Sister Sheila was born to John and Estelle (nee Diamond) Salmon in Cleveland, Ohio the day after Christmas in 1935. She was baptized at St. Clement Church, Lakewood and attended grade school at St. Christopher in Rocky River.
An only child, she and her cousins were close enough to be siblings. She is survived by her six cousins, Jack Hayes and his wife, Carol, of Canton, Georgia and Ft. Myers, Florida; Bob Salmon and his wife, Mary Ann, of Chevy Chase, Maryland; Mariellen Simon and her husband, Bob, of Naples, Florida and Vermilion, Ohio; Sally Staneff and her husband, Alex, of Vermilion, Ohio; John Terwoord and his wife, Barbara, of Berea, Ohio; and Bill Terwoord of Cleveland, Ohio.
She was influenced by her good friend and grade school classmate Shirley (Madden) Fronizer to attend Villa Maria High School, a boarding school at Villa Maria, Pennsylvania. There she met more of the HM Sisters who had taught her at St. Christopher.
After graduating in 1953 she decided to enter the convent and on October 7, 1954 she became a postulant at Villa Maria. She was received into the novitiate and was given her religious name, Sister Maureen, in July of 1955. She professed first vows in 1957 and made her final vows July 17, 1962.
Sister Sheila completed her BSN in 1960, graduating magna cum laude from St. Louis University School of Nursing. Her three years as a head nurse and supervisor of medical/surgical nursing at St. Elizabeth Hospital in Youngstown were stepping stones to her selection as a missionary to Latin America. After learning Spanish in Cuernavaca, Mexico, Sister Sheila and two other HM Sisters arrived in Temuco, Chile. In the following six years she received a BSN at the University of Chile, was a supervisor at the regional hospital in Temuco, taught nursing students, and set up clinics on the Mapuche Indian reservations near Temuco. She returned to the States in 1969.
The next chapter in her life began with the completion of her MSN in Public Health Nursing at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. Sister Sheila served in public health nursing as district director with the Visiting Nurse Association of Cleveland then worked directly with her clients at the MetroHealth Clement Center for Family Care and later for the Hospice of the Western Reserve as a member of the AIDS team.
Her missionary spirit from Temuco 20 years later drew her to become co-director of the Maryknoll Center for Cross-Cultural Training in Maryknoll, New York. Additional experiences as a visiting nurse in the South Bronx and serving the special needs of children with AIDS at a Nairobi, Kenya orphanage enabled her to share her love of God’s children and to care for them as a nurse.
For the past nine years she volunteered at Our Lady of Guadalupe Mission, Fellesmere, Florida and was active at St. Sebastian Parish, Sebastian, Florida where a special memorial Mass will be celebrated for her Sunday, June 20 at 2 pm. She also was a volunteer with the VNA Hospice of Indian River County, Vero Beach, and was recently appointed to the board of directors.
Where she served was of less significance than how she served. Sister Sheila always gave witness to the value that she placed on the life of the individual person. Her HM sisters experienced that first hand from 1981-89 when she was on the leadership team of the congregation with responsibilities as director of ministry and personnel.
Because of her strong commitment to justice and peace, in 2007 she was sentenced to 100 days in a Florida federal penitentiary, a misdemeanor sentence for trespassing on federal property while protesting at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation [WHINSEC] formerly known as the US Army School of the Americas [SOA] at Ft. Benning, Georgia. When standing before the judge in Columbus, Georgia she stated “I did it because our community has made a commitment to nonviolence and I thought it was time for me to take a public stance for justice.”
Knowing that she was terminally ill, Sister Sheila returned to Villa Maria Community Center where she received the loving attentions of hospice care and was surrounded by her Humility of Mary sisters. She entered eternal life May 16.
Rest in peace, Sister Sheila.
Contributions in memory of Sister Sheila Salmon may be forwarded to the Sisters of the Humility of Mary, Development Office, PO Box 534, Villa Maria PA 16155.
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