Sister Sheila Salmon, (formerly Sister Maureen), 74, who until recently had made her home in Sebastian, died Sunday, May 16, at Villa Maria Community Center in Villa Maria, Pa.
Born in Cleveland, Sister Sheila was a 1953 graduate of Villa Maria High School in Villa Maria. She entered the Sisters of the Humility of Mary in 1954 from St. Christopher Parish in Rocky River and made her first vows in 1957. She graduated from St. Louis University School of Nursing in 1960 and served at St. Elizabeth Health Center in Youngstown for three years.
During the 1960’s, she served as a missionary in the Diocese of Temuco, Chile, where she set up clinics, supervised in a regional hospital, and was a clinical instructor at the University of Chile for six years.
Following her return from Chile, she earned her MSN in Public Health Nursing from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.
She served the needs of many special patients as a home health and hospice nurse in Cleveland; Lorain; South Bronx, N.Y.; Nairobi, Kenya; and Indian River County. Since 2001, she volunteered at Our Lady of Guadalupe Mission in Fellsmere. She recently was named a member of the board of directors of the VNA Hospice of Indian River County, Vero Beach
Sister Sheila served for eight years as Director of Ministry and Personnel while a council member of the HM Congregation in the 1980’s.
Because of her strong commitment to peace, in 2007 Sister Sheila 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 (formerly known as the US Army School of the Americas) in Ft. Benning, Ga.
She was preceded in death by her parents, John and Estelle (Diamond) Salmon.
She is survived by the Sisters of the Humility of Mary Congregation, with whom she shared her life for 55 years; and cousins, Jack Hayes of Canton, Ga. and Ft. Myers, Fla., Bob Salmon of Chevy Chase, Md., Mariellen Simon of Vermilion and Naples, Fla.; Sally Staneff of Vermilion, John Terwoord of Berea and Bill Terwoord of Cleveland.
Funeral services will be Wednesday, May 19, 2010, at 3 p.m. at Villa Maria Chapel in Villa Maria Pa.
Memorial contributions may be made to the Sisters of the Humility of Mary, Development Office, P.O. Box 534, Villa Maria, PA 16155.