I still remember the party we threw for Sister Gail Grimes. It was supposed to be a celebration of her retirement — one she’d most certainly earned.
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At the age of 76, Gail had spent more than half a century working to improve the lives of others. And frankly, she deserved the break.
So we all raised glasses of punch in her honor back in 2014. At her friends’ urging, I even lured Gail onto the dance floor as a light-hearted throwback to her wilder, teenage years when she couldn’t resist the siren call of a jukebox.
But then, after we all wished her well in retirement, Gail politely and yet resolutely told us we could all pound sand.
She continued working, championing the rights and human dignity of the downtrodden for another 12 years until she passed away Sunday at the age of 88.
Even in her final days, she did things on her own terms. “She was on her dying bed, and she wanted Popeye’s,” said her best friend and roommate, Sister Ann Kendrick.
Gail and Ann were half of a beloved quartet of spunky nuns, along with Sisters Cathy Gorman and Teresa McElwee, who arrived in Central Florida in 1971. In 2007, the group colloquially known as “The Apopka Nuns” was selected as the Orlando Sentinel’s “Central Floridians of the Year.”
Archbishop Thomas Wenski once described them as “the conscience of the community,” saying: “They’ve inspired us to look at poor people in a new light and respond with generosity. Not paternalistically, but in a way that empowers them and allows them to find their own dignity.”
Once a foursome, now only Ann, 81, is left.
I could spend an entire column rattling off the litany of life-changing things these nuns accomplished from the Hope CommUnity Center in Apopka. They helped create an entire health care system and credit union for citizens often overlooked by society. They taught generations of immigrants English and math while standing up for their rights. They fought for integration and even helped build an entire neighborhood.
But instead, I wanted to talk about why they did all this — why Gail decided that, even after retirement, she couldn’t just sit on the sidelines.
Because, she said, God calls on all of us to act. Even when it’s tempting to tune out the news because it’s just so maddening. In fact, especially then.
Gail believed those of us who aren’t subjected to injustices and indignities have an obligation to stand up for those who do, no matter how old we are.
As an example, Gail last year recalled a story from 2023 that reminded her that she had to fight for others as long as she had breath in her lungs.
The story — about a bus crash that killed eight migrant farmworkers and injured nearly 50 others — was both horrific and tragic. The bus was cruising along the highway in the pre-dawn darkness on its way to watermelon fields in Dunnellon, when a drunk driver plowed into their vehicle.
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None of those injured or killed were wearing seat belts for a simple, yet gross reason: The bus didn’t have any, according to reports at the time that said such lacking safety measures were sadly standard for migrant workers.
Gail was outraged. Few other human beings would be subjected to such dangerous working conditions. And for what? So that the rest of us could stuff our faces with cheap produce?
Many Floridians saw the story, admitted it was sad, but then went about their lives. But Gail believed she had to act. Especially since she saw many Floridians demonizing these very people who do back-breaking work in scorching farm fields to put food on the table for the rest of us. And so that their employers could have healthier profit margins.
“There are just laws and unjust laws,” Gail said at the time. “And treating immigrants like they are dirt, those laws are unjust. And not moral.”
So, well into her 80s, Sister Monica Gail Grimes continued advocating for the least among us, working to ensure immigrants had health care and legal protection, sometimes even still attending protests in the streets on their behalf.
And I found myself thinking: If an octogenarian nun still felt morally compelled to keep on working on behalf of others, what excuse do the rest of us have?
I know many of us are sick and tired of being sick and tired. It’s tempting to want to tune out the noise and division and retreat into our protected bubbles. But Sister Gail believed people of faith have obligations.
She cited Luke 4: 18-20: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
It isn’t always easy. Sister Ann said she and Gail often talked about how, sometimes, “a hard day’s work meant breaking your heart.”
But Ann also said Gail was stubborn in all the best ways, “focused on the need for us to be courageous and to stand up.”
That’s probably why Gail didn’t think much of her retirement parties. “She had three of them, actually,” her friend Mary Carroll recalled Monday with a laugh.
And when Gail’s friends gathered in her hospice room last week and saw the results of a heart scan that showed her heart was so enlarged, it was intruding into her lungs, friend Laura Firtel said they decided that only made sense. “For over 50 years, Gail has been exercising her heart.”
Ann said Gail’s final moments were tear-filled, but also “a beautiful release.”
“I think both of us would say that, at the end of our lives, we have no regrets,” she said. “We’ve had a great run.”
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To support or learn more about Hope CommUnity Center, visit www.hcc-offm.org