Sheila Marie Tobbe interview, 09 August 2016

Abstract

Sister Sheila Marie Tobbe is an Ursuline Sister and served as a member of the Cleveland Latin American Mission team during the 1990s. In this interview, she shares her experiences in El Salvador, working and living with the Salvadoran people during the civil war and the nature of the work performed there. She discusses an earlier visit to El Salvador during Christmas 1979 and New Year's 1980 when she stayed with Sister Dorothy Kazel and the impact that trip had on her desire to serve as part of the mission team there. Sheila also details the founding of the InterReligious Task Force and the issues of gang violence and drugs in El Salvador in 2016. The interview culminates with her discussing the legacy of martyrdom, not only of the four churchwomen murdered in 1980, but also of every catechist who was killed during the Salvadoran Civil War.

Interviewee

Tobbe, Sheila Marie (interviewee)

Interviewer

Randt, Naomi A. (interviewer)

Project

Protest Voices

Date

8-9-2016

Document Type

Oral History

Duration

71 minutes

Recommended Citation

"Sheila Marie Tobbe interview, 09 August 2016" (2016). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 750011.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/774

Related Resources

Protest Voices @ Cleveland Voices

Transcript

Naomi A. Randt [00:00:01] My name is [Naomi A. Randt]. It is the 9th of August 2016. I am with Sister Sheila Marie Tobbe at the Ursuline Institute of Learning. Would you please state your name for the record?

Sister Sheila Marie Tobbe [00:00:12] Sheila Marie Tobias.

Naomi A. Randt [00:00:15] Could you spell your last name?

Sister Sheila Marie Tobbe [00:00:17] T-O-B-B-E.

Naomi A. Randt [00:00:20] Thank you. And we’ll start with some background info. When and where were you born?

Sister Sheila Marie Tobbe [00:00:25] I was born in Cleveland Heights. I was actually born at St. Ann’s Hospital in 1944. December… 1944.

Naomi A. Randt [00:00:32] Did you grow up in Cleveland Heights?

Sister Sheila Marie Tobbe [00:00:34] I grew up in Cleveland Heights, correct.

Naomi A. Randt [00:00:37] Did you have any siblings?

Sister Sheila Marie Tobbe [00:00:39] Five. Yeah. I have four older and one younger. The first two were boys, and the rest of us are all girls.

Naomi A. Randt [00:00:50] What was it like growing up in Cleveland Heights?

Sister Sheila Marie Tobbe [00:00:53] It was very comfortable. We were very close to the church. My mother taught at the school and my father was the Boy Scout leader. People from the church came over to our house all the time. As one of the younger kids, I sort of saw this activity going on, and it was comfortable.

Naomi A. Randt [00:01:18] What did your mother teach?

Sister Sheila Marie Tobbe [00:01:20] She taught kindergarten, first grade, and then eventually went up to fifth grade. And right at the school where I was attending, which was right across the street from us. So, St. Ann’s? Yeah.

Naomi A. Randt [00:01:38] When did you decide to become a sister?

Sister Sheila Marie Tobbe [00:01:42] Right after I graduated from high school. The Ursuline Sisters taught at St. Ann’s and at Beaumont, where I went to high school. And so I had gotten to know them quite well. When I was growing up, my mother drove, and she had access to the car. My father took the bus to work, so the sisters did not have a car, so my mother drove them everywhere. So from the time before I even started school, I rode around in the car with the nuns, and so I knew them. And we would go to the grocery store, so I’d have to help unload the groceries into their kitchen. And I knew the convent as well as I knew my own house, which was further from the church than our house. So I grew up, you know, very much surrounded by the congregation. So when I graduated from high school a long time ago, 1963. In those days, you know, some of my classmates were getting married. I mean, women were moving on to the next phase of their life. So I entered the Ursulines. I said I moved from St. Ann’s Church, which is right near Fairmount, up to Beaumont, which is on Fairmount. Out here on Fairmount. I never got out off Fairmont Boulevard for 30, well, 43 years.

Naomi A. Randt [00:03:03] What did your parents think about you entering the convent?

Sister Sheila Marie Tobbe [00:03:08] My mother was enthusiastic. She had a very close relationship with the sisters. Of course, my father was reluctant. He wanted me to go to a- Not that he didn’t. He was very religious, didn’t want me to enter, but he did think I should do a couple years of college first. And so he questioned me about it, but then he said, okay. He had a brother who was a Christian brother in Detroit, so he was very familiar with religious life, too. He was fine, and they were supportive through all of my years of Novitiate and Juniorate and so forth.

Naomi A. Randt [00:03:46] What was that experience like for you at Novitiate?

Sister Sheila Marie Tobbe [00:03:50] Challenging. Challenging. Because I had grown up in a family that was older and very active. To be that enclosed was difficult for me. And it was right after the Vatican Council. Things were just changing in religious life, and I would like to have seen the changes happen faster. So I was on the leading edge of pushing for change and had my challenges in the process. [laughs]

Naomi A. Randt [00:04:23] What were some of those changes that you were pushing for?

Sister Sheila Marie Tobbe [00:04:26] To be less enclosed, less enclosed, less conformist, if you will, to the old church, less emphasis on high control. You know, definitely I was a child of Vatican II. [laughs]

Naomi A. Randt [00:04:51] Did that have an influence on your want to do mission work?

Sister Sheila Marie Tobbe [00:04:56] Oh, of course. Of course. In fact, it was probably the fact that in 1968, the mission started in ’64, so it was already in the congregation and, you know, we were receiving information about it because religious women were being asked to serve on the team. And then in 1968, when the congregation said, you know, yes, we want to serve, I was still finishing up my Novitiate and Juniorate, my formation years, and I immediately volunteered and, of course, was turned down. So it was from 1968 on, it really influenced the direction of what I thought I wanted to do as a religious.

Naomi A. Randt [00:05:46] Why were you turned down?

Sister Sheila Marie Tobbe [00:05:47] I was too young and too inexperienced. [laughs] And at that point they were saying that we all had to have a permanent teacher certificate before we went so that our teacher certificate wouldn’t expire in the times that we were in missionary service. So, you know, there were all these hoops I had to jump through first, but eventually I got there.

