By Gretchen Wing

If it were up to Diana Sheridan, this Spotlight would use a different metaphor: a dream-catcher. “I see myself in this circle,” she says, all her passions connected in a web. “In the middle of that dream catcher are relationships and community. That’s what all those threads are.” Diana and her husband Ed share powerful strands of that web, which, one year ago, drew them permanently to Lopez.

Love of learning is a major strand, nurtured in her academic family. In 1966, with two children and little money, the Sheridans entered graduate school. Ed left his teaching job in Tacoma, and both enrolled at UW, Diana in library science, Ed in social work. With no budget for daycare, they tag-teamed. Diana watched the children while Ed attended class, “then at 4:30, I was literally on the curb, with both kids, waiting for him, and off I went till 10 o’clock.”

Diana and Ed rented an apartment for $32/month at Yesler Terrace, public housing for mostly African American families. That experience, she says, “was life-forming.” As part of the War on Poverty, Diana helped establish a daycare center. That neighborhood “nourished me to become an activist,” Diana says. “My involvement with the Lopez Land Trust really began long ago as a child in New York City, but it came to fruition in Seattle when I grasped what community really means.” Remember that dream-catcher?

Shared love of adventure is another strand. After a couple of years as high school librarian and social worker, Diana and Ed joined the Peace Corps and packed up for two years on Mindanao, in the Philippines. The kids, six and eight, went to local schools while their parents caught the “jeepney” (converted WWII jeeps) to work. Diana wrote grants and collected training materials for the Philippine Department of Social Welfare; Ed did community development projects. Though daily life was safe enough, evidence of a war between Christians and Muslims posed “difficult questions by our children when they saw body bags at the airport.”

Diana’s most passionate project was starting a squatters’ community health center that still exists. She also worked in the distant mountains with nomadic Mansaka women, who made beautiful beadwork. The women kept all their beads in a huge bowl, through which the children dug as their mothers painstakingly picked out the desired colors. Attempting to streamline production, Diana received a lesson in cultural norms. She brought a set of baby-food jars to separate colors into, a seemingly well-received innovation. Two weeks later she returned to find the jars used for other things, and all the beads back in the bowl. “What happened? ‘Well, there was nothing for the children to do. We’ve done this for thousands of years. The children play with us while we work.’” Diana began to dream of becoming a medical anthropologist.

The Sheridans returned to the States in 1974 with a new son, settling in Seattle. Some up-and-down years followed, librarian jobs cut short by RIFs, but Diana especially enjoyed her time at Highline Community College, where the Vietnamese and Native American students fed her love of connection with diverse peoples. But in 1980, Ed took a job in Eugene, and the family followed, spending 16 years there. Diana exercised her writing talents in the Grants Office at U. of O., and took some medical anthropology classes, but Oregon had no Ph.D. program in that field. So she created her own: Peace Studies, entwined with women’s and ecological issues. A new thread.

Her research took Diana as far as Norway and later, Siberia, to interview women on peacemaking strategies. She finished her degree in a manner more stressful than usual. The Center for the Study of Women and Society wanted to hire her as Associate Director, but required the Ph.D. So Diana blazed through her dissertation in six months, leaving the cooking to Ed. “He became a great cook,” she laughs. In her new job, Diana thrived in her work with faculty.

In 1996, the Sheridans retired to Bainbridge Island. The threads of community stayed tight: Diana hiked weekly with an outing group and worked with Kitsap Audubon society, among other involvement. But some variables were missing in their lives. They made a list: inter-generational community; little driving; beautiful environment; nourishing activism; physical activity. Years earlier, they had camped in the San Juans, and now a friend told them about Lopez’s Hamlet.

It was a perfect fit. Lopez is “a very caring place,” Diana says. Still passionate about housing, Diana joined the Land Trust board. She is also on the Trails Committee and the Hamlet’s Residence Council, and volunteers at the library. Six grandchildren – two from each child –                                         are “the love of our lives,” who “enjoy coming to us for ‘Nana and Papa’s Summer Camp.’” Into this web, Diana is now weaving art and poetry, and the circle grows more vibrant.