The man behind Sister Jean
Sister Jean’s star machine began with a right- hand man. Pull up a courtside seat. The 98- year- old nun, now an international mascot sensation as the chaplain for the Loyola men’s basketball team, was once jobless and heading for a convent in Iowa when then- university president
Michael Garanzini blew a stop whistle 10 years ago.
“Sister Jean was 88 and out of a job,” said Father Garanzini, who is now the Jesuit Order’s secretary for higher education.
“Back in 2007, Sister Jean may already have been Loyola’s courtside angel — but she was about to become an unemployed campus saint,” he told Sneed.
“Already a big Loyola sports fan and a much loved campus minister, Sister Jean was an unpaid nun working on a volunteer basis when her convent was emptied and sold to Loyola University,” Father Garanzini said.
“Now unemployed, we had to find a way to keep her,” he said.
“She was already a force of nature!”
So Garanzini popped this question to Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt: “What’s it going to take to keep you?”
The answer: “A salary and a place to live,” she said. “Done,” said Father Garanzini. After hiring her as a paid campus minister, the university moved Sister Jean into a dorm room at the university’s Lake Shore Campus in Rogers Park.
Father Garanzini, who also lived at the dorm, added a new assignment to his early morning schedule: driving Sister Jean to her office at the school’s downtown campus.
“She was like my spy,” he chuckled.
“Our drive downtown was like my morning briefing,” Father Garanzini said.
“Sister Jean knew all the kids and loved all of them. She was everybody’s grandma,” he said.
“Only she didn’t complain and she didn’t smoke,” he joked.
“She listened, but was stern as well as loving. She knew everything that was happening on campus. She was devoted to the students.
“It was a powerful and insight- ful way to know what the students’ needs were as well as their complaints. Sister Jean talked to them; prayed with them; went to games with them. She was everywhere — even in her eighties.
“Breaking her hip has been the only thing I’ve known to slow her down. It must be very frustrating for a woman with her energy.”
During Garanzini’s tenure as university president, he “was anxious to move our sports program up a notch now that we had moved the needle on our academic strategy at the university,” he said.
“Our athletic program was nothing to scream about back then,” added Garanzini who subsequently hired Ramblers coach Porter Moser and Loyola’s Athletic Director Steve Watson — who just led the team to a March Madness Final Four spot.
“With the help of Loyola Chief Operating Officer Tom Kelly, we were able to upgrade our facilities and personnel, and negotiate an invitation into the Missouri Valley Conference,” Father Garanzini said.
“But all we had to do was let Sister Jean perform her own magic.
“We didn’t have to tell this prayerful woman, who has been a nun since she was 17, how to be a morale booster.
“Sister Jean is really an angel with her own bracket.”
Amen.
Sneedlings . . .
Saturday’s birthdays: Peyton Manning, 42; Tommy Hilfiger, 67; and Jim Parsons, 45. . . . Sunday’s birthdays: Elton John, 71; Aretha Franklin, 76; Sarah Jessica Parker, 53; and a belated birthday to Michael Bakalis.