Benedictine Sisters
1910 Maple Ave
Lisle, IL 60532

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Gilbert Tuma, OSB

Sister Gilbert Tuma, OSB, entered the Benedictine community at age eighteen and has been involved in a lifetime of teaching and opening up the world of music and performance to young children and adults.

In 1947, Sister Gilbert started the first kindergarten at St. Vitus in Chicago and taught there for eleven years. In those days, Sister’s classes were never less in size than 40-50 students! Her love of children and of music blended as Sister wrote her own operettas and had her young students perform productions like ‘High Mother Goose’, ‘Hansel and Gretel’ and others. In her classroom that she decorated as a fairyland, Sister shared with her young charges her love of dance and song. She started a rhythm band and taught, first herself, and then her students how to play instruments such as sticks, castanets, cymbals, bells, triangle and the snare drum.

After her tenure at St. Vitus, Sister Gilbert taught kindergarten for three years at Lourdes, also in Chicago. She spent time teaching summer school at Mary of Celle in Cicero and then moved to Texas and taught first grade in Fort Worth. She especially enjoyed preparing the children for First Communion. Wisconsin was next in her teaching career where Sister worked with first, second and third graders and developed a skit of the seven sacraments that was performed each year by the students. Sister came back to Lisle to teach at St. Joan of Arc in the early elementary grades.

Sister Gilbert ultimately came back to the monastery and was involved teaching at a local Montessori school for a year. Then she established and operated the Music Studio in the lower level of the monastery where she provided piano and violin lessons for fifteen years until the monastery renovation required that the studio be closed.

Sister reflects with great pride on her 23-year ministry in the Altar Bread Department at the monastery. During this period, the monastery served over 100 churches. This department closed several years ago.

Sister Gilbert is not content to rest and relax! She moves with lightening speed around the monastery and remains very active in providing private piano and violin lessons in homes around the Lisle area. She currently has fourteen students, many youngsters but also some of their parents! Sister loves her students and the opportunity to get to know families in their homes.

With the completion of Villa St. Benedict, Sister Gilbert welcomes the opportunity to meet the new residents and perhaps to share her passion for music and performance with her new friends and neighbors on the grounds of Sacred Heart Monastery. Nothing would please her more than to make beautiful music at VSB with residents who share this interest.