Naomi A. Randt [00:06:13] What was your teacher certificate in?

Sister Sheila Marie Tobbe [00:06:15] In my primary area was math, and my secondary area was physical science. And, of course, I also taught religion.

Naomi A. Randt [00:06:27] So what drew you to those subjects?

Sister Sheila Marie Tobbe [00:06:33] Well, I always enjoyed math and science, so I was happy, but I didn’t have a choice. [laughs] I was told. My choice would have been kindergarten, first grade, like my mother. But the superiors said, you will, and so you did. And I’m grateful, actually, because I went to Ursuline College. My classmates went to St. John’s, who were going to teach in elementary school, but I went to Ursuline College at the time, the college was changing radically, too, and I appreciated- There was a particular sister who was very involved with, in social studies, actually was her area, sociology. She had her doctorate in sociology, did a tremendous amount of work with NDEA grants in inner-city education and things like that. And I took a course from her just to fulfill my course requirements. So she got to know me, and she decided that she needed a secretary, and she could pay me and pay the congregation to be her secretary. So while my field was math and science, I was her secretary. So I was very engaged because she didn’t drive. So I had to drive her to pick people up for all of the different meetings she was going to. And it was a- It was that opening up that I had been looking for in the Novitiate that I didn’t find. And had I not gone to Ursuline, I don’t think I would have found it either. But Ursuline was a great opening up for me to the world that I was drawn to.

Naomi A. Randt [00:08:15] What was the name of that professor?

Sister Sheila Marie Tobbe [00:08:17] Do you remember Sister Miriam? Miriam Lynch. Yeah, she was a real change agent in Cleveland.

Naomi A. Randt [00:08:28] Did she get any sort of pushback for the changes that she was trying to make?

Sister Sheila Marie Tobbe [00:08:35] She, of course, all religious women at that time were in such a state of change that the pushback came from various places. Sometimes it came from within the congregation, sometimes it came from the church community. We were overstepping our bounds, things like that. But she managed it very well. Her spirit stayed strong, and she- There were plenty of other sisters with her, you know, at the college that had been, had their doctorates, were very engaged in a lot of things in the Cleveland area, some younger ones that were very involved. And so she had a circle, a tremendous circle of support at the college, and so did we, the younger sisters, because we all ate together over here in the dining room [laughs], and we all lived together in this house. So there was a lot of foment going on through the college and the changes that were happening in the college as a women’s college, the awareness of being a women’s college, but women in the world and religious in the world, all of that, the nun in the world, the church in the world, was all very much a part of what was going on at the college particularly, but in religious life, too. So we all had our experiences of being challenged. But.

Naomi A. Randt [00:10:20] Did you end up going to El Salvador right after you graduated college?

Sister Sheila Marie Tobbe [00:10:24] No, I went to Beaumont to teach. I actually replaced one of the sisters who went to El Salvador at Beaumont and that meant she came back every year and spent- The arrangements with the mission team are, you have a month off every year back in Cleveland, partly doing support work for the mission and partly time to visit with your family and congregation and make retreat and things like that. So she would live with us when she was home on that month. And, of course, I would talk to her incessantly every moment that I could get to find out what it was like to be on the mission.

Naomi A. Randt [00:11:03] What were some of those stories that she told you?

Sister Sheila Marie Tobbe [00:11:06] Oh, she showed a lot of pictures and talked a lot about how the people, the poverty and their lack of education. And, you know, so the focus of the mission team at the beginning was strongly around education, not only catechesis, but also healthcare, basic reading and writing, agriculture. They worked in a variety of areas and had a training center in El Salvador. So she talked about working in the training center and what it was like and the people, stories of the sadness of some of the lives of the people in terms of their living with such poverty, such extreme poverty, and yet the joyfulness, too.

Naomi A. Randt [00:11:55] How did you feel about when you heard those stories?

Sister Sheila Marie Tobbe [00:11:59] Still very attracted to that type of mission activity work. Mission ministry, actually, is what we call it, mission ministry.

Naomi A. Randt [00:12:12] What was the name of the sister who that you would talk to that would come home?

Sister Sheila Marie Tobbe [00:12:17] You know, I can’t remember her religious name. It’s Janet Kearns. She left the community and got married, and I don’t even remember her married name. She lives out of town.

Naomi A. Randt [00:12:33] Can you spell her last name?

Sister Sheila Marie Tobbe [00:12:34] K-E-A-R-N-S. Martha or Khaled [phonetic] in the Archives will have all of her information.

Naomi A. Randt [00:12:47] When did you end up going to El Salvador?

