Loyola's Sister Jean, At 103, Adds Author To Life's Work, Achievements

CHICAGO — Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt has done her share of living in more than 103 years on earth, but she has found that showing oneself a little grace from time to time can certainly go a long way.

Sister Jean, the longtime and beloved chaplain for the Loyola University-Chicago’s basketball team, acknowledges that while taking ourselves to task for things we may regret may come naturally, sometimes what’s needed is a pat on the back.

Even if it comes from ourselves.

That message is one of the countless lessons passed along by Sister Jean in a book that will be released in February. The nun’s memoir, “Wake Up With Purpose" not only chronicles Sister Jean’s service to Loyola and to the church, but also is meant to provide encouragement to those who may be struggling and in need of encouragement.

The book, written along with college basketball analyst and writer Seth Davis, comes nearly five years after Sister Jean became an international celebrity when Loyola made a memorable and unexpected run to the NCAA Final Four in 2018. On Thursday, she told Patch that several people approached her immediately after the run about doing a book. But each time, she convinced hopeful authors that she didn’t have time to take on such a labor-intensive project.

Even though Sister Jean continues to work with students at Loyola's Rogers Park campus, where she holds an office with an open-door policy at 103 years of age, she decided the time had finally come to put her story out there for the world to read.

Sister Jean said she “talked all the time” to Davis, who “knocked a lot of information” out of perhaps the university's most familiar faces in a series of interviews over a couple of months. Davis did the writing before returning copies of the manuscript for review and fact-checking before finally providing a final copy to Sister Jean.

While the book is a memoir, it does not always follow a traditional path, said Sister Jean, and focuses on equal parts a life well-lived, lessons learned, faith, and of course, basketball.

Now with a release date set for the book in late February, Sister Jean is glad the work has been done, although Davis is convinced there is more to be done.

“He said, maybe we better think about Book 2,” Sister Jean told Patch in a telephone interview on Thursday. “I said, ‘Oh, wait a minute. Let’s get Book 1 on the road first.'”

Davis entered the project having only briefly met Sister Jean at the 2018 Final Four. But after being recommended to her by former Loyola basketball coach Porter Moser, Davis said he found himself speaking with someone whom he had always admired from afar. He watched the way Sister Jean interacted with Ramblers players — from pregame prayers — to sending them postgame emails after each game, win or loss.

But as conversations started to take place between the two, Davis discovered someone who was not only passionate about her life and her life's work but had plenty to share about the life she has lived for more than a century. But it's the manner in which Sister Jean has lived that stuck with Davis the most.

"What strikes you is how simple and ordinary her life is," Davis told Patch on Thursday. "As a writer, you're wondering how to make it more interesting. But at the end of the day, that's what makes it so interesting. She hasn't gone about her life trying to do all these great things and changing the world. She's just honoring who she is and just working with kids and being a nice person and serving God and fulfilling her purpose.

"To me, it's the ordinariness of her life that makes her so extraordinary."

Through a series of stories within her life story, Sister Jean hopes readers will glean plenty of value from the lessons her life’s work has produced. Although much of Sister Jean’s story has been well documented since 2018, she says there is plenty of insight that has come out of her own journey, including handling the challenges that everyday life can provide and how one handles what is thrown in front of them can affect health and happiness.

She includes a lesson from St. Ignatius, who stresses the importance of “giving ourselves a pat on the back” because “people like pats on the back.”

“It’s important that you just don’t think about what you might have not done well or where you could have improved but think about all the good things and actually give yourself a pat on the back before you go to bed or do it figuratively,” Sister Jean told Patch. “All of that helps me with my daily life.”

As far as finding purpose in each new day, the practice is one that Sister Jean also follows religiously. For years, she has woken early and spent time in prayer in meditation before taking on what — even at 103 — is a busy schedule filled with work, physical therapy, and other responsibilities.

Davis said she was struck by the way Sister Jean finds joy in the everyday tasks of work and life and how that carries over to the general joy with which she lives. She, like Davis, feels like she hasn't actually worked a day in her life, which assists in the purpose she is so driven on living with.

"If you feel that way about your work, the purpose will reveal itself," Davis said Thursday. "But it starts with that feeling."

But even before her campus day begins, Sister Jean spends time responding to emails each day and has a long list of prayer requests, which come from a variety of sources – often too many to always pray for individually, she says.

She also has her own list of “assignments from Loyola”, which she said is a good reminder for students, who often come to her desk seeking counsel or prayer. Sister Jean says she enjoys her daily interaction with students and Loyola’s athletes, who have come to rely on the beloved nun for her positivity and constant happiness.

Her daily work keeps her young at heart, although there are days when she admits that she does not feel young in body. However, that’s where her purpose and approach to life factor into her recipe for a long and fulfilled life.

“You can sigh within yourself and grump within yourself, but you will burden other people with what’s happening with you every day,” Sister Jean said, adding that she lives by a daily reminder “not to give any organ recitals.”

She added: “I think if you just go through (life) paddling backward, it’s not good. I think you have to keep moving forward.”

Davis said he did not anticipate Sister Jean's competitiveness, which comes out in the pregame prayers she delivers before Loyola home games. While she asks for the referees to be fair and for both teams to stay safe, she ultimately asks God to deliver the Ramblers a victory, which Davis asked was appropriate for a woman of Sister Jean's vocation.

In typical Sister Jean fashion, she provided an honest perspective in ways only she can.

"She said that it's perfectly alright for everyone to use their talents, you have to be a good sport and sometimes, you lose, but someone's got to win and someone's got to lose," Davis said of Sister Jean's response. "That's the whole point and the fact she gets that is really cool."

Although the stories of her life are familiar, Sister Jean said that the book-writing process with Davis helped her to remember stories and lessons perhaps she hadn’t thought about in years. From a Noah’s Ark-like collection of pets and animals (including a monkey named Jerry) growing up outside of San Francisco to lessons learned on Jesuit retreats in high school, Sister Jean says chronicling stories proved to be a valuable exercise.

While her life has been built largely around happiness and working for a bigger purpose, Sister Jean says that looking back has also provided her with an opportunity to reflect as she continues to approach her life and daily work with such verve and a positive spirit.

“My life has been pretty much the same as I’ve gone along,” Sister Jean told Patch. “But hopefully I have grown spiritually. I’ve always been tolerant, but hopefully, I have learned to be more tolerant of my own mistakes — and sometimes, I make mistakes and have to correct them. It’s OK to make a mistake as long as you don’t make the same one a second time because that shows improvement.”

And, Sister Jean says, self-correcting shows purpose on a daily basis even when providing oneself with a pat on the back is needed from time to time. It's something, even all these years later, Sister Jean — happiness and all — continues to do for herself.