VITA: 

THIS IS MY LIFE

(also known as Sister Mary Leo and Libby)

This is my life as I see it in my “Golden Years,” reflecting back on the “golden years” of my active life! There have been so many experiences and opportunities that I have had during these 78-plus years of my religious life and the years before becoming a Sister of St. Francis – how can I compress them into one short Vita – but I shall try!

I was born on a farm two miles east of Blakeslee on May 21, 1926, into a good Catholic family, to parents Herbert John and Clara (Nye) Siebenaler. I was the youngest of eight, none of whom are still living. The only remarkable thing surrounding my birth was that I was baptized on a Sunday. Two days after my birth, it is reported that my godparents, Aunt Elizabeth and Uncle Felix Brock, took me to a baseball game that afternoon behind the church.

I attended St. Joseph’s Elementary School at Blakeslee, where the teachers, the Sisters of St. Francis from Tiffin, Ohio, had a great influence on my life. After the eighth grade, I attended St. Francis Convent High School in Tiffin. I graduated from there as a Postulant, as I had entered the convent in September of my senior year. I received a diploma in nursing from St. Vincent’s School of Nursing, Toledo, Ohio, in 1949; a bachelor of science of nursing from Our Lady of Cincinnati College in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1950; and a master of science of nursing administration from Wayne State University in Detroit in 1968. This was the year of the riots in Detroit, but I was safe!

After my clothing on Aug. 12, 1943, bishop Alter game me the name of Sister Mary Leo. Leo was my favorite brother-in-law and was in military service at the time. I made my First Profession on Aug. 12, 1945, and my Final Profession on Aug. 12, 1948.

I developed an early interest in service to others and missionary work, beginning from the Holy Childhood Association custom of saving money in grade school to help “save pagan babies,” to learning about other peoples and cultures from the Catholic Student Mission Crusade during my high school years. This interest further developed in following the nursing profession when the community asked me, among others, to study nursing, so that the community could continue health care ministry. This ministry took me from infirmarian for the motherhouse and St. Anthony Orphanage in Toledo, to Lourdes Hospital in Paducah, Kentucky, as Director of Nursing Services there, to the East Coast Migrant Health Project as clinic nurse for the migrants and under-served populations of Vineland, New Jersey, and to the Belle Glade and Immokalee, Florida. The populations there included immigrants from Mexico, Haiti, Guatemala and other Spanish-speaking countries! One of the challenges of serving in Immokalee was to learn the Creole language to better serve the Haitian people. I had already learned the Spanish language before serving as a missionary in Mexico. The journey to serving in Mexico was rather unexpected! The community had asked for volunteers to go into missionary work as the pope, in the 1960’s, had requested that religious orders send one tenth of their members to foreign missionary work. Among several choices, the community decided to go into Chiapas, Mexico, at the personal request of the Bishop Samuel Ruiz, the bishop of the diocese of San Cristobal, in the state of Chiapas, at that time. The three years spent in Chiapas changed my whole outlook on life after seeing and experiencing the poverty of the people there, and at the same time experiencing their deep faith and the beauty of their lives in such extreme poverty and simplicity.

(Before going to Mexico, I returned to my baptismal name, Elizabeth Jean, by which I have been known since that time, but shortened to Libby many times. It was much less complicated to “cross the border” with the same name on my birth certificate and tourist card!)

Twelve years of my religious life were spent in administration as community councilor, with special focus in the areas of peace and justice. My continued interest in these issues was stimulated from my work in Mexico as we worked among the “poorest of the poor” with a team of Mexican priests there. As community councilor, I cherished visiting sisters in their places of ministry and getting to know the sisters better. In 2002, when I retired from active ministry, I moved to Aldringham house in Toledo with three other sisters. I did volunteer ministry in four different places there: the Family House, a homeless shelter for families; St. Louis Helping Hands, a soup kitchen where we served from 200-300 dinners a day; the emergency room at Toledo Hospital; and the surgery waiting room at St. Vincent’s Hospital. Meeting the needy people in each of these places gave me much joy in my “golden” years.

My motto, my goal in life, has been to “love your neighbor as yourself!” From riding horseback in the mountains of Chiapas, Mexico to visit the people in the far-flung colonies; to opening the first of five clinics around Lake Okeechobee in Florida on the porch of the dispensary of the United States Sugar Corporation; to visiting the tomb and home of Archbishop Oscar Romero in San Salvador; to participating in peace rallies, prayer services, protests, and demonstrations against injustices and violent situations in the world in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Georgia, all of these were done, I had always hoped, to carry out Jesus’ message, and as a Franciscan, to “love your neighbor as yourself.” And so “I give thanks for all that has been and say yes to all that will be!

I am extremely grateful to the community and to my family for all that you have meant to me during these many years, and I wish to let you all know that my love will remain with you, even though I will be awaiting you where all of us together can enjoy the reward of life with our God and our Creator forever.

With all my love,

Sister Elizabeth Jean – Libby