Callista Roy, CSJ, was born on October 14, 1939 (the feast day of St. Callistus) in Los Angeles, California, as Lorraine Callista Roy, to Fabien W. and Pirth (Hemenway) Roy. She was the second child and first daughter of fourteen, with seven brothers and six sisters. Her father was a punch-press operator, and her mother was a Licensed Vocational Nurse. At age fourteen, she began working at a large general hospital, first as a pantry girl, then as a maid, and finally as a nurse’s aid. After graduating from Bishop Conaty Memorial High School in Los Angeles in 1955, Roy entered a period of vocational discernment, and joined the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Carondelet in 1958, making first vows on March 19, 1960. She earned a bachelor of science in nursing from Mount St. Mary’s College, Los Angeles, in 1963, a master’s degree in nursing from UCLA in 1966, and master’s and doctoral degrees in sociology from UCLA in 1973 and 1977, respectively. She served as a postdoctoral fellow in neuroscience nursing at the University of California, San Francisco, under the supervision of Connie Robinson and with the support of a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation program grant.
The majority of Roy’s career was spent as Professor and Nursing Theorist at Boston College’s Connell School of Nursing, where she was hired in 1987 as part of the establishment of the doctoral program. She also held faculty positions at Mount St. Mary’s College, Los Angeles; St. Mary’s College, Kurume, Japan; and the University of Portland, Oregon. She is best known for developing the Roy Adaptation Model, first published in 1970 with the encouragement of Dorothy E. Johnson, a conceptual model of nursing that positions people (and communities) as systems of biological, psychological, social, and spiritual needs, and nursing as an adaptive process of guiding them to optimal health by balancing those needs. In 1991, Roy founded the Boston Based Adaptation Research in Nursing Society (BBARNS), which was later renamed the Roy Adaptation Association (RAA). Her other research areas included cognitive adaptation and nursing interventions with patients who sustained head injuries, and adaptation of patients with chronic neurologic conditions, both somewhat inspired by her own experiences with an acoustic neuroma. For this and other work, Roy received numerous awards and honors, including a Senior Fulbright Scholarship to Australia, the Boston College Distinguished Teaching Award, the National League for Nursing Martha Rogers Award, designation as a Living Legend by both the an American Academy of Nursing and the Massachusetts Association of Registered Nurses, induction into the Sigma Theta Tau Nurse Researcher Hall of Fame, and five honorary doctorates.
Roy retired from Boston College in 2017 and returned to California to live with her religious community.