Sister Sheila Marie Tobbe [00:12:50] Not until 1990. My first trip was in 1979, and it was a discernment trip. By that time, I had completed all the requirements. I had my permanent teacher certificate. Dorothy came home that summer, 1979, and she, too, was from Beaumont. So she stayed at Beaumont when she came back and at the convent there. And so we were in dialogue quite a bit. And two people had just been chosen because, of course, things were getting very unsettled in El Salvador. So they just chose two people who spoke Spanish fairly well to go. And so she was still encouraging me, and she said, well, it’s only five years. You know, in five more years, we’ll need some more people. You know, you’re freer now because you’re not studying to get your master’s degree and all that, and so you could start learning Spanish. And so why don’t you come down and visit me? Martha had come home. And she said, you know, I’ll be the only Ursuline in El Salvador at Christmastime. Why don’t you come and visit me at Christmastime? So I said, well, that sounds like it would be a good thing, because I am getting older, and I probably do have to do some discernment here whether this really is a real call that I could manage. So I got myself- Got the permission to go and started to get arranged to go. And at that point, there were tourism groups going, and they were trying to develop the sense of tourism in the country. And so I got on a charter plane. I was only gonna ride back and forth with them on the plane, but I already had the ticket and everything. And the coup happened in October of ’79, so they canceled the whole trip, and, of course, everything was on hold, so I didn’t think I was going to go. And then Dorothy to the rescue, she talked to our superior on the phone and said it was really a very nonviolent coup. It looks like things could calm down here. There’s no reason that she can’t come. So. But then, trying to get a ticket at the last minute, the only ticket I could get was Christmas Eve. So I arrived late in the afternoon on Christmas Eve. Dorothy was very engaged with pastoral activities, so she couldn’t come to pick me up, so she had to send Jean, and Jean’s mother and dad were there visiting to come and pick me up. Fortunately, they were very North American-looking and very blonde, so it was not hard to figure out who they were. But my luggage didn’t come. It was just, by the time I landed, I was- Why did I think this was a good idea for Christmas? [laughs] Then we went to Zaragoza, where I eventually served, and then we went on to- And we had supper there, and then we went on to- No, we had a 9:00 mass there, and then we went on to the port of La Libertad for a midnight mass, and that’s where I met Dorothy, and we met in the streets, in the market. That was at the end of the day they just threw all the refuse out into the streets, and the pigs would come and eat it up. So I’m running to meet her, and I slide garbage and fall down [laughs], and I’m a mess, and I have to go to mass. And then there’s- Between the firecrackers and the guys running around with machine guns, the military, I thought, this is not the idyllic village picture I had at all. [laughs] So from the moment I arrived, practically, it was culture shock. Yeah. When we landed, it was still the old airport, and you had to go down onto the tarmac, and it was completely, the whole plane was surrounded with guys in blue jeans and t-shirts and submachine guns. And I thought they said this was safe. So when I finally got a chance to ask Dorothy about it, she said, oh, that’s just because all the wealthy people are coming back into the country. Those are their bodyguards. She said, that’s not the military. [laughs] I said, oh, wow. Glad to know we had all those bodyguards. So it was those two weeks where that kind of experience continuously being, you know, just overwhelmed at the level of militarization in that country. And we went into Guatemala, too. And it was a realization of, part of my discernment was going to be, can you live with this? So, yeah. At first, you know, and the next day, Christmas, we drove all the way across the country to Chirilagua for Christmas dinner and then drove back late into the night. Now, in my time there during the war, we would never have been out at night like that. So it was very disconcerting. And as we drove and I saw the countryside and saw the intensity of the poverty, it was like, this is like a National Geographic special, you know [laughs], I can’t believe this is human beings living this way. And, you know, it’s like everybody’s camping out. There’s really, the housing is so inadequate. And so it was all of that kind of culture shock for two weeks. And then we went up into Guatemala, and we stopped quickly in Guatemala City, which is a pretty good-sized city. And then we went up into the mountains where June knew some priest, and we didn’t get there till late at night either. So her parents were very, very tired. We put them to bed, and we came back in to just have a drink with this priest. And he said, well, I think you better leave fairly early in the morning because the guerrillas left today because the military is on its way into this area. We don’t know what’s gonna happen. I mean, I didn’t sleep a wink that night. Get me out of here. [laughs] Then we get back into the- We stopped in Panajachel, and we spent a day there, and it’s a tourist place. Beautiful, lovely. But I wasn’t feeling beautiful and lovely. And we heard there that the border was closed and that we weren’t gonna be able to get back into Guatemala, I mean, back into El Salvador from Guatemala. So Dorothy and Jean and I were sharing a room and her parents were in another room. So the three of us were reconnoitering and they said, well, we’re going to go up to a bar and find out if we can get some accurate information. But the best place we’ll get information is tomorrow. We’ll go back into Guatemala City, and we’ll go to the Maryknoll house, and they’ll know. So we’ll send you with Jean’s parents to the hotel to get lunch and tell them we have to buy something at the Maryknoll shop and go over to the Maryknoll house and find out. So when they came back, I’m sitting at the table looking at them, and they started nodding. So I thought, well, the border must be open, because her parents were supposed to leave from El Salvador the next day. So it took us forever to get across the border because there was some kind of political something going on between the two countries. But we finally got back fairly late in the evening and got them packed up and got them to the airport the next day. Then I had a whole week with Dorothy, just really engaging in the ministry stuff that she was doing, and that was transformative, very transformative. We went to a mass with Archbishop Romero on the way out. It was so crowded, we had to get there two hours early. And I didn’t speak much Spanish, you know, a few words at that point, so she was, like, trying to translate. We got a seat, thank goodness, and then at the end, everybody was, like, standing on the benches, cheering as he walked out. And we got to the front entrance, and she introduced me to him, but couldn’t have much conversation since I didn’t speak Spanish. So we went down the steps, and she turned around and looked at him, and she said, that man is gonna get killed someday, and no one’s going to know whether it’s the right or the left that did it, because he speaks against violence on all sides. And she said, he was preaching today to the basic Christian communities, don’t let yourself be used for political causes. That’s not your reason for being in existence. So she said, he’s vulnerable on both sides, and his life is being threatened all the time. She knew him well, and so three months later, he was assassinated. That, you know, and then a year later, so was she. So my life changed dramatically through all of that. The last day I was there, we were gonna go to the beach with the team and have a picnic at the beach. And Dorothy had made all the arrangements with everybody for their day off to go there and have a picnic with me on the beach. And the night before, she got a phone call from a gentleman who was he kind of, like, was one of the coordinators of a village. And he said there was a very sick man that needed to go to the hospital. And, you know, could Dorothy come with the vehicle the next day to this village to take him to the hospital? And she said, okay. So she said to me, you go with the team to the picnic, and I’ll go take care of this first. And I said, no, I want to come with you. That’s what I came here for. So we picked up the guy, and that called, and he was directing us into this village. And we kept getting further and further in the vehicle that they were eventually killed in up the side of the mountain. And the road was, like, disappearing. And Dorothy kept saying, are you sure we can drive here? And he’s saying, yes, and I don’t think so. We finally get to the house, and sure enough, the vehicle gets stuck in a big rut. So all the men, they were- It was just a couple little houses in this. The village was so small, you could count the number of houses and just very small houses. And they were probably about- Looked like maybe ten people living in this house. And they had one bed that was just a wooden frame with rope across it. So we went into the house, just the women and me, because the men were outside trying to figure out what to do about the vehicle, and not speaking Spanish I was just sort of observing everything. The man was very, very sick. He was delirious. He had a very high fever. And so the women picked him up and carried him. And by that point, they had gotten the vehicle out of the rut, and I got into the vehicle, and they put the man in my lap and in the backseat. And then Dorothy and the gentleman that we picked up were in the front seat, and he was speaking to her in Spanish very fast. I couldn’t understand any of it. Finally, she turned around, and she said to me, well, here’s the story. That man fell by the side of the road sick last night, and they took him into their house and took care of him all night, gave him their one bed, and made sure that this guy got to me by phone so that they could get him to the hospital today, because he is, you can see he’s very sick. And I thought, I’ve heard this story before in the gospels. The good Samaritan, I’ve never seen it lived out like this before. [laughs] It was so transformative. And a couple days the next day, when I was headed back into Cleveland, it was the end of Christmas vacation. And the Miami airport was jam-packed with people and all. With their tennis racquets and all their gear from their Christmas vacations. And the schedules had gotten all messed up. It was so crowded, you had to sit on the floor. So I’m sitting on the floor watching all this crying, saying, I don’t want to go back to this. I don’t want to go back to this. So that’s during the week. I kept saying, I don’t know if I can do this. But by the end, I knew something had to come through for me around all of this. So it was very transformative being there with Dorothy. And during the time we were there, they got word from BBC. In fact, it was the day that we went to the mass with Romero that evening, that people, some of the generals were, the nonviolent generals, were resigning from the coup, from the junta, because they couldn’t deal with the level of violence, and they could see that war was coming. And they already had worked with the Maryknolls and were planning to go to Nicaragua to find out how to run refugee camps. And particularly, we’re talking about the children and the women who were most affected during war. So the beginnings of what we now know as COAR, the children’s village, were happening right while I was there. January of- Yeah, it was January 2000 by then. I went down in December of ’79. So. So that story, I mean, that trip was really the transformative thing in my life.

