[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 14 (Wednesday, February 8, 2006)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E107-E109]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




TRIBUTE TO SISTER JEANNE O'LAUGHLIN: A COMMUNITY TREASURE AND LEGEND IN 
                              HER OWN TIME

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. KENDRICK B. MEEK

                               of florida

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, February 8, 2006

  Mr. MEEK of Florida. Mr. Speaker, rarely has a single person left so 
great a mark on a community as Sister Jeanne O'Laughlin.
  When Sister Jean, as she is universally known, assumed the presidency 
of Barry College in 1981, it was a small all-girls institution. When 
she left nearly 25 years later, it was Barry University, a 9,000 
student co-ed institution of higher learning, complete with a law 
school and a national reputation for excellence.
  However, Sister Jean's achievements, as great as they are, pale when 
compared to the power of her personality and extraordinary impact she 
has had on virtually everyone she meets.
  Last fall, South Florida CEO magazine did a profile of Sister Jean 
which I think captures some of the spirit of this remarkable woman, and 
I would like to share it with my colleagues.

                           The Nun on the Run

       It is not every day you meet a nun whose license tag reads 
     ``Hugs 1'' and whose sentences are punctuated with an 
     endearing ``honey.'' But then again, there is only one Sister 
     Jeanne Marie O'Laughlin.
       A few hugs here and a few ``honeys'' there--along with 
     bulldog tenacity and a refusal to compromise her 
     convictions--have helped O'Laughlin forge bonds with everyone 
     from religious figures to football stars to dignitaries. Her 
     new office at Barry University, where she recently become 
     chancellor, is proof. The corridor is wallpapered with framed 
     photos of O'Laughlin with the pope, presidents, sports stars 
     and scores of other influential people.
       About 100 plaques, keys to cities and the Greater Miami 
     Chamber of Commerce's ``Sand in My Shoes'' award overwhelm 
     glass-enclosed display cases. O'Laughlin says it was tough to 
     choose from the hundreds she received during her 23-year 
     tenure as president of Barry University.
       ``They just delivered the furniture today. You are my first 
     external guest, honey,'' O'Laughlin, 76, says in a 
     grandmotherly tone as she points out her private prayer 
     closet. She proudly displays her collection of icons--
     artistic representations of sanctified Christians that are an 
     integral part of worship in the Catholic faith. Directing 
     attention to an icon of ``Jesus the Teacher,'' O'Laughlin 
     reveals. ``With this one I look at the world through his eyes 
     and see the humanity of children.'' She has a special place 
     in her heart for children of all ages, perhaps because her 
     own childhood, including World War II years spent in Detroit, 
     was strained.
       In 1935, when O'Laughlin was barely 6 years old, her mother 
     died in childbirth. Her family became a single-parent 
     household long before it was a societal norm. She describes 
     her father, a draftsman at the Dodge car factory in Detroit, 
     as a ``good old Irish dad'' who prayed the rosary every day 
     and read the Bible to his family on Sundays. Her childhood 
     memories are a mixture of pain, love and poverty.
       ``At times you had to pretty well fend for yourself. So 
     maybe my creativity in fundraising came out of that,'' 
     O'Laughlin laughs now. ``But my core values came from my 
     father's training and education. Our family always cared for 
     each other and loved one another. Sharing became an integral 
     part of what we did. My dad cared. He even took in my 
     mother's two brothers and two sisters when they got 
     married, So I had a model even though our family was poor 
     and motherless. I learned that family was important.''
       O'Laughlin's mother lived on in her imagination, stoked by 
     her Aunt Edna's frequent recounting of stories. One tale in 
     particular would forever direct the course of O'Laughlin's 
     life--and arouse her passion for education.
       ``Aunt Edna told me that my mother valued education and 
     that her whole desire when she died at age 29 was that her 
     children would be educated. My dad promised her on her 
     deathbed that we would be, and we all got college 
     educations,'' O'Laughlin solemnly shares. ``Missing a mother 
     made me yearn to protect other mothers and babies.''
       Detroit left its impression, too, and an early experience 
     with racism there, says O'Laughlin, led her to a lifetime of 
     social action.
       One day when she was 13 years old, a streetcar O'Laughlin 
     was riding in suddenly jolted. Two black children fell into 
     her lap, and she embraced them during the rest of the 
     journey. To her surprise, when she stepped off the streetcar, 
     a white man spit on her.
       ``I asked my dad why that man spit on me,'' recalls 
     O'Laughlin, still obviously disturbed by the decades-old 
     event. ``He told me

