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SAN ANTONIO • For 50 years, Sister Isabel Ball, CDP, has devoted her energies and talents to Our Lady of the Lake University (OLLU), first as a chemistry professor, then as dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and, most recently, as director of Mission Effectiveness. For two very full days, on Sept. 13 and 14, she was also a parade grand marshal, a “cover girl,” and recipient of numerous accolades from the university that has been her life.
“I think I’ve come to appreciate the work that a celebrity does,” said Sister Ball, at the conclusion of the two-day “love-fest” the university held in her honor. “Yesterday was almost like the paparazzi,” she quipped. “They were lined up to take pictures and interviews.”
Born in Elmendorf, Sister Ball noted she grew up somewhat of a tomboy, having to compete with two brothers and mostly male cousins. “I was a very outdoors kind of person, into all the sports,” she noted. “Having only brothers, you had to keep up with them — and in some cases out-do them.”
She attended county schools in the lower grades, then went off to the now closed, St. Mary’s High School downtown.
“That school certainly played a big part in my vocation, although I wasn’t ready at that point to move to the convent,” she said. The idea of a religious vocation first “popped into my mind,” as she put it, in childhood. “We had catechism in the summers when the sisters would come out,” she noted.
There would be one week of classes at Elmendorf, then another week at nearby Saspamco, taught by various orders of nuns. “Mama would make sure we got to both of them — double doses!” she related. Attending Our Lady of the Lake University she had the opportunity to get to know the nuns on a one-to-one basis and was also influenced by her membership in the Sodality of Our Lady. “That nurtured the spark, I guess,” she says.
However, she was still hesitant about pursuing a religious vocation, deciding to put off a decision until she had finished college. She was not sure how her family would react. Finally she admitted her aspirations to her mother. “And it was up to her to tell everybody else,” she says, chuckling.
Entering the convent in 1950, she finished her novitiate in 1952 and was first missioned to Sacred Heart School in Oklahoma for two years.
“I had a lovely seventh and eighth grade class and rotated out to teach high school science and math,” said Sister Ball. Then, in 1954, she was sent to the recently opened Providence High School in San Antonio. “I always thought that would be the neatest place,” she said. “I thought college would be neat too, but I didn’t have my eyes on that because I wasn’t material for that,” she says, smiling. But that summer, before starting the school year at Providence, there was an abrupt change in plans.
“I had been at Providence about a month,” recalls Sister Ball, “and was called out because one of the sisters here (OLLU) was ill — a chemistry teacher was sick. And so Mother Angelique Ayres, who was here at the time, asked me — told me — that I would be here at the university and to go over and ‘meet your superior’ and we’ll send for your trunk. I never went back to Providence. I came out (to OLLU) mid-afternoon and never went back. I spent the night here and I’ve been here ever since!”
She adds, “There’s nothing I would say that I regret about being here. Probably that first year was the toughest. I can remember preparing for my classes using ‘three by five’ cards and carrying them with me. And whenever I had an opportunity, I would reach down in those big, black pockets (of the traditional habit she wore at the time), pull the cards out and study them a little bit.”
The sisters were still wearing the traditional habit when Sister Ball entered the convent, but Vatican II changed all that. “It was probably in the early to mid ’60s that there was some transition,” she notes. “We called it experimentation.” First to change was the headpiece, then more modifications took place. In the late ’60s the nuns changed to a more secular type of dress, still keeping a type of veil for a while.
During this period, Sister Ball was attending the University of Texas at Austin.
“I was studying for my doctorate,” she relates. “I appeared one day in the lab in secular clothes and with the little habit and hat gone, and they said, ‘Whoa! You have legs!’” she laughs, recalling.
For just over a year now, Sister Ball has been director of Mission Effectiveness at the university. “I advise on things that I might observe that are contrary to the mission,” she says.
“The mission statement is the job of everybody, so one of the things I do is to educate,” she adds. She points out that of key relevance here is Our Lady of the Lake being “a Catholic institution of higher education.” This involves maintaining a Catholic culture, not just in the physical surroundings and who is being served, “but how we act, how we make our decisions,” she notes.
Another defining mark, she points out, is “our support and involvement of social justice, not just in action, but in curriculum.” She adds, “The way we worship is another mark,” noting that the Mass and various liturgies are part of the school’s intrinsic Catholic nature, though various ecumenical types of services are also welcome.