Naomi A. Randt [00:26:52] Is COAR an acronym?

Sister Sheila Marie Tobbe [00:26:54] Yes. It stands for- It’s capital C, capital O, capital A, capital R, and it stands for the Comunidad of Oscar Arnolfo Romero. So it’s really named after Romero, and it’s still in existence. I’m still on the board of it and was just there with some seminarians in June.

Naomi A. Randt [00:27:18] And that’s an all-children’s home, like an orphanage-type place?

Sister Sheila Marie Tobbe [00:27:22] It started as an orphanage. It started because very shortly after I left and they went to Nicaragua, they were contacted by Archbishop Romero, who asked them to go into the refugee camps. We actually had visited one, two of the refugee camps while I was there, and just attend to the people’s needs, like, if they needed clothing, if they needed food, if they needed medicine, to let the archdiocesan staff know. And of course, we had vehicles, so if they needed to go to a hospital, they could transport them and so forth. They thought at that point, Romero, I think, thought that the presence of North Americans would be protective, and to some extent it was. And so they had already begun a little bit of that when I was there. And then that expanded. And so by June, Father Ken Myers was starting to notice how many children there were and finding out about the children. And they, they kept saying, there’s a lot of children here that we don’t know where their parents are. We don’t know whether they got killed. We don’t know if- Some of the children would say they had seen their parents killed. So they did know they were killed. So he started to gather a small group of them. He said, well, I can at least take them to the parish, and families in the parish can take care of them, and we can protect them, because these refugee camps won’t last forever, and eventually maybe family will come back and find them. So he sort of let it be known that he was taking in these children that were abandoned in some way. Well, initially, he was just gonna work with the families in the parish. He got so many so fast, he had to start building. And then eventually he was given some land. It was a Belgian family that was leaving the country because of the war. So they gave him some of the land, they sold him some of the land, and it took him about eight or nine years, but he eventually built what’s now known as COAR. And by the time he turned it over in 1990, and I was there by that time, to the Incarnate Word sisters, there was a full clinic with laboratories and everything, a full school through high school, and about two to 300 kids at any given time. Kids were coming and going, but- So it was a rather major endeavor by the time he actually turned it over to the sisters. And he did all the initial fundraising and then set up the office here in Cleveland to do fundraising. So we’re still the primary funders of the children’s village. We now have about 50 children. It went from being an orphanage for war orphans, but not a full orphanage, because some of the parents did come back and find their kids or other relatives, grandparents, etcetera. So he never would allow children to be adopted from there. And then, as the sisters worked with the local parishes, were finding a lot of families where the parents had gone to the United States, and the grandparents were taking care of the kids and were aging out while they were waiting for the parents to call for the kids. So we started to take those children, then single mothers who had had to work and couldn’t take care of their kids. So it moved into being a place for poor children, but more like foster care. Now, the government has, within the last five years, installed a lot of laws around child protection, similar to the laws in the United States. So children have to be assigned to us by the government, by the courts, and the children have to go regularly to the courts to review their cases. We have a few that are true orphans. Most of them are more foster care because of families that are- And they’re really children from the streets much more than they used to be. They used to be more children from the outlying villages, but now it’s more kids who are emotionally abandoned because their parents are drug-addicted, prostitutes, you know, all the very much like the United States. I mean, it’s the drug situation. The violence situation in El Salvador right now is just beyond imaginable. The staff of the children’s village are robbed regularly coming to work. We’re constantly getting word that of another tragedy. One of the young women that worked as a house mother, she was about 25, 26 years old, went home, and her home was several hours away by bus. On her return trip, she went home for her two or three days off. And on her return trip, no one really knows what happened, but she never returned. So we contacted. I happened to be down there when this happened. So they contacted the family, and the family said, we put her on the bus to come back. About three days later, they found her body. She had been murdered. So we think she got picked up in the main terminal when she was transferring buses in the capital by the gangs. And she was an attractive young woman, but very clean living. I mean, she was a model. All the kids loved her at the village. They never actually told the kids what happened to her because these kids are already so traumatized. So it was very, a very tragic situation. And we’ve had children who can tell you stories of those kinds of tragedies, pretty bad stories. So the need is still very intense for this kind of residential facility for children.

Naomi A. Randt [00:33:47] I take it there’s other facilities like that around the country?