[[Page E108]]

     it was prejudice. I asked him what caused prejudice. He told 
     me it was ignorance. I asked him how you get rid of 
     ignorance. He said education.''
       The experience left O'Laughlin with a burning desire to 
     help people--all people, and it eventually led her down the 
     path towards joining the Dominican order of nuns. Three years 
     later, she joined the Adrian (Mich.) Dominican Sisters, an 
     international congregation of more than 970 vowed religious 
     women whose roots go back to St. Dominic during the 13th 
     century.
       O'Laughlin began professing her first vows at age 17, That 
     initial step towards becoming nun was followed by several 
     years of exploration and training, until she became a 
     permanent member of the order of the Dominican Sisters of 
     Adrian. O'Laughlin took her final vows when she was 21--lying 
     flat on her back in the midst of a battle with respiratory 
     illness so severe her father feared it was her last breath.
       After taking her final vows as a nun, O'Laughlin's next 
     priority was getting the education that her mother had wanted 
     for her. She earned a bachelor's degree and began her 
     teaching career in the 1950s. She taught throughout Michigan 
     at St. Agnes in Iron River, Detroit's Dominican High and 
     Dearborn's St. Alphonsus. After she earned a master's degree 
     in biology, the Archdiocese of Tucson, Ariz. hired her as a 
     supervisor of schools. Even then, she continued to attend 
     school, earning a doctorate in education from the University 
     of Arizona.
       A watershed moment in O'Laughlin's life was Pope John 
     XXIII's issuance of the Vatican II documents between 1962 and 
     1965, which made several reforms to the Catholic church, 
     Among the reforms were options for nuns to choose not to wear 
     a habit, the traditional head covering and garment worn for 
     centuries, and to have the choice of returning to their 
     baptismal names or keeping their religious name, That is when 
     O'Laughlin chose to exchange her religious name of Sister 
     John Anthony for her baptismal name, and became Sister Jeanne 
     Marie.
       Shortly thereafter, in the late 1960s, O'Laughlin was 
     appointed superintendent of the Adrian Dominican Independent 
     School System, overseeing schools in Arizona, Nevada, New 
     Mexico and California. The administrative position left her 
     with the experience she would later need to build a thriving 
     university.
       ``I learned a great deal about diversity during that time 
     because I worked with Indians [Native Americans] and 
     Hispanics. I gained a great respect for various cultures. I 
     learned to look at sameness instead of differences,'' 
     O'Laughlin says.
       Along with her development as an administrator, O'Laughlin 
     continued to evolve her concept of being a woman in the 
     religious order. By 1970, she shed her habit, after examining 
     the rationale of wearing it in light of Vatican II's 
     redefining of nuns as members of the laity and not of the 
     clergy. O'Laughlin says it seemed logical, in that light, for 
     her to dress like the laity. Her sister helped her pick out 
     clothes, which included the fashion of the day.
       While today O'Laughlin wears business suits with 
     sophisticated style, she says at the time it was like going 
     from adolescence to menopause in 10 minutes as she began to 
     understand what it meant to be a woman.
       ``All of a sudden my identity was not neuter. I had to 
     worry about hair and clothing. It was a whole new experience 
     for me. I had no idea how to dress,'' O'Laughlin says. ``I 
     had to learn the things most women learned in the normal 
     maturation process from girl to woman.''
       She also further reexamined her relationships with non-
     clergy. ``It was always very easy to define in the habit. I 
     just kept my place and my distance,'' she says. ``As part of 
     the laity, I had to begin relating to the laity on their 
     level as who I was as a woman.''
       As her career progressed, O'Laughlin became the executive 
     assistant to the president at St. Louis University in St. 
     Louis and also spent time as an adjunct faculty member at the 
     University of San Francisco and Siena Heights College in 
     Adrian before assuming the presidency at Miami Shores-
     based Barry University in 1981.


