By Karen Pulfer Focht
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (CNS) – As a child, Sheila Stiles Jewell played outside of the public housing where her family lived in Memphis. She felt one with nature weaving clover and catching bumblebees, not realizing that she was really feeding her curiosity for science and the natural world.
During the days of segregation, the Catholic Church recruited her family, living at Lemoyne Owen Gardens at the time, to receive a Catholic education. It was a noble act that she credits with much of her success today.

Working into her 70s, Jewell is a research geneticist at the U.S. NOAA Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Milford, Connecticut. NOAA Fisheries is an office of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“Science has made my faith stronger,” she said. “The DNA structure is amazing. It is beautiful and is evidence of what God can do and has done. Look around you, it is just wonderful!”
Women from her generation are underrepresented in the field of science.
Jewell would like to see more African American females enter the field of science. She speaks at schools and brings her sea creatures to show the students hoping to spark an interest within them.
“My faith has been an important part of how I persisted and persevered. I can’t imagine how I could have done it without my faith,” she said. Jewell still comes home often to be with family and together they attend Mass at St. Augustine Church in South Memphis.
She remembers the times as a child in the segregated South, when she went to Mass at a white church, she had to stand in the back, sit in the balcony at the movies, and drink out of separate drinking fountains.
“We came from humble beginnings,” she recalled. Her mother, a teacher, was her first role model. She instilled in Jewell that an education was the key to a successful life. “We couldn’t always realize our dreams because of segregation, but that did not keep us from striving to be somebody,” she said.
The people in the public housing where she lived always looked out for the children. “We were sheltered and protected, it was a village.” They were always encouraged to go to church.
Jewell studied science at Father Bertrand High School, where she was valedictorian. It was there that Sister Mary Kilian, a Sister of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, encouraged her to go to college and major in biology.
She attended Xavier University in New Orleans, the only historically Black Catholic university in the U.S., and then accepted an internship in Milford. She was apprehensive about leaving all she knew.
That summer, her advisers convinced her to go on a 30-hour Greyhound bus ride to pursue new opportunities. Because she was Black, she rode in the back of the bus and even though the North was not officially segregated like Memphis at the time, there was nowhere to stay. Housing was not open to Blacks in the 1960s. Her advisers found a family for her to stay with.
She was the first permanent African American female employee in Department of Interior in the Milford marine biological laboratory, where she has had a 56-year career and is still working today.
“I had a passion for genetics. Early in my career, there were no role models in this male-dominated field,” she said. She studies shellfish, such as oysters, clams, scallops and mussels, and working on restoring this population through genetics and breeding for better survival and growth.
Women’s rights and civil rights have helped and brought a lot of improvement, though there are still some barriers today, she said.
She loves working with young people, “reaching out and reaching back,” she said. “If you have a dream, follow it, do what it takes, don’t be discouraged, don’t give up.”
Jewell was a trailblazer. This past fall she was inducted into the Memphis Catholic High School Hall of Fame.
For so many years, she drew on her faith. “If it were not for my faith, I would not have been as successful as I have been. God has been beside me throughout this journey. I could not have made this journey alone. I am so thankful for my faith, my family and my friends.”
When it has been difficult to persevere, “my faith has made a difference,” she added.

By Carol Zimmermann
WASHINGTON (CNS) – Long before she burst into the public spotlight delivering her inauguration poem, Amanda Gorman got a standing ovation from fellow parishioners of St. Brigid Church in Los Angeles for reciting a poem she wrote about the parish.
And on Jan. 20, at the inauguration ceremony of President Joe Biden, parishioners watching this young woman on their TV screens – addressing political leaders and the nation at large about courageously rebuilding the country – applauded her all the more.