Sister Sheila Marie Tobbe [00:33:51] There were quite a few during the war, quite a few developed. Most of them were church sponsored. But when these laws came in and everything had to go through the courts and they began to demand social workers and psychologists and so forth, all of which are important, but it meant that a number of them had to close. We got some of the children from a few of them that closed, but so now there are far fewer residential facilities. I mean, the laws themselves are good. The way they were implemented were not so good. I know a lot of people in El Salvador and social workers and so forth, people that were my kids and that we trained in our catechetical program that are now, you know, professionals. And some of them said the children that went were sent home. Some were sent home from, because they had a family, supposedly, but they would get to the families and there was no food, they couldn’t go to school, and many of them got murdered. One of the ones that was a family of three girls that we had were told to go back to their parents, and the parents were very poor. And one of the children had a very severe stomach condition that needed special medicine. The parents couldn’t afford it. She died. So the implementation of the policies was not good. But that’s what we’re working with now and become a real challenge to running residential facilities in the country. So that’s why you’re seeing so many fleeing and coming to the United States. And I’m doing some English as a second language. And this week I’m gonna meet a young man who is one of those kids at the border. Fortunately, his father is here in Cleveland, and he’s been able to reconnect with his father at 16 years old. But, yeah, so the situation went from war to, you know, all the unsettlement after war, and then the whole drug scene has been- It’s really rooted in the country now so that the gangs are- And the gangs are kids that were deported from the United States. And our involvement and our complicity in the problems of that country and all three of them, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, as sad, you know, that after all three of them had terrible civil wars and we didn’t do anything to help them, and therefore - we did very little to help them. The UN stayed around in El Salvador for three years, and I was part of that. And they did make some real efforts at training civilian police, training judges, and training mayors. And that’s what I say to people. Those are the people that need training, not the military. The School of the Americas doesn’t have much effect because you’re training military. Military are not the basis of democracy. It’s civilian police, it’s mayors, it’s judges that are the basis of democracy, and that’s who we should be training. That’s who the UN was training. They only stayed for three years, and it wasn’t long enough.

Naomi A. Randt [00:37:28] That was three years after the end of the war?

Sister Sheila Marie Tobbe [00:37:30] After the end of the war. They were everywhere. There were UN cars everywhere. They took over one of the big hotels. And we had several incidents within our parish boundaries because we had several refugee camps within our parish boundaries. So I got quite involved with the UN for a while there.

Naomi A. Randt [00:37:50] What was that like working with them?

Sister Sheila Marie Tobbe [00:37:52] I found it very inspiring. The UN people that I worked with were very, very dedicated people and very committed to the people. And we had one small incident in one of our villages. And the one woman I got to be actually personal friends with, and we would go to lunch once a month together, because she said, I used to work in the campo. I think she worked for the Red Cross or something in Nicaragua. And she said, I like my work with the UN now, but I miss being in the campo, and you’re my connection. So come and we’ll have and talk about the people and everything. So I was telling her about this little sort of thing that happened. And I said, it’s not very important. She said, it’s very important. Those people feel violated. They feel they can’t trust something that’s happening. You bring them to the UN so that they can be heard. That’s what we’re here for, to hear the problems. It doesn’t matter, you know, you’re not the one to judge. In their minds, this is really important. And you need to help them to be able to come to the people, to be that listening force. That’s what we’re here for. And I thought, wow, that’s great. Because that was the role of the church during the war. You know, people would say to me, how can you work there with all that? And I said, it’s one of the best places I’ve ever worked because the church has such meaning. It gives such meaning and worth to the people’s life that they flock to the church. I don’t have to go looking for catechists. I got more than I can handle. You know? They are, because it’s the only thing. And I actually had people say that to me. It’s the only thing that gives meaning to our lives. Right after I landed, my Spanish wasn’t great, so I was struggling a bit with the catechetical work. And the team asked me to take on the confirmation program, which the original team had done well for where the country was at when they came. But by that point, there was enough change. And I looked at the materials and I said, we do confirmation at 15 years old. I said, there’s nothing about morality in here. There’s nothing about sexual morality in here. We have to add all those things. So I worked with some of the catechists, and we put together some materials. And then I was going home for my mother’s 90th birthday party. So I had the materials already, had a meeting, gave am each a stack of materials, and said, study these over while I’m gone. I’ll be gone for about three weeks, and then when I get back, we’ll be starting. This was in November, so we’ll be starting in early January. Well, as the meeting was terminating, one of the women came over to me with her books and her papers and said, Sister, could you keep these for me if I have these in my house? The military have come in sometimes, and they look and see if we have any religious materials or anything of Romero. And I’ve actually been put in jail for that. I said, oh, okay, everybody, hand your things in! [laughs] I don’t want this. I don’t want anybody to go to jail, etcetera. So several of the people did say, yes, we would prefer you keep them, and when you come back, we’ll come, you know, and we’ll study them here together with you. I said, in the church? I said, okay, that’s fine. I understand. And, boy you’re naive today. But one gentleman came up to me, and he said, I’m taking my books with me. And I said, are you sure, Silvestre? He said, yes. He said, the church is the only thing that gives any kind of meaning and direction to my life. I don’t care what they do to me. If I can do something for the church, that’s what I want to do. And I’m gonna work at being the best catechist in my village, and I want to get started now. So he said, you know, I’m not worried. If they come and get me, they come and get me. They’ve come and got me before. They’ll come and get me again, probably, but this is the only thing that gives meaning and direction to my life. So it was- I was always inspired by the intense faith of the people.

Naomi A. Randt [00:42:14] Was that November 1990 into ’91?

Sister Sheila Marie Tobbe [00:42:18] Yes, that would have been, yeah, because I arrived in July of ’90.

Naomi A. Randt [00:42:25] Was there any reservation going back in 1990 when you were part of the team?

