[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 68 (Thursday, April 26, 2018)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E555-E556]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




      RECOGNIZING THE CONSERVATION WORK OF SISTER JEREMIAS STINSON

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. MARCY KAPTUR

                                of ohio

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, April 26, 2018

  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record an article from the 
Toledo Blade, dated the 20th of April 2018.
  In doing so, I want to recognize the conservation work of the Sisters 
of St. Francis in Sylvania, Ohio and Sister M. Jeremias Stinson.
  As the superintendent of Environmental Stewardship, Gardens, Shrines 
and Woodland Management, in Sylvania, Sister Jeremias has committed her 
life to protecting over 250 native species of trees under her care.
  With Earth Day being this past Sunday, and a few weeks away from 
Arbor Day, we as a Nation need to recognize the part we take in our 
environment.
  As said by Sister Jeremias, ``To care for all creation, we have to 
balance the forces of creation. You have to make wise decisions.''

                    [From the Blade, Apr. 20, 2018]

 Nun Oversees Conservation of Saint Francis' Wooded Grounds in Sylvania

                            (By Nicki Gorny)

       It's a bright spring afternoon at the motherhouse of the 
     Sisters of St. Francis in Sylvania, and Sister M. Jeremias 
     Stinson is zipping around the grounds on a John Deere Gator, 
     navigating stick-strewn paths through the woods as adeptly as 
     the manicured lawns between buildings.
       ``We're going to fly,'' the 74-year-old nun tells a 
     reporter beside her at one point, fully committed to showing 
     off the full scope of the grounds within a time-crunched 
     tour.
       The tour, arranged just a few weeks before Arbor Day, 
     celebrated in Ohio on the last Friday in April, covered just 
     a sampling of the more than 5,000 mature trees that shade the 
     grounds. As Sister Jeremias drove, she rattled off the names 
     of species that stand tall in wooded areas and in deliberate 
     clusters, like an arboretum between buildings just north of 
     the Franciscan Center.
       There are oaks, firs, and pines--250 native species in all 
     to keep straight. Sister Jeremias, superintendent of the 
     environmental stewardship, gardens, shrines, arid woodland 
     management, has mapped and documented them all.
       The motherhouseholds the distinction of having the most 
     diverse number of plant specimens in the region, said Sister 
     Jeremias, who undertook a canopy study of the grounds that 
     began in 2006. The grounds are also recognized as a 
     conservation sanctuary, as approved in 1930 by the Lucas 
     County Conservation District and Ohio Forestry Division.
       ``They're a great leader in promoting conversation on 
     private lands,'' said Jamie Kochensparger, education and 
     outreach director of Lucas County Soil and Water Conservation 
     District.
       Her agency is one of several at the county, state, and 
     federal level to interact with Sister Jeremias and the 
     religious community on forestry and conservation-related 
     matters. With the vast majority of land in the United States 
     under private ownership, Mrs. Kochensparger said, 
     conscientious private partners play an important role in this 
     arena.
       ``They've been great ambassadors for that,'' she said.
       The distinctions reflect deliberate planning and 
     maintenance on the part of the sisters, who arrived in 
     Sylvania. in 1916. Sister Jeremias sees practicality and 
     spirituality in the number and diversity of trees on the 
     grounds, pointing to their assistance as groundcover and 
     windbreaks as well as their alignment with the values of St. 
     Francis Assisi.
       ``Francis of Assisi; our founder, was extremely sensitive 
     to all facets of nature,'' she said. ''He respected it in all 
     its forms.''
       ``As Franciscans, we are each called--we are all called, 
     but as Franciscans, we have a strong leaning and a strong 
     responsibility--to look and care for all creation.''
       Sister Jeremias has overseen the grounds since 1974, when 
     she submitted a proposal to leave her position as a local 
     schoolteacher and ``put full time into the witness to the 
     dignity of manual work and contemplation.'' She started with 
     the renovation of the Portiuncula chapel on the grounds, she 
     said, and went on to maintain and, in many more instances, 
     develop the shrines, paths, and other landscape elements that 
     create to a prayerful environment on the campus.
       Her work continues and forwards that of her predecessor, 
     whose name came up frequently during her recent tour of the 
     grounds.
       ``That fir tree over there, the tall one, was planted by 
     Mother Adelaide,'' she said at one point, a variation on a 
     theme that applied to some of the tallest trees on the 
     grounds.
       Mother Adelaide led the original sisters who established a 
     convent in Sylvania in 1916. While some of the 89 acres they 
     settled on were natively wooded, Sister Jeremias said, much 
     was farmland. Mother Adelaide took it upon herself to obtain 
     and plant trees on the campus to stabilize sandy hills, 
     create windbreaks, and fulfill other practical functions.
       ``Her footprint is still here,'' Sister Jeremias said.
       It's there, for example, in a cluster of Norway spruces 
     behind the Our Lady of Lourdes Grotto. It's also there in a 
     handful of original trees in the arboretum, whose 
     establishment Sister Jeremias credited to Mother Adelaide, 
     even if she's had to since replace many of the original trees 
     that were planted there over the years.
       This sort of maintenance has been an important part of 
     Sister Jeremias' work on the grounds. She's overseeing 
     several ponderosa pine seedlings in a patch near the Rosary 
     Care Center, which will find permanent homes on the grounds 
     as they grow larger. When the emerald ash borer more 
     dramatically killed off 1,841 trees on the campus in 2006, 
     she replanted an area that she now calls

[[Page E556]]

     the ``new woods'' on the grounds near Ten Mile Creek.
       Whenever she removes trees from the grounds, with an eye 
     toward long-term sustainability, she replaces them with new 
     trees that maintain respect to species diversity and the 
     individual site. While all species are native to the region, 
     not all thrive in the same soil or at the same elevation.
       ``To care for all of creation, we have to balance the 
     forces of creation,'' Sister Jeremias said. ``You have to 
     make wise decisions.''
       When Sister Jeremias proposed that she focus solely on 
     grounds work in 1974, Mother Adelaide had died only about 10 
     years earlier. Sister Jeremias recalled that she began to 
     notice downed trees and other effects of the community having 
     gone without a dedicated grounds presence in these years.
       It was a role for which the outdoorsy Sister Jeremias, who 
     grew up in Port Clinton, tagging along to work sites with her 
     father, a builder, felt she was well suited--and one that 
     she's been fulfilling faithfully for more than 40 years.
       ``I followed her footprint,'' she said of Mother Adelaide.