As the child of a peripatetic military family, Sister Sharon Zayac (Sister Sharon Therese) was born in Great Falls, Mont., but didn't spend much time there. After spending her youth on U.S. military bases around the world, she joined the Dominican Sisters from Sacred Heart Parish, Redlands, Calif. Her parents George and Mary Zayac and her brother Paul David Zayac are deceased. Her niece Tracy Zayac, lives in Cabot, Vermont and her nephew John Zayac in Rosewell, Ga.
Sister Sharon taught junior high, 1974-1982, at Little Flower School, Springfield, Ill., Sacred Heart School, San Diego, Calif., and St. Patrick School, Springfield. Then, after two years teaching history, geography, and theology at Sacred Heart Academy, Springfield, she transitioned into healthcare ministry. She worked for a year at St. Dominic Hospital Jackson, Miss, before completing a degree in healthcare administration and becoming assistant administrator, then administrator, of St. Mary-Rogers Memorial Hospital, Rogers, Ark., at that time a sponsored ministry of the Springfield Dominicans.
In the late 1990s Sister Sharon felt called to the study of Earth literacy and became the founding director of Jubilee Farm, the ecospirituality center on the western edge of Springfield begun by the Dominican Sisters in 1999. She directed operations and programming at Jubilee farm until 2019 and since then has dedicated most of her time writing, teaching, and presenting on topics related to ecojustice, climate change, and ecospirituality around the world.
"My vocation was quite a surprise to me, my parents, family, and friends," she said. "I did not attend Catholic schools or have any connection with religious sisters. I just knew it was what I was supposed to do. The roundabout way I ended up a Dominican Sister has brought me the most joy! Of the four pillars of our Dominican life, I continue to find that study is the most alluring for me. It is in learning about God's Creation, the whole of it, that I find God so powerfully present."
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Congratulations Sharon. I hope your Jubilee Year is richly blessed with much happiness and contentment! My thoughts and prayer is with you and your call to earth eco justice and preaching/teaching thus ministry around the earth. Much love to you from Aotearoa/New Zealand. Sr Judith Robinson op
Congratulations Sister Sharon. I really appreciate your service to us in Rogers at St Mary’s. I was a new radiologic technologist in 1989 and you made me feel so welcome.