Sister Sheila Marie Tobbe [00:42:31] Oh, I never had any- I never had a lot of fears for my personal life. By the time we got there, the Jesuits’ massacre had happened. I almost didn’t get into the country. I was in language school. Well, actually, it was in Cleveland when it happened. I was getting ready to leave for language school, and there were two who had been in language school ahead of me. And they got back to Cleveland in December and couldn’t get visas, so they didn’t get their visas till April. So I was in language school, not knowing whether we were going to be able to get visas and get into the country or not. So it was more of a joy when we got the visas and could get into the country. But we also knew that at that point, we didn’t have to worry too much about the military. They weren’t going to take on another international incident with us. The issue always was, you could be at the wrong place at the wrong time. But I had worked in the inner city before I left, and I could have been in the wrong place at the wrong time there, too. So that was more the problem. And the other challenge for me was just being so surrounded by military all the time. That I found disconcerting. And when I eventually got back, I did have some post-traumatic stress issues around all of that, because we were just, you know, you could be driving along completely surrounded by artillery. You were constantly running into squadrons that were all, with all their military garb and everything, and walking down the side of the road and- But what started to happen very quickly was I began to realize most of them were young boys that didn’t want to be there. They were forcibly being recruited. We could see them being forcibly recruited. We knew some of them, and if we knew them, their families would come to see if we could get them out. And we could sometimes. We could call the U.S. military advisor on the base and say, this young man is underage, or he’s the sole support of his mother, or he has a mental illness. And we were successful several times doing that. We did have one sad incident, though. It was the third time this poor kid had been picked up and forcibly recruited, and they, I guess, realized that he had been, we had intervened, so they sent him so far away, we couldn’t find him. And he was certifiably mentally ill. So they gave him a gun and he shot himself. And we had lots of stories like that, too, you know, people that- The constant pressure of being in that kind of war situation was heavy. And we always had military tanks in our village, and most of the time we had soldiers around. But most of them were kind of young, and they were pretty friendly, actually. And some of them, they didn’t usually put the ones, you know, when they’d recruit from a certain area, they wouldn’t put them back in that area. They’d send them far away. But during the- This was before I got there, when the Jesuits, right after the Jesuits had been killed, they were, the people at Zaragoza that eventually became my partners in the mission, were ensconced. They couldn’t leave, you know. And finally, after several days, things kind of calmed down. So my eventual partner went out into the streets, and she was a good friend of mine from the congregation. So Sister Jerry went out, and she was kind of making her way to make sure everything was okay across the central plaza. And there was a kid that she knew, you know, that she had taught up at COAR a couple a week before, standing there in full military unit with a big submachine gun. And she said, do you know how to use that thing? And he said, no, go get my mother! So that’s how young they were. That’s how. So once you realize that, it took some of the pressure off, because you could see that these kids- But it also added to the pressure in that they would start drinking. And then sometimes we’d hear- We often heard machine gun fire at night. And you’d listen, is there a response? And if there’s no response, it’s just a drunk soldier, which there was a lot of- We could also hear the bombing in the. Up in the mountains, which was pretty far away from us, but because it was up in the highlands, it echoed down, and so we could hear it. So you had to kind of listen and say, how far away is that? [laughs] How safe are we? And one Sunday morning, there was this terrible, I mean, all the silverware and the dishes were shaking in the cupboard and everything, this terrible bomb went off. And I was like, this is close. And my partner said to me, you better get over to church fast, because the kids are right here from the village. But the catechists are from a distance. They’re going to stop the buses, and you’re gonna have, you know, 200 kids and no catechists, and you’re gonna have to figure out what to do with them. So I said, okay. So I go running over there, and all the catechists were coming in. I said, they said, well, the buses are running. We got here, etcetera, and one of them looked at me and said, aren’t you used to this yet? Nobody should have to get used to this. [laughs] No! So, yeah, it was- But now the violence of the gangs, the sad part is we can take groups down there, I can go there, and I’m perfectly safe. It’s the poor people in the country that are being so victimized by this. So when you see those children at the border and those families, they have legitimate cause. They have legitimate cause to be here.

Naomi A. Randt [00:48:53] Have you tried, I mean, have there been any efforts to sort of educate people on that, on exactly, you know, it’s these poor people. I mean, it’s the same thing that’s-?

Sister Sheila Marie Tobbe [00:49:05] Been going on for- There are editorials in the newspaper from time to time. The Leadership Conference of Women Religious. There’s a lot of women religious working on the border, and they get information back every night. I’m reading information on the Internet from these groups. It does hit the news fairly often. Not necessarily the Cleveland newspapers, but because Cleveland hasn’t been as, as inundated, although to some extent we are, because we have the only immigration court. So those that are getting released and going to family members anywhere in Ohio, the only immigration court is in Cleveland. Sister Rita Mary Harwood at the diocese, she would be a good person to interview if someone hasn’t told you. She’s been doing wonderful immigration work. And Father Bob Reidy over at Sagrada Familia. I’m taking the seminarians over there this weekend because these families have to come from all over Ohio. Religious women sometimes are transporting them or helping them to get the money. They have to check in once a month at this immigration court. So it’s a royal pain. And they sometimes need a place to stay overnight, or sometimes they come in the early morning and they’re not gonna get heard till the afternoon. So the court doesn’t want them around all day. So they go over to Sagrada Familia and stay for the day. So there is an awareness at the part of the church and the diocese and religious women across the United States that’s very strong. And there’s a number of groups, non-NGOs, that are working on these issues. And every once in a while it does hit the mainline press. So, and it has been a little bit a part of the election campaign. Hillary Clinton has clicked in a couple times saying, you know, we’ve got to do something about these detention facilities because there’s no reason to be detaining families like this. They’re innocent families. And as I keep saying to people, they’re fleeing violence. That’s who we need. Young people in this country who are nonviolent. That’s what they’re trying. They’re, and believe me, I’m working with English as a second language. You never saw people work hard in your life, working sometimes two jobs and studying. I’ve got three this afternoon to meet with, and they will do anything to get an education. So it’s sad to see the response that we’re giving to them. And there’s just been a recent statement where doing something where they’re trying to get them into Costa Rica to be processed before they come to the United States. And that seems to be a little bit of a help, but I don’t know how effective it’s gonna be. It’s quite recent. In the last couple weeks.

