♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -I'm Sister Eileen Schieber, a Sister of the Most Precious Blood.

Our community is devoted to what we call the Paschal Mystery, the death and rising of Jesus' Passion.

I always believed that religious should be doing... things that are beginning that other people can't do because they have to support their families and themselves.

And we have a community to support us.

When I was in Toledo, I was a vicar for religious there.

I was the representative of the bishop to all of the men and women religious in the diocese.

And I had worked with a young man from Guatemala who had AIDS to get him home.

♪♪ I went to a prayer service for persons with AIDS in Toledo, and at that prayer service, Ron came up to me and asked me if I would go with them to a meeting to organize something for persons with AIDS.

And I said, "Why?"

And they said, "Because we need credibility.

We need somebody in the organization with credibility."

I started David's House, and I told the bishop I needed to resign and do that full time because it was becoming full time, which he supported.

He was extremely supportive.

Then I was re-elected to leadership, and then when I finished, they said, "Are you going back to David's House?"

And I said, "Oh, no, because they have everything that they need.

If I go back, I would just throw a wrench into everything."

The rosary has different prayers and it has different things that you meditate on.

On the cross, you say the creed, "I believe in God."

Then you say the Our Father, three Hail Marys.

And then you begin with whatever -- Like, what's today?

Today's Tuesday.

So it would be the Sorrowful Mysteries.

So all of the five mysteries are about the Passion of Christ.

And on another day, you have -- the mysteries are all about the life of Mary, and another day, the mysteries are about the public life of Christ, like Cana and the Transfiguration and the establishment of the Eucharist and the preaching of the message of the Gospel.

And then there are 10 Hail Marys and an Our Father, 10 Hail Marys and an Our Father.

There's a form of prayer which is just a quiet prayer, just of being present without words, without sound or whatever.

I often ask for the angels to intercede for me.

We don't really pray to them because they're not God.

We pray to God, but we can ask them for their intercession.

And I often do.

I trust the angels.

♪♪ ♪♪ I have two here.

♪♪ ♪♪ The person that got me involved in AIDS ministry was Ron Dryer.

I'll use his name because he gets the credit and he is no longer living.

But Ron came to me with his mother and he said, "We would like for you to come to a meeting with a group of people.

We would like to start a buddy system of volunteers that would assist persons with AIDS who are living in their own home."

So Ron and his mother picked me up, and we go to a gay bar.

And the -- the man who owned the bar had a room for us to meet.

And there was -- there was quite a large group of people there, but most of them were gay men or their parents, one of their parents.

The man who owned the bar said to us, "I have the upstairs free, and you can have it without charge.

You can use it for your offices."

And so we did.

But the next day after the meeting, I went to the bishop and I said, "Bishop Hoffman, if somebody tells you they saw your vicar coming out of a gay bar, it would be true."

And he just looked at me.

He said, "Eileen, I trust you implicitly."

So we planned it and -- and got it up and running.

♪♪ Some of the priests would say to the bishop, "Eileen can't be your vicar."

You know, he always referred to me as the vicar for religious.

And they say, "She can't be your vicar.

She's a woman, you know, and you need to have a man who represents you."

And he says, "I can have anybody I want represent me."

So he always referred to me as his vicar, and he would say to me sometimes -- he would send me somewhere and he would say, "Now, Eileen, you wear my hat," which meant I was to represent him and his teaching authority in the church, not my own opinion or whatever.

♪♪ ♪♪ I-I didn't -- I didn't sit down with them and think, "You're gay."

You know, there's a -- there's an old Jewish proverb, and it says, "Before every human being marches an angel proclaiming, 'Behold the image of God.'"

I have a saying here that is -- that's how I felt.

"Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach.

It was the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God's eyes."

And that's what I often felt.

I was privileged to see the person as God saw them.

I saw their beauty as God saw them.

And so I just say what I need to say -- to God, as well as to everybody else.

[ Chuckles ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ I did so much education not just in Toledo, but in the surrounding counties, out in Sandusky and some of the outlying areas.

People seemed to be very... frightened about how it could be transmitted.

So there was a real... ...avoidance of people if they knew that they were HIV positive or had -- had contracted AIDS.

And so there was silence on the part of some people who were infected.

So they weren't getting the help that they needed because they -- they -- they were afraid to -- to say.

I was mostly with them in the hospital and at the doctor's offices.

And when we were in the car, if they had the chills and it was summer, they would turn the heater on, and if it was winter and they had a fever, they would open the window.

And I got immune to temperature.

