Signs of Faith - Spring 2001- Our Everyday Work

Nick Haan is speaking of his mother, Joan Haan. A longtime teacher and counselor at Christian Brothers High School in Sacramento, Joan in her mid-sixties left her familiar surroundings to work for the De La Salle Christian Brothers in the Lwanga District of East Africa, where she was the District's Coordinator for Shared Mission from 1997 to 1999. Her accomplishments in Africa were called by many "miraculous."But a genetic blood disease claimed her life in the spring of 2000. She died in California, in the arms of her family. In the last years of her life, however, she blazed a new trail in Lasallian service and shared mission.

Brother John O'Neill, FSC, knew her in Africa and remembers with a smile, "She came to be called Brother Joan, which says something about how much she embodied the concept of shared mission."Brother Ronald Roggenback, FSC, also worked with her in Africa and recalls another nickname: "We used to kid her by calling her Madam Visitor. That's how much we thought of her."

Africa Called

Joan had been active in social justice and outreach programs during her career as a high school faculty member, and something about Africa spoke to her deeply. Joan first went to Africa in 1992, with her daughter Annie, to visit Nick, who was a Peace Corps volunteer in Kenya. Says Annie, "That lit a fire under Mom. She got this look in her eye. She told me that she wanted to go back after she retired, maybe to join the Peace Corps."

But the Brothers provided another road back to Africa for Joan as she served as a volunteer teacher and counselor in Kenya in 1995 and 1996. Retirement was just a few years off, but Joan didn't want to wait for retirement, so she arranged through the District of San Francisco to go to Africa in June 1997 to work for the Lwanga District out of its Provincialate headquarters in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya.

This was when Joan learned that she had a rare blood disease, not simply the diabetes that she had dealt with since the age of fifty. She had a genetic disorder called myelofibrosis, a condition that causes the bone marrow to become fibrous. While not contractible or contagious, it is eventually terminal, with a post-diagnosis life expectancy of from one to ten years. Joan's family and friends talked with her seriously about her plan to engage in demanding new work in a faraway place, but Africa was calling, and Joan answered.

As the District's coordinator for shared mission, Joan traveled through Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and South Africa teaching Lasallian spirituality and pedagogy in workshops. She helped to prepare undergraduates to be school teachers and school counselors at Christ the Teacher Institute of Education (CTIE), an institute of the Brothers within the Catholic University of East Africa.

Brother Ronald Roggenback, FSC, was director of CTIE at that time and recalls, "I'd known Joan for years and knew what a superb teacher she was. Once she got to Africa I recruited her to come to teach in our summer program that we call third semester, when we offer enrichment classes to these future teachers. Joan had a unique combination of skills. She taught psychological counseling and she taught an excellent course in reading and writing English. She was so energetic and dynamic. Her classes were always lively. I could hear her hard at work, and I felt that she really enjoyed what she was doing every moment. Not only was she a fine teacher, but also when she was in residence at the Provincialate headquarters she became indispensable. Even though she was on the road a good deal for her work, she could be depended upon to follow up on what you asked and to get things done. She was our rock."

"She went to my children's school to talk to the classes about missionary work in Africa. But actually she spent the time telling the kids all about her little Kenyan children. The thing about Mom is, when she was home, she really was just Mom. We found out more about all her accomplishments after her death."

– Lisa Haan Driscoll

A School Made of Cardboard

In her "free time" Joan took on a daunting project. Nick Haan, who is a consultant on food security in East Africa, explains: "I went to visit Mom during her first year in Kenya. I'd been in East Africa by then for eleven years and had been in hardship areas. But Mom took me to a place she had found where I saw poverty like I'd never seen before. Mom had gone to Mass at a little church in a slum area and had become aware of an impoverished little school there, made basically of cardboard and sitting right on a river running raw sewage and infested with cholera. She told me that she wanted to get hold of one small issue, to take one small thing that she could really help, and that this little school could be it."

Joan's friends and colleagues refer to this as Joan's "adoption" of the Kanyaa Primary School. Step by step Joan got improvements made, calling on her circle of support – her children, the De La Salle Brothers in Africa, Christian Brothers High School in Sacramento, the Sisters of Mercy in Auburn, St. Mary's Elementary School in Spokane. First, she got a vegetable farm started, to be maintained by the parents and children; she bought soccer balls and volleyballs for the kids to play with, instead of cans and sticks they would dig out of trash heaps; she got cloth and had school uniforms made, employing local women to sew them; she got textbooks (three children share each desk, and the goal was to secure one textbook per desk). Finally, she helped the school build more substantial classrooms on higher ground, where the campus would no longer be flooded by the polluted river.

That was as far as Joan herself could get before her illness forced her back to California. As myleofibrosis advances, the spleen begins to fail and must be removed. In the spring of 1999, doctors told Joan that she had reached that stage, and that her treatment must include surgery, hormone shots, blood transfusions, and greatly diminished activity. Annie recalls, "When she was told she could not go back to Kenya, it broke her heart. Not because of the illness' progress, but because she couldn't return to the people there she had come to love, because she couldn't continue the work she had been able to start so late in her life."

Joan continued to work from her home base in California, even as she continued to weaken. Her daughter Lisa says, "Mom's pride and joy was the support she provided for the school in Mathari. She visited us in Spokane a couple of years ago and she went to my children's school to talk to the classes about missionary work in Africa. But actually she spent the time telling the kids all about her little Kenyan children. The thing about Mom is, when she was home, she really was just Mom. We found out more about all her accomplishments after her death."

