A History of our Services> A Gem from South Dakota
(Sheila Rice-Wray)

She was in this country for only a short period of time during the 1940’s, on her way to other lands in the Americas where she did not settle down. She came back very soon, dazzled by the landscapes of the island and the simplicity of the people, staying among us to spread faith and teachings for half a century. Sheila Rice-Wray – Miss Sheila to all – originally from South Dakota, the daughter of an austere family of four sisters, divided her time between two noble apostolates: The spread of the Baha`i Faith and the teaching of English, which have made her become a legend at the Instituto Cultural Domínico-Americano, of which she was a founder and teacher during decades, until her retirement some years ago.

I met Miss Sheila towards the end of the Trujillo Era, when my sixth grade teacher, breaking all the rules of the religious regulation of the Salesian school where he taught, invited me to visit the Baha`i Center, situated in Ciudad Nueva. I am talking here about 1958, when the dictatorship, already declining, had made even more strict the political repression in the country, trying to detain, by terrible means that would show themselves to be futile in the long run because of the landslide of silent protest and dissatisfaction that had fed the ranks of the clandestine opposition, thoroughly undermining the bases of the régime.

In those days, I was barely a child of twelve, with no knowledge of the horrors of political happenings, but with my eyes and ears on all that surrounded me.
The thin figure of that woman full of enthusiasm, who spoke Spanish with a marked American accent, irradiated a powerful attraction on all others. Surely the conversation of the adults who were gathered there was about her faith, but the only lasting thing that remained of that encounter was Miss Sheila’s presence. I never returned or remained in contact with the persons I met there. However, the image of that foreigner with the lively blue eyes and prematurely white hair was fixed in me with the strength that only belongs to things that are permanent.

Years later, as an adolescent, I decided to study English, and the first thing I did was go to the Dominico to take the corresponding level exam. You can imagine my surprise when I saw that the teacher in charge of the evaluations was Miss Sheila. A friendly, brief interview in a corner under a staircase in the old locale, located at Avenida Independencia corner of Pasteur, was enough to indicate my low level of proficiency in her language. As of then, and thanks to the evocation of the past and that link of mutual liking that was established between us, sprang a friendship full of affection, which the years have only enriched and made more solid.

Through the classes taught by Miss Sheila, I learned not only English but also some of the secrets of the art of teaching. Her method was more intuitive than scientific, full of marvelous guesswork that you can only achieve when teaching is a vocation. Her style, a mixture of severe spontaneity and appeasing humor, of rigorous professionalism and eternal joy, was the result of a woman who had put her life at the service of her fellow man, without resigning to her own space, without abandoning her deepest fondness, like her painting which was to her for a long time a way of honoring God through shapes and colors. Her oil paintings of a seascape had the seal of the Caribbean, exuberant and wild, that had been her country of adoption: furiously blue and gray skies; rough waves that break on the reefs; suicidal poincianas, as Mieses Burgos would say; orange and red twilights that foretold the dark night; fruit trees that were either leafy or about to die of old age. All of nature vibrated as a demonstration of the immensity of the universe and the trifle that is mankind. She still keeps some of those paintings, which hang on the walls of her room, in the home of the Bezán family, and in the rest of the house where the fruit of her friendship is harvested.

Several generations of Dominicans were taught by this English teacher who never limited her work to exercises, the right sentence, and the exact pronunciation. She was strict, of course, but she went much further, becoming a model of good manners, shyness without being ridiculous, and a spontaneous spirituality that showed in each class. An hour spent in her presence, if you made good use of it, was the equivalent of being immersed in a vital experience, always rejoicing to those who imagine the universe with optimism and know how to face adversity with an admirable wholeness of spirit. In no other way can you explain her living so happily, without being apparently perturbed by bitter memories or old pains, always loved by the profound ethical and religious convictions taught by Baha´u´llah… Rather than telling anecdotes about her youth, her conversation during the last years tells about experiences in European countries, or in the Orient, where she had the privilege of attending a congress about the Baha’i Faith. Since I met her, I know that for her talking about herself or about her family is a subject that she reserves for very few persons and occasions. What is important is the feeling, the attitude, the way of facing life, the relationships with concrete human beings and spiritual development.

To me in particular, Miss Sheila means much more than a respectable language teacher does. She oriented my first readings of the North American classical authors, as a close friend and as a counselor. I learned more about the most elementary things by listening to Emerson, Hawthorne, Poe, Cooper, Twain, or any other of the great writers of the XIX Century, than trying to figure out for myself the possible meanings in the complexities of a language that I was learning. When I was n Alabama as a resident teacher, I wrote her a letter to express my gratitude for being my counselor during the seventies, and to talk to her about the agreeable experiences I got from my classes, in English, about literature and culture in the Caribbean.

When I published the first collection of tales in 1973, she did not hesitate to tell me about her disgust because I had used bad language in some texts. I accepted her rebuke in silence, aware that to her, literature should not give way to verbal excess. Miss Sheila is also, in my memory, a series of conversations in her apartment on Calle Federico Henríquez y Carvajal, lovely afternoons of tea and cookies – her unforgettable cookies, which made herself for her guests. In my brief experience at the Dominico as a teacher of Spanish for foreign students, about twenty years ago, I had the honor of sharing with her in an atmosphere of camaraderie which contributed in part to my training as an educator. From time to time, I visit her when my obligations allow me to do so, that is to say, very little, although I try to give each visit an intensity that will make up for the limitations of absence. She always prepares herself to receive the friend, to whom she offers some delicacy set apart with care for such occasions. At some moment, she proudly shows me the gallery of pictures of her correligionaries, her religious relatives, scattered around the world at the four cardinal points, and with whom she maintains a sporadic communication by letter. They are her points of reference with outside life, because at age eighty-eight she hardly goes out of the house.

Now she is a woman who is slender as never before, fragile, small, with diminished hearing and movements, but with her spirit intact and her faith strengthened by reading and meditation. She is retired and far from mundane noise. This year, the Dominico celebrates the fifty-five years of its foundation, and the sparkle of that gem of South Dakota who answers to the name of Sheila Rice-Wray, pioneer, teacher of generations, lights the way of this educational center and projects it firmly toward the future.