Nun Not Forced to Sacrifice Identity

When she was younger, Doreen Herrman was a regular tomboy, climbing trees, jumping over hedges, playing baseball and touch football.

“In my days, girls were nice young ladies, and my mother couldn’t understand why I couldn’t be like the other girls,” she said.

It’s five decades later and that romping little girl is Sister Doreen Herrman, 69, who just celebrated her 50th year as a member of the Third Franciscan Order of Syracuse (New York), a teaching and nursing order.

“To a certain extent, I still did all those things after becoming a nun,” she said, although a recent leg ailment that requires surgery has slowed her somewhat.

“For some reason, people outside the convent think we don’t have any fun, that we can’t have parties and can’t have friends,” said the recently retired principal of San Juan Capistrano’s Mission School. She continues to teach there.

And, she said, others think of a nun’s existence as unchallenging and dull and that the whole purpose is a religious life.

“That’s not true,” she said, but she admits that the reputation has caused a drop in the number of women who are interested in becoming nuns.

Sister Doreen said the life of a nun is a matter of interpretation.

“Being together with one another, playing together, praying together, going through our struggles together, teasing each other and playing tricks on one another is part of our life,” she said. “It’s not unlike regular community life.”

And just like life outside the convent, she said, “we try to let people see us as normal, warm human beings. We all have our own personalities.”

As teachers--as any teachers--she notes, “nuns have to point out mistakes and correct people.”

“There are those who say we are hard to please and are grouches,” added the University of Dayton (Ohio) graduate. “I guess sometimes we can be that way, just like any teacher. We often have to nag at some students to remind them of their shortcomings.”

Sister Doreen has spent most of her career as a nun in Syracuse and in Hawaii, where she received her master’s degree in education at the University of Hawaii.

She has been at the mission in San Juan Capistrano for 11 years.

“I think I have accomplished a number of things, most of all that I was a forthright person,” she said. “I called a spade a spade.”

And there are no regrets about her life as a teaching nun, which includes instructing students in elementary, junior high and high school.

As principal at Mission School, she initiated a computer system and used computers to aid schoolwork.

While she sees the need for computers, she insists that “computers will never replace teachers.”

Her long career as a nun belies the fact that she wasn’t especially interested in becoming a nun and, early on, had planned a career in law.

“When I was young, a friend asked me to visit a convent with her one night, but I had a date and didn’t want to go,” said Sister Doreen. “She told me, ‘Keep your old date.’ But I broke it and went with her.”

During her career, she shied away from politics.

“I don’t believe in being political,” she said. “Maybe it’s because I have stereotyped some politicians as being untruthful and saying things just to get what they want.”

However, she added, “people have wrong ideas about (nuns), and maybe I have the wrong idea of some politicians.”

Acknowledgments--Donald D. Reimann, who will retire next month after 30 years of teaching at Fullerton College, was the unanimous choice for the President’s Award, the school’s top staff honor of the year. The veteran humanities teacher also received $500. He is the father of seven children.