Just whatever the temperature was, I just endured it.

Some of them relied on me on almost everything.

Like, there was one young man there, if he got sick, they couldn't do anything with him until I got there.

If he had to go to the hospital, he would hold my hand.

He wouldn't let loose of it.

I'd have to climb in the ambulance with him, which made the ambulance people really frustrated, you know, that sort of thing, where -- where if they were frightened or whatever, I would get called, or if there was a problem with them, I would get called, or if they didn't understand what was going on with them, they would ask me to come and talk to them or whatever, that kind of thing.

The bishop had appointed me his liaison to the interreligious group.

Almost every religion in Toledo had representatives there, and I did AIDS education with them.

And I told them something about the work that we were doing.

And as a result of that, I had ministers of every religion who were on call, because I found often that persons who were dying of AIDS wanted a connection with the church of their childhood.

They didn't want just anybody.

And so I would be able to call the Episcopal or the Presbyterian or the Baptist or whatever.

We didn't have any Pentecostals.

I had been talking with this man who had said to me, "I'd like to talk to my minister."

Well, I had sent him somebody from practically every denomination.

I had sent him Episcopal priest, Catholic priest, a Presbyterian, a Baptist, a Methodist.

I just ran out of people.

And he would always say, "That was a very nice minister, but I really want to talk to mine."

And I said, "Well, who is yours?"

"Well, I don't know, but I always went to church with my grandmother in West Virginia," and she was dead, so I couldn't contact her.

And then one day a lady came to me, and she said, "Sister, my husband and I have been talking, and I'm going to quit my job and volunteer with you full time.

And he's going to support us."

So I got them together and I said, "I'm going to assign you as buddies, and I don't know why.

So after one month, we'll meet.

And if either one of you say, 'I would like to try someone else,' you just say that.

You don't have to explain or anything.

You just tell us."

So the next day -- He was in the hospital at the time.

The next day, I go to the hospital to check on him.

And I walk in, and he is just blooming.

And he said, "Sister, I saw my minister last night."

And I said, "Who was your minister?"

And he said, "Cindy's husband."

And they were Pentecostals.

And so they invited me to come to their church and do AIDS education.

And he literally died in their midst.

And they took him by train -- his body by train to West Virginia to bury him by his grandmother.

♪♪ ♪♪ The ones that frustrated me were the prostitutes.

And I remember driving down the street one day and I spotted a woman who was full-blown AIDS.

And I stopped my car and I said, "Get in."

She said, "Sister, my pimp will kill you."

And I said, "No, no, he won't."

I said, "I've been told the word is on the street, anybody hurts Eileen, they get hurt."

I took her to David's House.

But when they went back on the street and back on the street and I would see them, and I'd think, "This can't be."

There was some of our volunteers that were so frustrated at this that they began writing down license plates of the people who picked them up, looking up their home address and sending a postcard to them, "You were seen picking up a prostitute on such and such a day at such and such a time on such and such a street," and sending it to their home.

[ Chuckles ] ♪♪ The church would say that a union between two men is not valid, okay?

It's wrong, okay?

That's theological.

Pastorally, I would sit down with couples who were both men and I would work with them and I would accept them as the persons that they were.

A lot of times I was their power of attorney for healthcare because their families, at that point, some of them would have nothing to do with them.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Michael died first.

And Dennis moved in with Michael kind of to be his caregiver, even though he -- he had AIDS himself.

I was Michael's power of attorney for health care.

"Mike and Dennie."

I went with him to all of his medical appointments.

So, one day, he called me, and he said, "Eileen, I can't breathe."

And I said, "I'll be right there."

So, I took him, and I called his doctor.

And he said, "Michael, I would have to intubate you, and you said no extraordinary means."

And the doctor looked at me and said, "Eileen, from here on, you're gonna have to make all the medical decisions."

He looked at Michael, and Michael said, "Yes!"

Like that.

So they did.

They intubated him.

You know, after some time, he -- he obviously was not living anymore.

And I asked his doctor to take him off the machines.

And the doctor was extremely reluctant to do that, and I said to him, "Am I making a bad decision to close things down for Michael?"

And he said, "No.

You're absolutely right."

And I said, "Well, then why aren't you doing it?"

And he said, "Because he's dying as much from the medicines I gave him as he is from the disease."

And I said to him, "I was with him in every single appointment with you, and every time you gave him the medicine, you explained more than we wanted to hear what the side effects and what the possible, you know, outcomes of this medicine was, and Michael made informed decisions."

So, I said, "You need to take him off."