"She was an integral part of the faith life, the academic life, and the co-curricular activities of our school. Joan taught me so much about being an educator. I often hear Joan's words of faith, reason, and guidance in my head and in my heart."

Tenacity, Compassion

Joan's modesty and tenacity seemed to flow from the same source as her compassion. Her friend Sister Maura Power, RSM, wrote of her after her death: "All her ministries flowed from the core of her being, a core that was solidly rooted in a belief in a God of compassionate love, who through the death and resurrection of Jesus and the gift of the Holy Spirit calls us all to be one family, and sisters and brothers to each other."

Joan's effect on colleagues and students wherever she worked was deep and lasting. Shelly Gorman, Director of Admissions at Christian Brothers High School in Sacramento, was Joan's friend and colleague since 1976. "Joan provided so much for our school. She taught English and psychology, was a counselor, a vice principal, a director of guidance. And she was the timekeeper for the CBHS girls' basketball team. She was an integral part of the faith life, the academic life, and the co-curricular activities of our school. Joan taught me so much about being an educator. I often hear Joan's words of faith, reason, and guidance in my head and in my heart."The community at Christian Brothers High continues Joan's service to Kanyaa Primary School with an annual Valentine's Day fundraiser and with donations made to her memorial fund throughout the year.

More than a teacher and counselor, Joan was a kind of pioneer, according to Gery Short, Director of Lasallian School Programs for the District of San Francisco. Gery says, "Joan told me that we should set up a program for retiring teachers and staff to do the kind of work she wanted to do – to take their energy and talent and commit it to Lasallian work, even after they retired, which is a great idea. Joan, of course, wasn't one to wait for such a program to be set up. She just did it herself. What she did in Africa suited her, because she not only taught shared mission but she was a model of what she was teaching. When Joan committed herself to Africa, it was a terrific message she gave to people in this District. There are probably more Joan Haans in our schools. There is a large corps of lay teachers and staff coming to retirement age who still have much to offer. It's a new generation in Lasallian education and in Catholic education generally, and a pool of talent and energy is there, waiting to be tapped."

If love is permanent, then she can never leave.
Just because we can't hold the pearl
does not mean its luminescence dulls.
Her soul and spirit breathe into us;
what a gift, this death, what a birth!
– Anna Marie Haan

In Death as in Life

As Joan lived a Lasallian life, so she died a Lasallian death – on Founder's Day, May 15, 2000. Her son Nick wrote to Brother Dominic Ehrmantraut, FSC, Visitor of the Lwanga District, to inform him of Joan's death: "As I understand it, today, May 15, marks fifty years since John Baptist de La Salle was proclaimed Patron of Christian Teachers. What a truly fitting day for my mother to devote her spirit to the heavens. Mom passed away at 4:48 a.m. this morning in the most beautiful, serene manner imaginable. The four of us children were with her, cuddled on her bed, for her final hours . . . . For a couple of weeks prior to her death, we had been watching the nesting and birth of some finches just outside her bedroom window; and literally at the very moment of her final breath those birds began chirping as the new dawn began."

Annie recalls, "She had told us that when she knew it was time to go she wanted us to call some close friends over so that we could all say the rosary together. On the night before she died the people gathered and we said a rosary around her bed. Next day, after she had died, a couple of friends returned to say another rosary. And then we sang some songs. Strangely enough, one of the songs that we felt like singing was 'Happy Birthday.' We meant it. We felt this death was her birth into a new life."

Joan's daughter Mary Kidd says simply, "My mother is my hero."In those words, she speaks for many in Joan's family and for many in the Lasallian family of which Joan Haan was a treasured member.

Joan Susan Haan . . .
was born December 19, 1934, in Carroll, Iowa. Orphaned young, she was raised in Denver, Colorado, by her aunt and uncle. In 1956, Joan earned a degree in drama from Loretto Heights College in Denver; she later earned her master's degree in counseling from San Francisco State University. Joan joined Bishop Manogue High School in Sacramento in 1976 as vice-principal and teacher. In 1990 when Manogue's existence as a separate institution ended, Joan began working at Christian Brothers High School as a teacher and counselor. Joan sat on numerous charitable boards and was a Mercy Associate with the Sisters of Mercy in Auburn, California, as well as a Eucharistic Minister in her parish. Joan is survived by four children, Anna Marie Haan, Lisa Marie Driscoll, Nicholas John Haan, and Mary Catherine Kidd; also by five grandchildren, two sisters, and her former husband Dr. Robert Haan.

Kanyaa Primary School in the Mathari district has three hundred students this year,
up from one hundred two years ago. All of them live in slums, and dire poverty is their way of life. The school is sponsored by the Archdiocese of Nairobi, but all funding comes through generous donors such as the late Joan Haan. Basic needs are for textbooks, teacher salaries, and an adequate building. At present the school consists of mud huts for classrooms. Parents, teachers, and students, through the efforts of Joan Haan, have a garden where they grow vegetables for school lunch. They also sell some of the produce to subsidize the school. It is heartrending to see the students and the school,
but the children are happy to have any educational opportunity at all, and they thoroughly enjoy their school.

– Brother Dominic Ehrmantraut, FSC, Visitor of the Lwanga District

Question:
As you read this article, what other thoughts, people or stories came to mind? Please share your ideas with us (email signs@dlsi.org); we will publish responses in future issues of Signs of Faith.

Brother Visitor's Letter	\|	The Spirit Shines Through It
Learning To Give Until it Hurts	\|	Joan Haan: A Life Fulfilled
Rancho de Los Hermanos	\|	Hold Them Close, With Open Hands