A Crooked Nun And Her Conglomerate

"I’m a crooked nun, that’s all, but I can still walk," says Sister Cecelia with a wink, her face bright under the visor of a blue batik sun cap. She heads Our Lady of Victory mission of the Maryknoll sisters in Davao City, whose primary mission target is the disabled. But the way the mission has grown, it’s like a conglomerate with a diversified portfolio of businesses.

Sister Cecelia Wood, now 86, walks with a marked stoop—hence the description "crooked"—and the aid of an umbrella she uses as a walking stick. She has a couple of wheeled walkers, which she rarely uses because she cannot take them up and down hills and over dirt tracks when she visits the many projects that Our Lady of Victory runs in Davao City.

At the 1.3-hectare main center in Sasa district they have a medical rest house for orthopedic patients, a physiotherapy center, a bakery, an art workshop, a wood workshop, a metal workshop where they make wheelchairs (which also doubles as a basketball court), a workshop where they make prostheses, a piggery, and a thatch roof coop crowded with 720 quail that lay about 400 eggs a day, which they sell to restaurants in the city. Not too far away they have an orchidarium, from where they also run a plant rental service and a flower shop.

On Samal island, a RoRo ride away—the Bangayans who own the ferry service are very accommodating, giving them free passage—a five-hectare beachfront property, purchased in 2003 at P178 per square meter (now worth about P5,000 per square meter and likely to go up even more with a resort being developed right next door) has sections planted to rice (they hope to be self-sufficient soon), mangoes, corn and vegetables. Cottages and gazebos near the beach provide accommodation for some of their wards, and also for patients from the city center who are brought here for hydro-physiotherapy sessions. "We find that hydro-therapy really helps them," says Edna May Tamayo, a physical therapist who now does administration work as well for the mission.

"And it’s good for them to get out of the city and come here," adds Sister Cecelia. Indeed, the view of Davao Gulf and the mountains beyond are a soothing sight for anyone, disabled or not. A student that Sister Cecelia taught over 50 years ago donated a banca, which the boys use to go out fishing. On the beachfront they are starting to plant mangrove trees.

There is a little school here, and Father Ralph Kroes teaches the kids how to use the computer. There is also a bakery attached to a sari-sari store, which does the community great service because residents no longer have to pay a hefty sum for a tricycle ride into town to buy basic needs like rice and soap and milk, and things are sold much cheaper here in the mission store. Pan de sal, for example, is only P1.50, about half the price elsewhere.

Sister Cecelia first came to the Philippines as a teacher in 1946, "on the first boat after the war; Manila was in shambles," she recalls. She returned to the U.S. to get her medical degree, specializing in internal medicine. She also got a PhD in biology, specializing in cancer research, then taught at Columbia University. But she felt that that was not where she wanted to be: "I was with the wealthy and that’s not what I became a Maryknoll sister for."

She looked at mission fields overseas, and heard about a Jesuit priest who was starting a medical school in Mindanao and was desperate for teachers. The Philippines, medicine and education added up to the right recipe, so she came over and taught at the Davao Medical School for 13 years. She started clinics in Sirawan and Talomo, Muslim communities in Davao where, back in 1978,""no white person had ever been."

In 1981 she took three disabled boys under her wing, and in three months the number grew to 35. "I looked for a person who would give me a hectare of land to build a place for these disabled boys," she says, and found Don Vicente Hizon, who told her, "Choose the land and it’s yours." There she built the Our Lady of Victory training center. Many other donors came to share her burden and her mission, among them Ambassador Howard Dee and the Assisi Foundation, as well as the Christoffel Blindenmission of Germany.

All their other "businesses" grew mainly as answers to needs and unexpected opportunities. The orchidarium, for example, came about because "I worked extensively with tissues when I was doing cancer research," and that expertise translated successfully into orchid culture.

Edna May’s husband Edwin—they met at the center, one of many matches that Sister Cecelia has fostered—who is an engineer, helped construct the medical center and most of the other facilities, and started their prostheses workshop, with help from overseas foundations which provided the technology needed for such a specialized product.

They used to have a chicken farm, but a virus wiped out their flock, and a carageenan venture had to be scrapped because the water around their Samal property was too warm.

The beneficiaries of Our Lady of Victory put in their share, helping with construction when they can, or else work in the craftshop or metal shop. In the artshop they do cross-stitch cards and decor; when we visited they showed us some 20 beautiful panels that a Canadian entity ordered. They also do beadwork—two ladies in wheelchairs were busy finishing the beadwork on a debutante’s gown—and woodcarving.

Originally from Seattle, Sister Cecelia says her grandfather was an old Irish sea captain who thought that Seattle was the most beautiful place on earth, so he moved his family there when Cecelia’s mother was just 12 years old. Her father worked on the boats at Puget Sound, and Sister Cecelia recalls going out with him on the boats sometimes, and going skiing in the mountains. "A train ride to the mountains then was 50 cents," she reminisces. "We also went horseback riding for 50 cents—it now costs $40!"

Sister Cecelia is tireless, tracking down people she can help as well as potential sponsors who can help her and her mission. But she is quick to dispel any notion of indispensability: "I can go to heaven tomorrow and the center will go on fine," she says.

Crooked she may now be with age, but for the past three decades Sister Cecelia has made the path straight for many, many disabled and disadvantaged Filipinos, and shared her radiant smile and her big, big heart with countless others.