Having religious resources available in the library for research she lists as another pre-requisite — important in order to be able to draw on the Fathers of the Church and the wisdom of the past in relation to new discoveries and scientific information. The significance of a liberal arts education is also stressed, the “focus on values,” she says. “Applied kinds of fields use those values, incorporate them.”
"The interesting thing is I really didn’t plan on being a teacher,” she notes, considering it “providential” that being drawn to the Congregation of Divine Providence drew her to find her calling as a teacher as well — one that she has still not relinquished. In addition to serving as the rudder that steers the sisters and Our Lady of Lake into the 21st century in interpreting the CDP mission, Sister Ball still teaches a general chemistry class at the university. “I’ve never quit,” she says.
So when Our Lady of the Lake decided to honor Sister Ball during the annual “Spirit Days” on campus, they went all out. Sister Karen M. Kennelly of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, noted author, lecturer and theologian, was invited to come in to kick off the festivities with a lecture in Sister Ball’s honor on “Living the Call,” the theme of this year’s “Spirit Days” at OLLU.
Sister Kennelly noted that preparing remarks worthy of the occasion were somewhat daunting in the face of all Sister Ball’s accomplishments. “Her fund-raising ability on behalf of the science and chemistry departments of the university was legendary,” said Sister Kennelly. She was also told of Sister Ball’s remarkable “ability to maintain focus with dedication and perseverance for half a century,” and of the innumerable OLLU alumnae who had been inspired by Sister Ball both during and after their student years.
She traced the choices of Sister Ball’s life as a journey in which she had often taken Robert Frost’s “road less traveled,” and went on to describe her as a stellar example of leadership in a changing world, one that involved, in the ’80s and ’90s, addressing the challenges faced by the AIDS epidemic, the unlocking of the genetic code of the DNA molecule, cloning and more. “It meant,” said Sister Kennelly, “delineating in the university classroom the dimensions of ethical dilemmas and decision-making only faintly glimpsed the year Sister Isabel completed her doctorate with a minor in molecular genetics in 1969.”
On behalf of the university community and the sisters, she concluded by expressing thanks to Sister Isabel for “the verve with which you’ve lived your years at Our Lady of the Lake University and all that you’ve given to its faculty, staff and students.”
A documentary of Sister Ball’s life, featuring photographs taken over the years, was presented to her by its creator, Cesar Hernandez of OLLU’s Teaching Learning Technology Center, and played on a nearby monitor during the reception.
It included an original song, written and sung by Sister Anita de Luna, CDP, in Sister Isabel’s honor.
Two portraits of Sister Isabel by OLLU art professor, Alfredo Cruz, were then unveiled. First was a larger version of the portrait of Sister Ball that will hang in the new undergraduate science research lab that was funded through a grant she helped write. The second portrait, a remembrance gift for her, was described as a tribute to her sense of humor. It portrayed her in her early days on campus, but depicted as the cover shot for a magazine titled West Side Geographic, with a border of highly recognizable “National Geographic orange.”
Supposed inside articles touted on the “cover” made references to Sister Ball’s life and included: “Better Living Through Chemistry,” page 63 (she received her bachelor’s degree in chemistry in 1963); “Civil Defense Shelter Management,” page 64 (the year she became a certified fall-out shelter manager during the Cuban missile crises); “Mouse Liver, Lung, and Kidney Tissue,” page 75 (the year sister co-wrote and presented a paper on that subject at a conference); and “Charting the Lake’s Mission Effectiveness,” page 103 (a variation of 2003, the year she started in her current position).
The following day Sister Ball was celebrated further, with Mass of the Holy Spirit, a luncheon, pep rally and “Crazy Olympics,” culminating in a campus parade in which she served as grand marshal.
A dedication ceremony was held in her honor at the undergraduate science research lab and more speeches in her honor were given at the Chapel Auditorium.
Summing up her feelings at the end of the two-day tribute to her 50 years of service at OLLU, Sister Ball remarked, “I just feel very blessed, and I really think my decision to become a sister is probably the biggest blessing of all.” The faculty, staff and students at Our Lady of the Lake would beg to differ. To them, the “biggest blessing of all” has been Sister Isabel Ball. |