Sister Monica Gail Grimes, a Catholic nun who devoted her life to battling racial injustice and serving immigrant community members in Central Florida, died Sunday at the age of 88.
Sister Gail, as she was known, was one of a small group of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur who came to Apopka at the bishop's request in the 1970s.
“And when we came,” Grimes said, in a 2014 oral history interview for the RICHES of Central Florida project, “the agreement with the bishop was that we would not just serve Catholic farmworkers, that we would serve farmworkers … what their needs were, not based on establishing churches or establishing missions, but that we would work with all farmworkers.”
Grimes moved into segregated South Apopka. She helped found Hope CommUnity Center, which educates and assists immigrant families in Apopka, and helped organize farmworkers in Florida.
Felipe Sousa Lazaballet, Hope CommUnity Center's executive director, who is also a Democratic candidate for the Florida House, said Grimes was a "giant among us."
"She fought against segregation when she arrived in Central Florida," he said. "Here in Apopka she organized farmworkers and the Black community in South Apopka for justice. And honestly, she was the backbone of the founding of the Hope CommUnity Center and the Farmworker Association of Florida."
Grimes had a warmth about her, he said, but also "a certain level of discipline that she always brought to everything she did, constantly reminding us (about) the power of everyday people to do great things."
U.S. Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Orlando, said he had come to know Grimes several years ago. Frost said he joined her recently at a roundtable about immigrants in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, where "she had a lot to say."
He said her death was "devastating" but her legacy lives on.
"People don't understand how much of a pillar of the community she is, and also Sister Ann," Frost said, referring to her fellow religious Ann Kendrick.
"Sister Gail has been pivotal in the fight for human rights and civil rights in this community for a long time," Frost said. "In Ocoee, when black families were being terrorized, she stood outside of homes in her car, waiting to make sure that people were safe, to warn people, to call the police, to help people. When farm workers were organizing in Apopka, she was there."
In the oral history recording, Grimes recalled the hard lives of farm workers and the racially segregated scene in Apopka, where even the drinking water supply was unequal.
Many young Black people left South Apopka, she said, to escape the toil and low pay of a farm worker's life.
"And they wanted to do something that would give them more dignity," she added, "although farm workers sometimes say that I have the most wonderful job in the nation. I feed you. Without me, what would you do?"
