Sister M. Isolina Ferre; Awarded Medal of Freedom for Aiding Needy

Sister M. Isolina Ferre, 85, a U.S. Medal of Freedom winner known as the Mother Teresa of Puerto Rico for her work among the poor on that island and the U.S. mainland. Ferre was born in Ponce, Puerto Rico, in 1914, the youngest daughter of one of Puerto Rico’s wealthiest families. The Ferre family owned two of the island’s leading newspapers and her brother, former Gov. Luis A. Ferre, founded the ruling New Progressive Party and Ponce Art Museum. During a visit to Havana in 1935, Ferre decided to become a nun in the order of the Missionary Servants of the Holy Trinity. She was assigned to missionary work with miners in Appalachia and with immigrants in Brooklyn, N.Y., and Massachusetts before attending St. Joseph College for Women and Fordham University, both in New York City. She gained international recognition in the 1950s and 1960s for her social work with Puerto Rican youth gangs in Brooklyn. She later established community aid centers in Ponce and in the United States and 1988 founded Ponce’s Trinity College. Her work with the disadvantaged was based on teaching them self-sufficiency. She provided leadership and vocational training and created jobs, establishing a line of handicrafts, prints and greeting cards that is sold in gift shops in Puerto Rico. Several of her former students became professional photographers after learning the craft in one of her programs and have been represented in exhibits in New York’s Metropolitan Museum. In August 1999 Ferre was awarded the Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, by President Clinton. On Thursday at Women’s Hospital in Ponce, Puerto Rico.