Floy Hawkins, former director of religious education at the parish for over 20 years, said her phone did not stop ringing after the inauguration, with friends asking if she saw, heard or knew about Gorman’s role.
“You see her? Look at that little girl!” fellow parishioners were saying because as Hawkins put it: “We still see her in a very endearing way.”
And even though they were thrilled for Gorman, parishioners of the historically Black church didn’t see her performance as a “solo act,” because Gorman has always been at the parish with her twin sister, Gabrielle, and her mom. Hawkins felt that sense of family when cameras followed Gorman joining her mother when she finished her delivery.
St. Brigid’s pastor, Josephite Father Kenneth Keke, also didn’t just see Gorman in that moment but felt she represented the entire parish in South Central Los Angeles – which is predominantly African American but now also has a growing number of Latinos, Filipinos and white parishioners too.
“We are a community; everyone here is important,” the priest said. “Whatever belongs to the parish belongs to everyone; in our parish, the success of anyone is the success of all.”
It’s also the pride of all.
“Parishioners are very much proud of her,” the priest, from Nigeria, told Catholic News Service Jan. 22, adding that he personally knew she would go far. “She is a very, very intelligent young lady. The first time I saw her, I knew that one day she was going to be very important.”
This pride is displayed on the parish website with photos of Gorman and the words: “We celebrate and congratulate Amanda Gorman: 2021 inauguration poet. Youngest in history.”
Hawkins told CNS that when she saw Gorman approach the podium and begin speaking, she was “in awe … to see such a young African American female be at such a pinnacle point of the world.” She also said it humbled her “from a spiritual perspective of God’s graces and mercies,” since she knew the national youth poet laureate from Gorman’s middle school days.
As adolescents, Gorman and her sister, went through a two-year training program at the parish and then received the sacraments of baptism, first Communion and confirmation on the same day.
When she graduated from high school to attend Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Gorman received a scholarship donation from the parish. The pastor said she always returned to the church when she visited home.
In recent months, he hasn’t seen Gorman, who graduated last year, but he also hasn’t seen many of his parishioners due to coronavirus Mass restrictions.
Hawkins, in her role at the parish which numbered 750 families prior to the pandemic, was impressed by the Gorman sisters from the start, saying they were brilliant intellectually and socially with quiet but confident personalities.
She also remembered Amanda’s speech impairment that caused difficulty in saying certain letters, which the poet has overcome and spoken about. Hawkins once overhead a student asking Amanda why she talked the way she did, and Amanda replied that it was just her East Coast accent.
“I was so happy when I learned she had acknowledged publicly that she had a speech impediment, what a release for her,” Hawkins said.
Gorman, who had been writing and developing her own style since she was a young girl, was named the Youth Poet Laureate of Los Angeles at 16, and it was around that time she wrote the St. Brigid’s poem that she recited at the end of a Mass commemorating the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. The parish assistant choir director, knowing of Gorman’s work, had asked her to consider doing it.
That Gorman stepped up to the plate, then and now, is something Hawkins admires. When she saw her on the Capitol stage in her yellow coat and red headband, she knew Gorman had taken “ownership of the opportunity.”
“Sometimes people ask you to do something and you say: ‘Oh, I don’t know if I could do it,’” she said.
“I don’t get the sense that was her response when the first lady invited her to speak at the inauguration,” Hawkins added. “I believe she immediately said yes, as we are encouraged to say: ‘Yes Lord.’”
Hawkins prayed for Gorman before the poet introduced herself to the country as the “skinny Black girl, descended from slaves and raised by a single mother” who can “dream of becoming president only to find herself reciting for one.”
But as she listened to the 22-year-old’s strong, clear voice she said to herself: “Glory be to God. … Look what you have done in the world!” And she felt the strong connection too – that the poet’s description of finding light in dark times was something the people of St. Brigid’s knew all too well.
What a time for our Catholic faith and our African American culture, she thought.
She also was pleased that Gorman, named the National Youth Poet Laureate in 2017, “didn’t minimize or dismiss” the insurrection at the Capitol just two weeks before but spoke of not losing hope when terrible things happen.
Her poem, “The Hill We Climb,” speaks in part of a country “bruised but whole, benevolent but bold, fierce and free” and adds: “We will not be turned around or interrupted by intimidation.”
It ends with the promise of rebirth and reconciliation, saying: “Our people diverse and beautiful will emerge, battered and beautiful … For there is always light, if only we’re brave enough to see it. If only we’re brave enough to be it.”
Father Keke said the poem reflected “what we preach here at St. Brigid’s” about liberation and redemption. Her words on unity had a strong spiritual connection, the priest added.
The parish is planning to celebrate Gorman’s achievement in some small way soon and in a bigger way once COVID-19 restrictions are lifted.
“She is definitely a light, an inspiration to us all,” said Hawkins, who said the current buzz around Gorman simply validates who she is and will take her further than she ever imagined. She also has no doubt Gorman will continue to courageously move forward, but not alone.
“She takes God with her,” she said.

