As a child, Shelia 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, for Catholic education. It was a noble act that she credits with much of her success today.
Working into her 70’s, Dr. Jewell is a research geneticist at the U.S. NOAA Northeast Fisheries Science Center, Milford, Connecticut.
“Science has made my faith stronger,” she says. “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.
Dr. 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 says. Dr. 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 reflects. Her mother, a teacher, was her first role model. She instilled in Sheila that 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 says.
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.
Sheila studied science at Father Bertrand High School where she was valedictorian. It was there that Sister Mary Kilian encouraged her to go to college and major in biology. She attended Xavier University in New Orleans and then accepted an internship in Milford, Connecticut. She was very apprehensive about leaving all she knew.
That summer, her advisors 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. They found a family for her to stay with.
She was the first permanent African American female employee in the Department of Interior in Milford marine biological laboratory, where she has had a 56-year career and she 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 working on restoring the population through genetics and breeding for better survival and growth.
Women’s rights and civil rights have helped and because of those things we saw a lot of improvement, though there are still some barriers today she says.
She loves working with young people, “reaching out and reaching back,” she says. “If you have a dream, follow it, do what it takes, don’t be discouraged, don’t give up.”
Dr. Stiles 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 very difficult to persevere, my faith has made a difference. Now, looking back, she realizes she was a pioneer who had much more than just scallops on her plate.
Written by Karen Pulfer Focht ©
Freelance Photojournalist in Memphis
Published by Faith Magazine Memphis, Tennessee
https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2021/02/04/black-catholic-science-genetics-239924