A handwritten letter from Sophie at her Santo Domingo apartment to Dr. Dyrce Lacombe — a Brazilian zoologist at the Casa de Oswaldo Cruz / Fundação Oswaldo Cruz (Fiocruz) in Rio de Janeiro — dated September 6, 1999. The letter is preserved in Fiocruz’s institutional archives under the catalog identifier BR RJCOC DL DP IC 03.25, in the personal-documents series of Dyrce Lacombe’s papers.
The letter is the strongest documentary evidence on record that Sophie maintained an active Brazilian scientific network into her late seventies, two years before her own death.
Sophie (right, in checkered cap and glasses, holding tropical flowers) at a Brazilian waterfront — most plausibly Angra dos Reis, the diving destination her letter references. Photo also held by the Casa de Oswaldo Cruz archive, identifier DL-VP-RF-03-031.
The letterhead
Letterhead reads:
SOPHIE JAKOWSKA, Ph.D. · Arz. Meriño 154 · Santo Domingo · Dominican Republic · Tel. & Fax: (809) 6873948
The Arz. Meriño 154 address is the same Santo Domingo apartment where her husband Constantine had died nineteen years earlier in 1980. Sophie remained at that address through at least September 1999 — six years before her own 2005 death.
The letter (verbatim Spanish)
Querida Dyrce: 6 de septiembre 1999
Todo el día sin electricidad! ¡Destino!
Ayer tuve tanto dolor que ni pude leer — hoy, gracias a Dios, menos dolor y puedo sentarme al escritorio.
Esta carta es sobre un asunto especial pero que contestes sinceramente.
A principio de Octubre un joven colaborador en el Parque Nacional Mirador del Norte, Arquitecto paisajista Juan Ysidro Tineo Alvarado (± 36 años, soltero, buen cocinero y cariñoso) presentará un trabajo en Curitiba, Paraná. Después, por su cuenta, visitará Brasília, S. Salvador de Bahía y Río de Janeiro a donde llegará el 14 de octubre poco después de mediodía.
Pregunta:
1) ¿Estarías dispuesta a recibirlo en el aeropuerto?
2) ¿Quieres que hable en tu laboratorio sobre nuestro Parque y educación ambiental que comparte (tiene slides + vídeo)?
3) ¿Puedes reservarle habitación cerca de tu casa en un hotel “razonable”?
No sé si quieres recibirlo en tu casa, pero si quieres, será para ti como un hijo y compañero muy bien educado.
Si puedes recibirlo y hacer contactos, arregló para visitar Angra dos Reis (él bucea = scuba) manda e-mail a [REDACTED] al Arquitecto Juan Ysidro Tineo Alvarado, Encargado de Recursos Naturales, Parque Nacional Mirador del Norte, Ave. Mirador del Norte Puerta No 5, Santo Domingo, Rep. Dominicana.
Espero que te haya llegado la copia del Seminario Monográfico del Nuestro Parque que él te envió por avión.
Si estarás ausente el 14 de octubre al 17 (cuando saldrá para Rep. Dom.) explícalo, pero espero que lo puedas conocer.
Cariños
PS Tus “Triatomíneos” son preciosos.
What the letter establishes
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Sophie was still actively running Dominican environmental-education work at age 77. She was facilitating a young Dominican landscape-architect’s professional trip to Brazil (Curitiba conference, then Brasília, Salvador de Bahia, Rio de Janeiro), brokering hospitality, vouching for him personally, asking Dyrce to host him.
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The young collaborator was Juan Ysidro Tineo Alvarado, then ~36, Encargado de Recursos Naturales (Head of Natural Resources) at the Parque Nacional Mirador del Norte in Santo Domingo — a Dominican national-park architect-administrator who had given Sophie a copy of a Seminario Monográfico about the park.
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The recipient was almost certainly Dr. Dyrce Lacombe (1924–2014) — a Brazilian zoologist at the Casa de Oswaldo Cruz / Fiocruz who specialized in the Triatominae (kissing bugs, the vectors of Chagas disease). The postscript — “Tus Triatomíneos son preciosos” (“Your Triatomines are gorgeous”) — pins the recipient: Sophie was writing to someone whose triatomine specimens (probably illustrations or photographs) she had recently seen and admired. That fits Dyrce Lacombe’s professional specialty precisely.
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Sophie was in chronic pain. “Ayer tuve tanto dolor que ni pude leer” — “yesterday I was in so much pain I couldn’t even read.” She wrote anyway. Two years before her 2005 death of aneurism in Santo Domingo, the chronic-pain pattern was already documented in her own hand.
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Power was unreliable in Santo Domingo. “Todo el día sin electricidad! ¡Destino!” — “All day without electricity! Destiny!” Daily life detail.
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Sophie’s Brazilian network was substantial. That Fiocruz — Brazil’s flagship biomedical research foundation — preserved her letter in Dyrce Lacombe’s personal-documents series means she was treated by the institution as a figure worth archiving. Combined with the waterfront photograph (Casa de Oswaldo Cruz identifier DL-VP-RF-03-031), the archive holds at least one photograph and one letter by her — material evidence of a sustained scientific friendship.
About Dr. Dyrce Lacombe (1924-2014)
Brazilian zoologist at the Instituto Oswaldo Cruz (now Fiocruz), Rio de Janeiro. A specialist on the taxonomy and biology of the Triatominae — the Chagas-disease vector insects whose study has been a centerpiece of Latin American tropical medicine since Carlos Chagas described the disease in 1909. Lacombe was active at Fiocruz from the 1950s through her death; her personal papers and photographs are preserved in the Casa de Oswaldo Cruz archive, where this letter and the accompanying photograph were filed.
Provenance
Catalog identifier: BR RJCOC DL DP IC 03.25 (Brazil, Rio de Janeiro, Casa de Oswaldo Cruz, Dyrce Lacombe series, Documentos Pessoais, Identificação, item 03.25). The original is held at the Casa de Oswaldo Cruz, Fiocruz campus, Manguinhos, Rio de Janeiro. Reproduction archived to the family record at OneDrive/Documents/personal/family/ancestry/sophie/1999_letter_to_dyrce_lacombe/.
The waterfront photograph is filed under a separate Casa de Oswaldo Cruz identifier — DL-VP-RF-03-031 (Dyrce Lacombe, Visual Productions, Registro Fotográfico, item 03-031).
Open research
- The full Dyrce Lacombe correspondence: Fiocruz’s Casa de Oswaldo Cruz archive likely holds more Sophie letters than this one. A direct request to the archive (or a research visit) would surface the full extent of the friendship.
- Juan Ysidro Tineo Alvarado — the young collaborator — is presumably still alive in 2026 (~63) and would be the living-memory bridge to Sophie’s late-life Dominican-park work.
- The Brasília / Salvador / Rio trip outcome — did Tineo make the trip? Did he stay with Dyrce in Rio? Did he dive at Angra dos Reis? Likely all yes; documentary trail would be in Brazilian conference records and Dyrce’s archive.