Alverno’s Sister Joel Read was a legend among us
It was a physical challenge for Sister Joel Read to read a book in recent times. After two strokes, the left side of her body just didn’t work. To hold a book open and turn the pages required determination.
Determination was one of Sister Joel’s strongest suits.
I went to visit her a month ago. Much of our conversation was about what she was reading. A book on what it means to lead a moral life. A book of Christian perspectives on portions of the Old Testament (she wanted me to get her a comparable commentary from a Jewish perspective). “Hillbilly Elegy,” the autobiography by J.D. Vance that has become nearly required reading if you want to understand what’s going on in America.
The breadth and depth of the books on her shelves were impressive. Her one-room quarters at Sacred Heart on the south side were as much a learning center as a residence.
Sister Joel’s mind was fully engaged, and the order of the day — of every day of her life, I suggest — was thinking about what could make the world around her better and then pursuing the best possibilities.
And then it stopped. There was a third stroke a week ago.
Sister Joel, who led Alverno College to become a nationally recognized center of pioneering excellence in educating women, died at 91 on Thursday.
I don’t use the word “legend” often. To me, it means a towering figure who has accomplished big things.
Sister Joel was a legend.
What did she accomplish? In 35 years as its president, she led Alverno to grow and change, opening opportunities for new kinds of students. And her impact went far beyond the south side campus.
She was a leader who called on people to do their best, to seize opportunities, to reach their potential, to be engaged in helping the world. She was a role model of what it means to pursue a vision of success. She showed, almost to the day she died, what it means to engage your mind in noble pursuits.
Under her leadership, Alverno was an early leader in offering women ways to enroll in college part time and on weekends. Minority women, low-income women, women who were well past high school graduation, and women who were the first in their families to go to college became Alverno students in percentages well above national averages — and they succeeded in large numbers.
In the most recent statistics, nearly half of the undergraduates attending Alverno are women of color, and roughly twothirds are first-generation college students. Those numbers are remarkable.
Alverno adopted an approach to education that emphasizes building abilities and not getting grades. Leading students to think and understand — that’s the Alverno goal.
About 15 years ago, Howard Gardner, a famed Harvard psychologist known for his theory of “multiple intelligences” that lead different people to learn in different ways, was speaking in Milwaukee. I interviewed him and asked what else he was doing during his visit. Going to Alverno, he said.
He asked me, do people in Milwaukee understand how significant Alverno is in American education?
Alverno was hardly a one-woman act — as Sister Joel would be the first to say — but Gardner knew she was the key driver. In 2013, Alverno made Gardner the first recipient of the Sister Joel Read Outstanding Educator Award.
Sister Joel retired from Alverno in 2003, at age 77. What did she do then? She took on trying to improve Milwaukee Public Schools. She was chair at the time of the education committee of the Greater Milwaukee Committee, an organization of civic leaders. She pushed for the creation of a strategic plan for MPS.
It didn’t go so well. She probably wasn’t the right fit for the job (is anybody?). The effort fizzled, and she publicly criticized the entrenched bureaucracy of MPS.
But even as recently as my visit with her in late April, she talked up the importance of education as an issue for the city.
Sister Joel didn’t hesitate to speak out at times. And that became a bit more the case in later years.
She attended an education program at Marquette Law School a couple of years ago. At one point, one of the speakers described steps that many people agree would improve student success in Milwaukee.
From the audience, Sister Joel called out: Then why is there so much talk and so little action?
Sure, it was not the best form to call out like that. But I have to admit, I appreciated the question. She was never an all-talk, no-action leader.
And that determination to get things done? I think it was in 2010 that Sister Joel was scheduled to be part of a panel discussion at a luncheon of a professional women’s organization. I was one of the other panelists. An organizer called me several days before the event to say that Sister Joel had fallen and broken a collar bone. She wouldn’t be there.
I asked: Did she say she wouldn’t be there or are you assuming that? It was an assumption. She was there.
I wrote a profile story of Sister Joel in 2000. I asked her why she became a nun.
“I really wanted to know if you could know God in this life,” she said.
I asked if she thought she had succeeded. “I think I have.” I tried to put that thought in my own words when I stood at her bedside last Wednesday. She wasn’t able to speak. It was clear the end was near. I held her hand.
It’s been a good life, I said. Think of all the people whose lives are better because of you, who aimed higher in their own lives because of what you did. Thousands of people. Tens of thousands.
I’m one of them.