                           transforming barry

       When O'Laughlin first took the helm at Barry, it was a 
     small all-girls college. When she retired in June 2005, it 
     was a 9,000-student co-ed university with a law school, an 
     athletics program, and a $22 million endowment.
       After dropping to her knees and dedicating the school to 
     ``the Lord''--saying, she recalls, that it was his 
     institution and he had to save it and develop it because she 
     couldn't do it with her own strength--she set out to instill 
     what she calls the ``midnight shakes.'' Her goal was for 
     Barry's mission to be so clear in the minds of the staff that 
     if she suddenly awakened them at midnight they could recite 
     it, nearly in their sleep.
       The mission was (and still is) to offer students a quality 
     education, assure a religious dimension to that education, 
     offer a caring environment and provide community service. 
     O'Laughlin saw the biggest challenge to fulfilling that 
     mission and building Barry into Florida's fourth-largest 
     private university was finances.
       ``It's easy to have dreams and visions, but you need the 
     resources to fulfill those dreams and visions. The most awful 
     thing was worrying at night about the people who worked here 
     getting paid: their mortgages, their car payments, their 
     children,'' O'Laughlin recalls. ``When I got here the payroll 
     was about $250,000 every two weeks and then it got up to $2.5 
     million every two weeks. The greatest challenge to me is to 
     try to reward and keep the people who shared this mission and 
     ministry with us.''
       O'Laughlin embarked on an exuberant fundraising campaign, 
     often using the sheer force of her personality to fulfill 
     what had become a true mission for her. In fact, some have 
     described her as a cross between P.T. Barnum and Mother 
     Theresa because of her unusual fundraising efforts, which 
     included a lot of arm-twisting and the acceptance of a dare 
     or two.
       There was the time she took a $2 million dare to learn 
     ballroom dancing. O'Laughlin became the first Dominican nun 
     to debut at the US Ballroom Championships, wearing a floor-
     length royal blue gown. She donned a feather boa and white 
     satin gown on a millionaire's yacht and sang ``Don't Cry for 
     Me, Argentina'' for a $1.5 million donation.
       O'Laughlin's 16-hour days were not only spent building 
     Barry University, but also building the community. In 1987, 
     when Boynton Beach-based community radio station WXEL was 
     plagued with personnel problems, plummeting membership and 
     donations--even a lightning strike on its transmitter, the 
     station turned to Barry University for help, and O'Laughlin 
     led the university's takeover of the station.
       Talk of turning the community station over to a Catholic 
     school drew its critics, but those voices were muted when 
     O'Laughlin herself spearheaded the move to wash away the 
     station's $2.5 million debt with the help of a single donor: 
     Dwayne O. Andreas, retired chairman of agricultural giant 
     Archer Daniels Midland Co. Andreas had donated the money to 
     Barry at the urging of his wife, an alumnus. O'Laughlin asked 
     Andreas if she could use it to save the radio station and he 
     agreed.
       O'Laughlin hired Jerry Carr, a broadcasting veteran and 
     turnaround expert who had helped revive Miami's Channel 33 
     and Paxson television stations. Carr credits O'Laughlin with 
     single-handedly rescuing WXEL from bankruptcy. Many didn't 
     believe O'Laughlin could keep a Catholic agenda out of the 
     station's programming, but Carr says she never told him what 
     to air. In fact, Carr even ran a Planned Parenthood 
     advertising campaign, a taboo subject in the Catholic church.
       ``I did not even have to ask Sister Jeanne for permission 
     because I knew her heart was to do whatever was necessary to 
     serve the community in a non-sectarian role,'' Carr recalls. 
     ``She always told me I should not do anything other than what 
     was expected in the world of broadcasting. She was the 
     greatest boss I ever had and the most wonderful lady I've 
     ever met in my life.'' WXEL rebounded and revenues 
     skyrocketed. When Barry took over, the station's net value 
     was $354,573. It was valued at $5.93 million when O'Laughlin 
     handed over the chair of the station to Sister Linda 
     Bevilacqua.
       O'Laughlin smiles when she talks about WXEL, but admits it 
     wasn't quite a dream come true in every respect. ``My dream 
     was to use the radio station as an instrument to increase 
     access to education in the community,'' she says. ``We just 
     didn't have the resources. But God used me as an instrument 
     to save it, and if that's all he wanted and all he wrote, 
     then that's OK. It's a huge success. I am proud of that.''
       In 1999, O'Laughlin oversaw the launch of Barry's law 
     school in Orlando. She battled for three years to gain 
     accreditation from the American Bar Association (ABA). Barry 
     law professor Stanley M. Talcott, who was dean during the 
     battle, says he will always remember O'Laughlin's 
     determination.
       ``I watched Sister Jeanne as she advocated for the law 
     school. I found her to be extraordinarily effective, well-
     informed, and just powerful,'' he says.


