SESP 100: Otherie Love
As part of our SESP Centennial celebration, we are highlighting notable alumni who have helped shape education and social policy for the last 100 years. Visit our Centennial website.
Alumna Otherie Love (1920-2022), was a trailblazing educator, writer, and historian known as a voracious reader and lifelong learner. She made history in 1941 when she became the first African American student teacher in Evanston/Skokie School District 65, the same year she received her bachelor's degree from Northwestern's School of Education.
"Northwestern helped break down a barrier," Love told the School of Education and Social Policy's Inquiry Magazine in 2011, when she was 91. "My Northwestern teacher helped break down the racial prejudice in Evanston by putting me there. It had an impact on my life and the community's life."
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When Love realizeld she was the only Black teacher in a school of Black children, she raised the issue with the school board. It paved the way for more Black student teachers, and in 1943, SESP alumna Lorraine Morton became the district's first Black teacher in an all-white middle school. (Morton later became Evanston's first Black mayor, serving four terms, from 1993 to 2009.)
Detroit Days
Love married Samuel Love in 1943 and moved to Detroit, where they lived for 47 years. While teaching elementary school math in the Detroit Public Schools and raising two daughters, Love attended graduate school and earned a master's degree in mathematics in 1969 from the University of Detroit.
A talented teacher, Love became assistant to the administrator of the regional office. She oversaw all math instruction in the region, gave workshop presentations and served as an educational consultant to a publishing firm.
Love said she was heavily influenced by her college-educated parents. Her father, the Rev. Prentice H.E. Winfield, was pastor at Sherman Methodist Church from 1933 to 1953. Her mother, meanwhile, was certified as a teacher.
"I had that instinct of wanting to teach, wanting to help children," she said.
A Lifelong Learner
Love left education after four decades and dove into her second career as a tax preparer. She spent 20 years as a master tax adviser and enrolled agent for H&R Block until she retired at age 85.
A year earlier, however, at age 84, she earned a certificate in human services, and she graduated at the top of her class with a 4.0 grade-point average. The experience included an internship at an adult day-care program, where she volunteered to create activities for adults in various stages of dementia.
She also began taking classes in Spanish at the North Shore Senior Center.
"Older people are the neglected people," Love said in 2011. "I was seeing this need. I wanted to be able to counsel people, and I wanted to be able to do it right."
In 2008, Love received an award from the nonprofit Family Focus in Evanston, which chose deserving people in the community to honor. As Love chalked up accomplishment after accomplishment, her father's motto stuck with her. "You can," he impressed upon her. "It gave me the confidence that I could do it," she said.
In 2012, Love moved to a senior living community in Dearborn, Michigan, where she made a name for herself as a poet. In 2021, a year before she died at 102, the community named her poet laureate.
Her daughter, Jeri, compiled a book of her mother's poetry and essays and titled it "100 Years of Blessings." During the 2021 celebration, Love read one of her poems from that book titled "Memories."
Asked if she had any words of wisdom to share with others as she approached her 101st birthday, Love agreed to share the poem she wrote in 1997.
"Love Is Everywhere" by Otherie W. Love
Love is in kind words you say.
Love is in actions you do every day.
Love is in the affection you share.
Love is all around you; it's everywhere.
It is lovers that embrace and kiss.
It is slipping into a world of bliss.
It is a mother holding a child dear.
It is a father proudly standing near.
It is sisters and brothers together forever.
It is families combining in an endeavor.
It is friends you can always treasure,
It's understanding beyond measure.
It is reaching out to help those in need.
It is sharing time and doing a good deed.
Love is universal, it shows you care.
Love is all around you. It's everywhere.