WASHINGTON (CNS) – Hank Aaron, who was baseball’s home run king for 33 years, overcame racism to make his mark in the game he loved. Aaron died Jan. 22 at age 86.
Aaron, who became a Catholic while playing for the Milwaukee Braves, joined the Baptist faith later in life.
He never hit 50 home runs in a season, much less 60 or even 70 as other sluggers did; in his best season, he knocked 47 homers out of the park in 1971, when he was 37 years old. But it was his consistency that allowed him to amass 755 round-trippers over 23 seasons playing for the Milwaukee and Atlanta Braves, and – after he had set the record – back to Milwaukee to play for the Brewers.

Aaron was not flashy or a self-promoter, either. But he was durable. After his rookie season in 1954, he played at least 150 games a season every year through 1968; this included seven years when the season was just 154 games. When he dipped to 147 games played in 1969, Aaron still socked 44 homers.
He had eight seasons of at least 40 home runs, 15 seasons in which he hit at least 30 – one of only two players to do so in the major leagues’ 152-year history, and 19 straight seasons in which “The Hammer” clouted at least 24.
Aaron and his first wife, Barbara, were received into the Catholic faith in 1959.
According to a Catholic News Service article from that May, they were baptized at St. Benedict the Moor Church in Milwaukee, along with their children, 3-year-old Gayle and 2-year-old Henry Jr. A third child, Larry, was baptized at birth.
“Mrs. Aaron said the Aarons first became interested in joining the church when their twins were born at St. Anthony’s Hospital in Milwaukee,” the article said. Both Larry and his twin were baptized, but the unnamed twin died.
The Aarons began their “instructions” in Catholicism shortly before Christmas 1958, and completed them when the Braves returned to Milwaukee from spring training, according to the story. “Mrs. Aaron said there are no other Catholics among family relatives,” it added.
In a 1991 interview, Aaron credited Father Michael Sablica, a priest of the Milwaukee Archdiocese, for helping him grow as a person in the 1950s, when baseball often reflected the prejudice and racism of society, especially that of the South.
“Father Sablica and I have been good friends for a very long time,” Aaron said. “He taught me what life was all about. But he was more than just a religious friend of mine, he was a friend because he talked as if he was not a priest sometimes. … He was just good people.” The priest was active in the civil rights movement, and encouraged Aaron to be more vocal about the things that he believed in but had yet to speak about publicly.
Aaron was known to frequently read Thomas a Kempis’ “The Imitation of Christ,” which he kept in his locker. He and Barbara divorced in 1971, and Aaron remarried in 1973.
A native of Mobile, Alabama, Aaron had to confront racism anew when the Braves moved to Atlanta in 1966. The on-field verbal abuse, hate mail and death threats fueled his desire to break Ruth’s 714-homer record – he ended the 1973 season with 713, which set up a torrent of abuse in the offseason – but also made him vow not to let home runs be his only business.
“I feel like it’s my responsibility to speak out on social issues, because after all, if I had not been a baseball player, I would probably be in the same position as a lot of my Black brothers, and so I feel like it’s my obligation to do these things,” Aaron said.
Aaron continued to speak out about racism and equity after his playing days ended in 1976.
A right-handed hitter, Aaron played briefly in the Negro Leagues before being signed by the Milwaukee Braves. In his early pro days, he hit cross-handed, meaning he put his left hand above his right when he was holding the bat, before a coach corrected Aaron’s swing.
Aaron was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1982, the first year he was eligible. In addition to his career home run totals, he led the National League in home runs, runs batted in and doubles four times each, slugging average and runs scored three times each, and batting average and hits twice each.