                    Changing the Meaning of ``Nun''

       O'Laughlin has never taken the easy path, and her life has 
     been tinged with controversy since the Detroit streetcar 
     incident. She proudly calls herself ``the nun on the run'' 
     because she is constantly on the go and knows she has helped 
     quash some stereotypes about Catholic religious women and 
     women in general--things she never intended to do. As she 
     sees it, she was just following her faith.
       In a time when nuns did not typically fraternize with 
     political potentates and influential business leaders, 
     O'Laughlin was the first woman on Miami's influential Orange 
     Bowl Committee and the Non-Group, an informal fraternity of 
     local power brokers. She has served on countless boards and 
     committees and has been urged to run for political office.
       Never afraid of being outspoken, O'Laughlin has worked to 
     do more than educate her students. She has labored to fight 
     drug abuse, feed the homeless, assist immigrants and protect 
     children.
       ``We have to understand the dignity and beauty of each 
     human being, even though we don't agree with them because of 
     a different tradition or history,'' says O'Laughlin, who has 
     also fostered the most diverse enrollment in Barry's history, 
     with 47 percent of its students identified as black or 
     Latino.
       Among her many exploits, O'Laughlin took responsibility for 
     300 Haitian immigrants when they were released from the Krome 
     Detention Center in 1982 and placed with sponsors who 
     provided them with food, housing, and employment; took in 
     Romanian detainees; helped get residency for an Iranian 
     couple and their children; and found a home for a Chinese 
     baby.

[[Page E109]]

       Certainly O'Laughlin's most controversial engagement was 
     her role in 2000's Elian Gonzalez saga. Moved by the little 
     boy whose mother had died while they were fleeing Cuba by 
     raft to the US, she initially acted as a neutral mediator, 
     hosting meetings between the boy's Miami relatives and his 
     Cuban grandmothers in their tug-of-war for custody. Hers was 
     an unpopular position that spawned death threats, bomb 
     threats, and plenty of hate mail.
       Then, suddenly, the neutral nun became an ardent advocate 
     for the Miami relatives, urging the government to allow Elian 
     to stay in the US. O'Laughlin says her emotions included 
     fear, compassion, and rejection during a period she describes 
     as one of the most difficult in her life, but insists her 
     faith got her through.
       ``When I went to bed at night, I had to tell the Lord it 
     was in his hands, and, `If I offended, I ask pardon. If I 
     haven't, I sure hope you'll help me the next day,''' 
     O'Laughlin reveals. ``When I talked to [former Attorney 
     General] Janet Reno about Elian after it was over, she quoted 
     Truman. She said we were both searching for the truth.''
       Generally, O'Laughlin's disarming manner has been key to 
     her success in helping people, say those who have worked 
     closely with her.
       ``With the `honey' here and the `honey' there, she gets a 
     lot of things accomplished,'' says Leslie Pantin Jr., 
     chairman of Barry's board of trustees. ``She continues to 
     instill in Barry a unique, caring environment while being 
     involved in every major cause we've had in South Florida, 
     from the airport to rebuilding after Hurricane Andrew to the 
     fight against drugs, and of course the Elian Gonzalez 
     position.''
       O'Laughlin may be loathe to admit it, but one of her 
     toughest fights was her personal battle with lung cancer. She 
     underwent two lung cancer surgeries in the past few years 
     (she never smoked) but has hardly slowed down. After stepping 
     down as Barry's president last summer to allow a new face 
     with a new perspective to take the university to the next 
     level, she continued to focus on education, albeit with a 
     slightly different twist. O'Laughlin's mission now is to 
     teach women how to open universities in developing countries.
       ``It would be really great if the Lord would let me, before 
     I turn up my toes, play a role in getting schools started and 
     I don't care at what level--because we'll never have peace, 
     we'll never have a legitimate fight against poverty, unless 
     we have education,'' she says.
       In her quasi-retired life, O'Laughlin remains involved in 
     various South Florida organizations, and has faith that the 
     region will become a model that the whole world will envy.
       ``South Florida has all right ingredients: good people, an 
     embracing climate, and welcoming shores,'' O'Laughlin says. 
     ``My vision and hope is that we continue to open our arms and 
     caress our people and energize them to create a greater state 
     and a greater South Florida by giving their gifts back to 
     this great place.''

                          ____________________