Naomi A. Randt [00:52:22] I wonder if we could shift a little bit. I was reading some of that information that you sent me, and you talked about pilgrimages. So, I wonder if you could-

Sister Sheila Marie Tobbe [00:52:32] Oh, okay. Right. Because of being on the board of COAR, I have taken groups, parish groups, school groups, sometimes as many as two or three a year, to El Salvador. Plus some of the parish groups then have spun off into doing specific housing projects, and they just need to translator. So I’ve gone sometimes. I actually started when I was in El Salvador with a group who were all different religions. A friend of mine who’s Methodist, wanted to do eyecare work, so we worked out this whole thing. And that group, that was 1995, and they’ve gone yearly since then. I stopped going with them after a few years because they got enough translators and people that they didn’t need me as much. And the school groups and the parish groups going through COAR I had, there was more of a need for. And I was working at a parish, so I couldn’t leave all the time. I could get a few weeks off every year to do this, but I couldn’t go. And other people, there are other people that would bring the groups, too, besides me, from the COAR board and COAR volunteers. So, yeah, so we did quite a bit of that, but we just kind of stopped it. We’re still working with the seminarians, but the other groups, because of the violence level and then Zika. When those two things hit, we said, it’s not a real strong. It doesn’t bring in a lot of income for us. It’s good solidarity work, but it doesn’t bring in a lot of income. So we said, we can’t risk a serious problem because we’ve got 50 kids to take care of down there. So we have to concentrate our efforts on fundraising right now, and we’ll have to drop the solidarity piece until the violence situation gets under better control. And the Zika, although El Salvador so far has not had, I don’t think they’ve had any birth defects yet, but they had, the big outbreak was in January and February, so those women might not have given birth yet. So it doesn’t seem to be as bad as it is in some of the other countries. They were, when I was there in March, they were trimming the trees and fumigating and everything. And hopefully that was effective, because I haven’t heard of any really bad outbreaks in El Salvador yet, but the potential is there.

Naomi A. Randt [00:55:13] Were there any particular sites that you would take these groups to?

Sister Sheila Marie Tobbe [00:55:18] Oh, we always went to the sites of the martyrs. I mean, it was a pilgrimage to the sites of the martyrs, so, yeah, always, to- I was just at the jesuit university, the cathedral, the museum with the Archbishop Romero, the site where he was assassinated in June, and then the site where the women were killed, we always took the groups there, too.

Naomi A. Randt [00:55:48] So is that where the memorial is built?

Sister Sheila Marie Tobbe [00:55:50] Yes, where the chapel and the memorial stone marker.

Naomi A. Randt [00:56:02] Where is that?

Sister Sheila Marie Tobbe [00:56:03] It’s in Zacatecoluca, which is not too far from the airport. It’s about 20 minutes from the airport on the road to- It’s between San Juan and, what’s the other? San Juan Nonualco and, there’s another. It’s between two, not really large cities, but cities.

Naomi A. Randt [00:56:34] Could you spell that?

Sister Sheila Marie Tobbe [00:56:35] Nonualco? San Juan Nonualco?

Naomi A. Randt [00:56:37] Where the memorial is.

Sister Sheila Marie Tobbe [00:56:39] Well, it’s- Zacatecoluca is the nearest big city. It’s Z-A-C-A- Zaca- T-E-C-O-L-U-C-A, I think. Zacatecoluca. If you have a map of El Salvador, you can find it. Find the airport, and it’s a little bit to the right of the airport on the map, because that’s the largest big city. That’s where the judge that came out from there to say, to identify the bodies and so forth came from is Zacatecoluca. And there was a military place there, too. San Juan Nonualco and there’s another one that it’s closer to, and they’re a little bit smaller cities.

Naomi A. Randt [00:57:46] Is that Santiago Nonualco?.

Sister Sheila Marie Tobbe [00:57:48] Yeah, Santiago Nonualco and San Juan Nonualco. Those are the two, and it’s kind of in between those two cities on a small road. If you didn’t know where it was, you would have a very hard time finding it. It’s been a challenge, you know, when groups have gone, if they don’t have a guide, they usually can’t find it because it’s not that easy to find it, really. They really did find an obscure place. And I was there when we were building, when the church was being built, and Diane will tell you about putting the altar in and everything, but I made all the arrangements for that to happen, for her to come down and create the altar and the site there. And then we buried some of Jean and Dorothy’s things under the altar there.

Naomi A. Randt [00:58:40] When was this?

Sister Sheila Marie Tobbe [00:58:44] It was right before I left, so it would have been 1995. Yeah. The archbishop died. I had hepatitis. I was coming down with hepatitis when we were building the thing, and I was driving back and forth, and they were redoing the roads, and there was tons of dust, and I was so sick, and I didn’t know what it was. [laughs] Finally, they were gone, and they finished building the altar and everything, and I succumbed to hepatitis. So that’s why I’m remembering it was November of 1995, so it was ready for the December 1995 celebration, December 2. And I was pretty sick, but I didn’t know that it was hepatitis yet. So I was there. And then within the week, because my birthday is December 8, and I was in bed with hepatitis for my 50th birthday. When we were building the altar, Diane had some ideas of what she wanted before she came down. And I found a craftsman in our village, and it was brick. She wanted brick. So he was telling me where he could get the bricks, and I said, well, can’t we get bricks from, like, right around the area there? Because there’s a bunch of brick factories there. And he said, well, why would you want to do that? I said, well, I guess I have a sense that their blood is soaked in the ground there, and if it’s right from the area there, I would feel good about that. And he said, well, I don’t know them as well as I know the people here, so I don’t know if I can trust the quality, etcetera. He said, there’s hardly any place in this country that isn’t soaked in the blood of the martyrs, remember? Yeah, there’s all kinds of martyrs in this country, hundreds and thousands of catechists that were murdered, and nobody even knows their names, hardly. So that was kind of a good experience for me to say. Yeah, that’s true. This is the reality of this country.

Naomi A. Randt [01:01:16] I wanted to ask you about the legacy of Sister Dorothy. You had talked about that a little bit and some of the things that you had sent me to read.

