Regina Lynne Schultz

Simbwala (Regina Lynne) Schultz, age 70, was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on December 27, 1951. She passed into the afterlife with the ancestors, Monday, November 21, 2022, after two years of battling congestive heart conditions.

She was the daughter of the late Lieutenant Ezell Butler and Rose Yeates Butler-Schultz, social worker. She was later adopted by Leo Schultz, her mother’s second husband. As a young child, along with her older brother, the late Kenneth Ezell Butler, her family moved from Wisconsin to Dallas, Texas, where she eventually attended and graduated from Ursuline Academy (High School). She attended the University of Michigan and in her later years after having moved and lived in California for many years, she attended John F. Kennedy University and received a master’s degree in Marriage Family Therapy with honors.

She assisted healing for many suffering from substance abuse, through the Harm Reduction Therapy Center in Oakland, with pioneers in the field, Jeannie Little and Patt Denning. Carrying her unconditional love from Harm Reduction Therapy she became an advocate for high-risk children of color in East Oakland and worked diligently on their behalf at E.C. Reems Academy, Claremont Middle School, and REACH Academy through the County of Alameda in California.

Finally, in her later years she turned to her love of writing and storytelling. Eventually, she produced a one woman play, with the assistance of Vicki Dello Joio, called The Beauty of the Not so Beautiful in which she tells her story of growing up as a black girl in Dallas during desegregation and the experience of becoming a black woman and claiming her sexuality as a lesbian. It was an ongoing project that provided much joy to herself and others. Excerpts of her storytelling can be viewed on YouTube.

While she was raised Catholic and Baha’i, she was a spiritual warrior walking the paths of the Lakota Native American sundance prayer ceremony as a dancer and pipe holder in a non-traditional, women’s ceremony and the Hummingbird sweatlodge/inipi ceremony community in Oakland, CA for thirty years. She was a long-term practitioner of Soto Zen Buddhism and received her lay vows through the San Francisco Zen Center and given the dharma name Zan Do (Mountain Way) Sho On (True Voice) and at the end of her life was given Lay Entrustment as a teacher of Zen Buddhism.

Simbwala Schultz is survived by her beloved companion, Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, currently living in New Mexico, her son, Izayah Nitchman, his sons, and his mother Karla Nitchman of Oakland, CA, her nephew Jomo Kenneth Starke of Pasadena, CA, and a host of many relatives in Milwaukee, WI, Los Angeles, CA, Dallas, TX, and Starkville, MS. She will be missed by all who had the opportunity to know her loving spirit.

A Funeral Service will be held on Friday, December 9, 2022, at 1:00 p.m., Chester T. French Memorial Mausoleum, 924 Menaul Blvd NE - Albuquerque, NM 87107.