Episode 62 Sister Sharon Rambin - ”Shreveport-Bossier: My City, My Community, My Home”

Sister Sharon Rambin sits down with Jeffrey Goodman, Director of Marketing and Development for the YMCA of Northwest Louisiana, to answer the following questions:

 

0:31 1. Sister Sharon, you have been a longtime advocate for accessible healthcare for children in Shreveport-Bossier. You once said, “A healthy community thrives.”

 

Today I want to talk about some of your impactful work and touch on the inspiring life of service you have led.

 

Let’s start here today. How did you first become aware that providing accessible healthcare to children in Shreveport-Bossier was such an important need in our community?

 

4:37 2. Your path to becoming a nun is not the most traditional I have ever come across. After graduating from LSUS, you worked in public relations before joining Channel 3 where you ultimately became a news producer.

 

You once said,

 

“I think all of us have a call to ministry. Growing up in Shreveport and Bossier, I’ve been given so much, and I’d like to return as much as possible.”

 

How did you come to make the decision that your life’s work would be giving back to our community?

 

7:37 3. In 1998, along with the Sisters of Our Lady of Sorrows, you founded the Renzi Education and Art Center. Talk to me about the beginning of Renzi, how you got involved in that project and how you knew it would serve such an important need in our community.

 

9:55 4. You have also spent your career advocating for the elderly and disabled in our community. Your mother was a nurse in Holy Angels’ baby nursery for several years and it was here that, as a child, you were introduced to the needs of disabled children and the life of religious Sisters.

 

Talk to me about your early memories of Holy Angels and, from your perspective, how we are doing as a community in taking care of our elderly and disabled?

 

13:10 5. This wasn’t one of my planned questions. But listening to you speak I have to ask you, and it’s a question I’ve asked some previous guests.

 

I feel like we’ve become, maybe here or a lot of places, we’ve become such a me community rather than a we community. As someone who is so community-minded, what kind of advice or what sort of recommendations would you potentially offer to help us maybe transition from a me community to a we community?

 

16:21 6. As you look around our community now, what concerns you the most? And what seems more challenging today than at other times in your more than thirty years of serving our community?

 

19:27 7. Lastly, on the other side of the last question, what seems better today and makes you optimistic about the future of our community?