Living Holy Child History
Sr. Sheila McNiff ’56, SHCJ
At 83, Sr. Sheila remains an active Mayfield alum and trustee, and we were thrilled to have her on campus this spring to help during our transition to hybrid learning.
As we celebrate the 175th anniversary of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus, we honor the Sisters who have devoted their lives to “Love and Serve” as part of Cornelia Connelly’s educational mission and the Society’s social justice ministries around the world. Mayfield alum and trustee Sr. Sheila McNiff ’56, SHCJ offers a unique window into the history of the Society, and connects the Mayfield of a bygone age to the Mayfield of the present.
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ayfield has been a part of Sr. Sheila’s life since she was a toddler. The fourth of seven McNiff siblings to attend a Mayfield school in Pasadena, some of Sr. Sheila’s earliest Mayfield memories were marked by a very different international crisis: “When I started school, it was World War II,” Sr. Sheila says. She remembers the global scope and the local impacts, and explained how her mother used to exchange rations with the nuns at Mayfield Junior School. Her mother would give them her flour and sugar coupons, and the nuns would trade their shoe rations. The nuns had less need
The McNiff family’s World War II ration book
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Postscripts 2021
for new shoes, Sr. Sheila says, while the many McNiff children were constantly outgrowing their Oxfords. “I still have my mother’s ration book,” she admits. In the 65 years since she graduated from Mayfield, Sr. Sheila has enjoyed an expansive and impressive career as an educator, therapist, counselor and chaplain. She has served as a principal at schools in the U.S. and internationally and has been an active member of Mayfield’s Board of Trustees for more than 17 years—first in the 1970s, before she moved to Africa, and again from 2008 through to today. This year, during the COVID-19 pandemic, she joined fellow alums working on campus to make sure the hybrid reopening of the school was safe for every student. Sr. Sheila has relished the opportunity to get to know this generation of Mayfield students a little better. In late May, she piled into a school bus with a group of Seniors bound for the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank to volunteer with them during their final service project before graduation. She has watched as this new crop of Mayfield students finds their