♪♪ I said to Michael, who was seemingly totally unconscious -- I said to him, "Michael, I have to go to be with Glen, and if you need to leave before I come back, that's alright.

You go when you're ready to go."

And so, I left, and I got down to the parking lot.

And I was paged, and the nurse said, "Sister, Michael left with you.

She said, "We heard -- We heard the elevator door close and we went into his room and he was gone.

He'd left with you."

That happened more than once.

♪♪ Once, I was on a retreat, and this lady came to me and she said, "Sister, there are spirits in contact with me."

She said, "There are spirits all around you, just all around you.

And they want to speak to you."

She named names which she could never have known and told me things which she never could have known.

I said, "Why -- Why are they wanting to speak through you?"

And she said, "Because they want you to know that you are to trust your intuition because they are guiding it."

♪♪ ♪♪ I-I remember the issue of being with a couple, and the young man who was ill had dementia.

And they had asked me to come to the hospital to feed him because he wouldn't eat for anyone.

And so I went into his room, and he tried to eat.

He tried to eat.

And then I understood that he had thrush from his lips to his stomach.

And I went -- I marched out to the doctor and I said, "How can you expect him to eat when he has thrush from his mouth to his stomach?"

And the doctor looked at me and he said, "Get him ready to go downstairs for a test."

Sure enough, he had thrush from his mouth to his stomach.

And then later I met that doctor, and he said, "How did you know he had thrush from his mouth to his stomach?"

I said, "Well, he told me."

He's said, "But he -- he's -- he's completely incoherent.

How did --" I said, "Well, he just told me."

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ I think David contacted me probably through NOVA.

He was more interested in what he could do, if he could do anything at that point, because he lived with his father and his sister and they were very caring and -- and took excellent care for him.

And they also gave him his freedom.

Like, I remember David traveled, because I remember once he was gone for a week or two and I made a thing that covered his door that said, "Welcome home, David," and took it out to the house.

And so I know that at the beginning, he was pretty active.

And -- And well.

I mean, he had full-blown AIDS, but he was not ill. And... ...he would talk to me about the people that didn't have the support that he had.

He had such a heart for them.

And he said, "If only we could have a house.

We need a house for people to go to if they don't have family or if their family won't have anything to do with them and they don't have any support."

And he would just frequently talk about that.

He died before anything happened.

And a group kind of came together that was interested in housing.

And when it came time to name, I-I told them about David and suggested it be named David's House.

♪♪ I-I just remember the people that were involved and how dear they were to me.

I remember how they were.

Here's David.

I like that picture of David.

It -- To me, this looks more like David than this does.

This was taken much earlier.

And these are the quilts.

This is David's quilt.

And this is Ron's.

♪♪ And this is Thomas's quilt that I made.

Some of it's sewn by hand, and some of it was sewn on.

But, you know, I had to -- I had -- this is padded, and the leaves are padded.

♪♪ He loved the theater.

"I'd rather be bowling."

And I can't remember why he liked pigs, but he did.

There's flamingos and pigs on his.

He loved Christmas.

♪♪ ♪♪ I know I have a picture of it somewhere.

Okay, this is the staircase.

And it was all of the same wood as the woodwork, and it kind of curved around a landing to go upstairs.

It was ideal for what we wanted to do.

It was ideal because it had individual -- I think it was five individual suites with a sitting room, a bedroom, and a bathroom.

It had a large kitchen.

It had a large dining room and two sitting areas... living room spaces.

And it had absolutely beautiful woodwork.

You know, the original woodwork, it was absolutely gorgeous.

And it had crystal chandeliers, and it had oriental rugs still beautiful after not being used for years and years and years.

And we cleaned them, and they were like new.

♪♪ It was just very different depending on who was there.

When it was the end-stage folks, it was quite different because their sharing was often more spiritual.

It was often more supportive of one another at whatever stage they were.

Sometimes it was very sad because we had lost somebody, so there was supporting of one another in grief.

It was just very different.

♪♪ ♪♪ I left in '90.

So it was just those initial years of getting it up and running.

At that point, there was not a paid position for me, because my paid position was with NOVA.

As I looked at what was happening, it was time to move.

They had what they needed to succeed.

They needed to be invested with the people that were there to serve them.

And I felt that keeping too much in touch could block that.

And when I came home, I thought maybe I needed counseling because I was grieving.

There were hundreds, literally, that died.

So I went to the counselor, and after an hour he said, "Oh, you don't need counseling.

You just need to resign yourself that you're going to grieve the rest of your life."

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