Antoinette Rodez Schiesler facts for kids

Mary Antoinette "Toni" Rodez Schiesler (born December 13, 1934 – died April 8, 1996) was an amazing American chemist. She was also a leader in research at Villanova University. Before that, she was a Roman Catholic nun and later an Episcopal deaconess.

Toni's Early Life and School Days

Carole Virginia was born in Chicago, Illinois. Her mother, Gladyce Cunningham Rodez, was a singer. She moved to Chicago to find work with big music bands. Gladyce raised Carole by herself. She decided to move back to her hometown of New Haven, Connecticut, to raise her daughter.

Carole said her mother sometimes had a strong temper. But she also explained that her mother gave her "all" she could. A writer named Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot wrote about Toni. She said Toni remembered listening to her mother sing on the radio. She loved her mother's calm voice. Toni felt sad that her mother had great talents but couldn't become a famous musician because of life's challenges. Carole knew her mother thought she was very talented and tried to help her grow.

Carole's early life was sometimes difficult. Her mother worked doing house chores. But she often struggled to find jobs. So, Carole was sometimes left with friends while her mother worked in other states. When Carole was seven, Gladyce married a cook named Lafayette. Carole described him as "the meanest man I'd ever known." Carole traveled to Florida for the wedding. She stayed there for a year with Lafayette's sister. Then she went back to New Haven to live with her mother and Lafayette. Lafayette was unkind, and Gladyce eventually sent him away.

Carole was a very smart child. She learned to read by looking at ads on the bus. She took apart her toys to see how they worked. She even did chemistry experiments with a kit she got for her birthday. In New Haven, she went to public school. She was so far ahead that her teachers suggested she skip fifth grade. When Carole was twelve, Gladyce enrolled her at St. Frances Academy. This was to give her a stable life and a good education.

St. Frances Academy was a Catholic girls' school for "colored girls." It taught grades eight to twelve. It was run by the Oblate Sisters of Providence. This was the first school for black children in the city. It was run by free black Roman Catholic nuns, mostly from Haiti. Carole was "terrified" to go to a convent. She worried about being alone and the mystery of the place. However, Carole later said she "ended up loving the place." She especially liked the rules, the discipline, and the strong values of the academy. For Carole, who often felt alone, St. Frances felt like a safe haven. She worked hard to be a perfect student.

Carole often worried about money. Most of the other girls at school came from middle-class families. She felt different because she was poor. She was also shy and kept to herself. She worried that others might leave her out. To overcome her shyness, Carole learned to play the guitar. She used it to make friends.

Her summers away from the academy were often messy. After ninth grade, her mother Gladyce lost her job. They were homeless and had no money. They slept outside and looked for work and places to stay during the day. They stayed for several months in a hotel run by a religious leader named Father Divine. Carole was very upset when she learned they didn't have money for St. Frances tuition. She would have to go to a local school instead. She wrote to the sisters at St. Frances about how sad she was. After six weeks, they wrote back. They offered her a scholarship! The only condition was that she work two jobs to pay her way. She quickly returned to St. Frances.

Carole was an excellent student. She graduated high school at the top of her class. She studied chemistry in her senior year and was very good at it. Sometimes, she even ran the lab and taught other students when the teacher was away. She said, "I was looking for answers as an adolescent, and chemistry provided them."

When Carole joined St. Frances Academy, she was an Episcopalian. But she was drawn to the nuns. Within months, Carole decided she also wanted to be a nun. She became Catholic after tenth grade. She was baptized on December 7, 1950. She applied to join the convent. On September 8, 1952, at age seventeen, she entered the Convent of the Immaculate Conception. At the convent, she had a daily schedule of hard work, hours of prayer, and quiet time. She loved this routine and the structure it gave her. She said, "The regularity was wonderful. It gave me the security I always craved." She was given the name Mary Antoinette when she became a novice on March 9, 1953. She kept this name for the rest of her life.

Toni's Career and Education Journey

Mary Antoinette Schiesler trained to be a teacher at the Oblate Institute. She started working as a teacher at St. Augustine elementary school in Washington, D.C. She found teaching challenging at first because she hadn't learned how to manage a classroom. She transferred to St. Joseph's School in Alexandria, Virginia, after a year. She taught there for four years. Then she returned to the Mother House for a year of hard work and prayer. She took her final vows on August 15, 1960. Her third teaching job was at Saint Cecilia's in Baltimore. There, she shared her love for math and science with older students.

Schiesler wanted to study at university full-time. Instead, she earned her college degree in chemistry while working as a teacher. She went to college classes on Saturdays and studied full-time during the summer. She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in 1967 from the College of Notre Dame of Maryland.