Sister Sheila Marie Tobbe [01:01:28] Yeah. Her legacy certainly is bringing to the attention of the church in Cleveland the reality of the situation there. The team was somewhat circumspect about what they would say about what was going on. I learned that in my trip there in 1979 that they were far more aware of what was going on than what they were telling people in Cleveland, partly to protect their families and partly because people wouldn’t understand very well. But their deaths certainly raised huge questions, and I found that fairly quickly, it wasn’t just the Catholic church that was asking those questions. It was all of the churches, all of the Christian churches, particularly Christian churches, but the Jewish community, too. The InterReligious Task Force in Central America that still started in Cleveland had a lot of Jewish participation at the beginning, too. The first-year anniversary was at Old Stone Church. The bishop was still being very careful because we had people there, and he didn’t want to- So he was willing to come to the Old Stone Church but didn’t want it at the cathedral, the Catholic cathedral. And that was perfect, because then it opened it up to a very large interfaith community. And that InterReligious Task Force is still very active and still very concerned about issues in Central America and Colombia. So that certainly is one of the legacies. The religious women around the world celebrate that anniversary. It’s part of our bravery that we pray every day now. So the legacy goes way beyond Cleveland, way beyond the United States even, I found. When I was in language school, of course, I was with people from all over the world, and I was amazed how much they knew about the deaths of the Romero and the four women and the Jesuits, and how much they were in solidarity with me, struggling to figure out whether I was going to be going there. And one of the things we did in language school was process living with fear. And so they were very conscious of the realities that were going on in El Salvador. So I think it opened up to certainly the world religious community, but also the politics of the United States were very, very influenced. I think there’s a doctoral dissertation to be done on how the deaths of the women opened up the politics of the United States to a much deeper awareness of what was going on in Latin America. So that legacy- And, of course, there’s the spiritual legacy of martyrdom that’s the gift of the church, is, for me, I think the signs and wonders of scriptures of our day are martyrdom and the numbers of martyrs, because it’s not just in Latin America and Africa, we’ve had martyrs. We have martyrs. They say the last century, there were more martyrs than ever in the church, around the world. People that really put their life on the line for what they believed in and were in some way assassinated, so that it fed that whole religious legacy of martyrdom in the church. And that still has meaning. I get calls regularly. I just got last night on the Internet a group that goes to El Salvador regularly, but they go, like, every other year, I think, and then they try to meet and pray in the interim. So would I come and do a retreat for them in October? So that legacy is at so many levels of the meanings of their lives and the importance. Four women, and especially four women that didn’t all come from the same area, one being a laywoman, and then the fact that Ida Ford’s brother was such an important and capable lawyer to carry out all the cases. And now the recent thing is they’ve lifted the amnesty in El Salvador. So we don’t know what’s gonna happen to those guys that eventually got deported and are back in El Salvador. You know, how much are those cases going to be heard in El Salvador? But I was in El Salvador when the UN put that Commission of Truth report out, and a week later, amnesty was claimed. And the people were outraged. Outraged. They said, this isn’t amnesty, this is amnesia. They’re asking us to forget horrible things that happened to us and our families. We can’t do that. So this was a good thing that it was lifted, but what it’s gonna do in terms of an already pretty unstable country, don’t know. So. Yeah, but the legacy in Cleveland, too, there’s 31 parishes that have had some type of regular connection and twelve high schools that they translate the letters for the sponsors for us. And then several of those travel to El Salvador regularly. Now, some of them are going to Nicaragua or the Dominican Republic instead of El Salvador or Honduras or Guatemala because of the violence. And their institutional structures are saying we can’t risk the problems. But at least they’re still doing some type of mission trip somewhere, you know, to where conditions are a little more stable.

Naomi A. Randt [01:07:43] Could you speak a little bit more about the InterReligious Task Force? I know that you were a founding member.

Sister Sheila Marie Tobbe [01:07:49] Right. There were several of us. At that point there was an active political group out of Cleveland State University, CASC [Cleveland Central America Solidarity Committee], I think it was called, and several of us got together and said we really wanted to have more of a religious thrust coming out of the whole sense of martyrdom and Archbishop Romero. And this was before the Jesuits, of course, so. But it became interreligious fairly quickly. It started, actually, in, I used to say, the basement of Erieview High School, where the sisters’ justice group was meeting, but they had also were renting space to Clergy and Laity Concerned, and that was a very interreligious group. So the two kind of merged together in the InterReligious Task Force, and then the offices moved over to St. Patrick’s on Bridge, which is where they are now. But it’s become even more interreligious over the years, and that it’s still very, very vital group that meets and stays in touch and sends emails to congresspeople. So I’m not as connected as I was, although I still attend their functions as much as I can. But it’s been a very good group to keep, particularly the religious community of Cleveland together around. They do a lot of work with fair trade around the social justice issues, particularly related to Latin America. But the trade issues are trade issues around the world. A lot of the issues are pretty expansive in terms of social justice. So it’s been a very good group and good group of young people involved right now. And as life is, I also do some work at Case Western Reserve University, working with the students in spiritual direction. And the director there now, the former director, Tony Vento, who brought me on board, was at one point one of the directors of InterReligious Task Force. That’s how I knew him. And then he was replaced by a woman who’s on the board and her husband who’s an immigration lawyer. So he’s been helping me out with all these English as a second language people that I’m dealing with right now. [laughs] So the legacy goes on in the relationships, the network of relationships nationally, internationally, but especially within the city. And Case Western Reserve has done a lot of work connected to the InterReligious Task Force. They do a big teach-in every spring, and John Carroll University has been very connected to the Catholic Worker Community on the Near West Side. I pray with them regularly, and they’re kind of the mainstay of keeping all these connections going.

Naomi A. Randt [01:11:09] That’s the end of my questions. Is there’s anything else you wanted to add before we-?

Sister Sheila Marie Tobbe [01:11:15] No, I think we’ve covered. I’d sent you some materials, and I think you form some of the questions around those materials, so I think you have pretty much to work with. If you think of anything else, and I can respond to, I’d be happy to. And if you want to take the books and just return them to me when you’re finished. You’re completing this- [recording ends abruptly]

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.