Biography
Sister Marge Eilerman OSF was a Sister of St. Francis sentenced to 14 months in federal prison for SOA Watch sign-alteration and repeat trespass at the U.S. Army School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia on November 16, 1997.
Birth-year source
- SOA Watch prisoners-of-conscience chronology — identifies Sister Marge Eilerman as 60 during the September and November 1997 Fort Benning actions, supporting 1937 as her birth year.
Earlier line-crossing sentencing context distinct from sign alteration
Lorraine Krofchok’s January 21,1998 trial report, printed in the May 1998 newsletter on original page3, individually quotes this defendant in the Fort Benning line-crossing proceedings. It reports six-month terms and $3,000 fines in the collective sentencing account, with twenty-two to go to jail alongside three previously sentenced. This is not the separate September 1997 SOA sign-alteration prosecution currently recorded with a later 1998 prison phase. The article’s subsequent twenty-person March 23 reporting roster does not include this name; its common intake date must not be copied here. A remark in a collective sentencing report is not by itself a physical-prison admission or proof of a completed six-month term. No actual release, individual exact sentence date, new jail interval or numeric counter is inferred.
Grandmothers for Peace International, May 1998 newsletter, original pages 3–4.
The Pardon Attorney’s April 15, 1998 letter says Bichsel, Eilerman, Kinane and Trotochaud had not yet begun the November 1997 protest sentences while awaiting sentencing in another case. It is therefore unsafe to copy the other defendants’ common March 23 intake date onto these four. Mike Lowry’s October 21 letter distinguishes the September 1997 sign-alteration prosecution and reports that their six-month line-crossing terms were ordered consecutive to the sign-case terms. A clemency request is not a grant, and nominal consecutive sentences are not proof of an equivalent amount of actual service.
Eilerman’s individual biography describes a ten-month property-damage sentence consecutive to six months for trespass, with prison entry September 28, 1998.