Even though she was an elementary school teacher, Schiesler secretly applied for a special graduate program. This program was for junior-college teachers of math and science. It was sponsored by the National Labs in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The program involved a full year of science study. Then, there was a summer of writing a thesis for a Master of Science degree. Schiesler was one of only twenty students accepted into the program. She was also the only African American student. She convinced her superiors to let her attend. They gave her permission, even though they were worried she might not come back.

Her schedule at Oak Ridge was very busy. She was allowed to live in an apartment instead of the convent. This was the first time she lived on her own. Schiesler had never studied physics. So, she taught herself some of the basics to understand her nuclear physics classes. She also hadn't studied biochemistry. But her advisor at Oak Ridge was a biochemist. He gave her a part of his research for her thesis. She worked on how radioactivity affects enzymes. Through mostly independent study, she earned a master's degree in chemistry in 1969 from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Her thesis was titled "The Inactivation of Pancreatic Lipase by Gamma Radiation."

Schiesler returned to the convent. She worked as a math teacher for a year. Then she became the academic dean, registrar, housemother, and physical science teacher. This new routine felt too restrictive. Schiesler was unsure about her life path. She started looking for ways to take time away from the religious community. She talked to a psychologist. The psychologist told her that her uncertainty was causing her stress. In 1971, at age thirty-seven, after nineteen years as a nun, she left the religious order. She decided to pursue a career in chemistry.

Schiesler taught astronomy at Bowie State College. Then she went back to graduate school. She earned a PhD in chemical education at University of Maryland, College Park. For a while, she worked as a lecturer and lab coordinator for the University of Maryland. She also rewrote math and science workbooks because she felt "they were not good." Throughout her career, Schiesler also worked for the Maryland Higher Education Commission. She was a program manager at the National Science Foundation. She was also director of research at Eastern Michigan University. Later, she became director of research at Villanova University. Her last job before she retired from academic life in 1993 was as dean of academic affairs at Cabrini College in Radnor, Pennsylvania. She described the life of an administrator as busy and varied.

Schiesler became an Episcopal deacon in 1994. She wanted her religious work to be different from her husband's, who was also an Episcopal priest. She served at the Cathedral of St. John in Wilmington, Delaware, until her death. She also served on important boards for the Episcopal Church.

Toni's Personal Life and Beliefs

Schiesler had a sister named Arvella. She was two years younger than Toni. Toni only found this out when she was in her twenties. Her mother had felt she couldn't take care of two children. So, she had given Arvella up for adoption to a family in New York City. Toni later managed to meet her sister.

In her book I've Known Rivers: Lives of Loss and Liberation (1994), Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot described her first meeting with Schiesler. She said Toni was full of energy and had a unique style. She was tall and slim. She wore purple from head to toe: purple stockings, a purple leather purse, a purple silk blouse, a large purple scarf over her white coat, and even purple eye shadow behind her large modern glasses. She had medium-brown skin, sharp features, large expressive eyes, and a halo of white hair.

Mary Antoinette Rodez met Robert Alan "Bob" Schiesler (born 1949) soon after she left religious life. He was a former Roman Catholic seminarian. He had left the seminary and taught school for a while. Then he became an Episcopal priest. They were married on October 20, 1973. They were a unique couple for their time. He was a white man, fourteen years younger than her. At that time, some states still had laws against marriages between people of different races. But Schiesler described him as "perfect for me." She said their marriage was "satisfying and rewarding." It gave her space to be herself and follow her interests. Schiesler did not want to just be known as a priest's wife. She was a professional and wanted to stay that way. She saw herself as a "radical feminist type."

Schiesler said her husband was "very understanding and supportive of anything I choose to do." However, her husband at first didn't want her to leave her academic career to become an Episcopal priest. He said she was too old to start a new career (she was fifty-two at the time). He also said she would earn much less money. Schiesler eventually realized his real fear was that this career change might create some competition between them. He worried that his wife might be more popular with their church members.

While at Cabrini College, Schiesler started a women's spirituality group. They met once a week to "discover the spirit." She wanted it to be a group where everyone was equal. It had a broad idea of spirituality. This included "taking care of yourself, growing up, understanding yourself, your talents and strengths." It also included "being aware of how we deal with one another." She believed it meant "determining the power we have and how we use it." It also included "creating the time for prayer, exercise, meditation, reading."

Schiesler did not see any problems between her love of science and her love of religion. Instead, she believed that each helped and strengthened the other. She said, "The beauty of chemistry and astronomy say so much to me about the beauty and wonder of God." She asked, "How could you take a chemistry course and not believe in God?" She saw the order and harmony in science as "all God's work." She believed chemistry showed the tiny, organized world, and astronomy showed the vast, orderly universe.

She died suddenly from a brain tumor in 1996, at age 61.

Legacy

Since 1996, there has been an M. Antoinette Schiesler Memorial scholarship at Cabrini University. This scholarship is sponsored by her family. It is for African-American or Hispanic-American women students studying education.

See Also

• List of African-American women in STEM