned the Spring St. Grill (in what is now Marco Jewelers) for many years through the mid-1900s, said Watertown’s Linda Landesberg, who is Moeller’s cousin.
Two of their sons operated, John and Robert, Victory Spa on in Coolidge Square Mt. Auburn Street through the early 2000s. Grandson Richard Calleggero ran a barbershop on the same block for more than 25 years
The Helen Caloggero Women’s and Family Center is a four-story, 137,000-square-foot facility that will provide a wide array of services, including Providence Medical Foundation obstetrics and gynecology, a maternity wellness center to guide women through their pregnancy, maternal mental health services, pelvic health and rehab, according to the Providence St. Joseph Hospital Foundation website.