Jewish Group Names a Sister Its Mother of the Year

The Los Angeles Jewish Home for the Aging’s choice for its Community Mother of the Year honor is neither a mother nor Jewish.

But Jennie Lechtenberg, a Roman Catholic nun, so impressed the group with her work as founder and director of the PUENTE Learning Center that it is honoring her today in Reseda at a Mother’s Day gathering that is expected to attract more than 1,500 mothers, grandmothers and children.

The event’s special guests will be the home’s 800 residents, 90% of them women, the majority of them mothers. These women have been practicing the maternal arts for a long time -- the median age of residents is 90, said the home’s chief executive, Molly Forrest.

Sister Jennie, as Lechtenberg is called, has won international recognition for the intergenerational educational program she started in Boyle Heights in 1985. Begun as an effort to tutor a few dozen first- and second-graders who weren’t doing well in school, the center has grown into an educational organization that serves more than 3,000 people, many of them immigrants, between the ages of 4 and 99. In its literature, the center states its conviction that no one should be held back by illiteracy, poverty or the inability to speak English.

Today, the center uses computers and traditional methods to teach English and Spanish, effective parenting skills, public speaking, preschool readiness and job training. It also offers a high school tutorial and other programs at its two campuses -- the Boyle Heights facility and another in South Los Angeles.

Lechtenberg, 67, is not the first non-Jew to receive the Community Mother of the Year honor, but she is the first non-mother.

“The Jewish Home recognizes the value of every individual who makes the world a better place,” said Forrest, adding that Lechtenberg, who joined the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary almost 50 years ago, is a superb role model.

“All of us should have that kind of dramatic impact on so many lives,” Forrest said.

Bridge to Education

PUENTE stands for People United to Enrich the Neighborhood Through Education, and is also Spanish for bridge. Lechtenberg insisted that the institution is the real honoree -- she is just its public face.

“I’ve really been blessed to work in an organization in which the values of motherhood are so well understood,” said Lechtenberg, who lists caring, wishing the best for others and self-sacrifice among those values.

The center has become a popular stop for political leaders visiting the city, including Great Britain’s Prince Charles, President George W. Bush and former First Lady and now New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan is a fan. The center’s main building is named after Riordan, who once described Lechtenberg as “an angel in the City of Angels.”

Retired businessman Dan Rosenson headed the Jewish Home committee that chose Lechtenberg for the honor. “We wanted somebody who really gives to the community,” he said.

Rosenson said he had never talked with a nun before he spent time with Lechtenberg.

“She’s vivacious, intelligent, driven, sincere, warm, caring,” he said. “And the PUENTE Learning Center is just awe-inspiring.”

Once Rosenson saw the program, he said, honoring Lechtenberg “was a no-brainer.”

Minding Ps and Qs

Lechtenberg’s charm includes not taking herself too seriously. Asked about her early experiences as a community activist, she recalled that she organized local children into a group called the Junior Stripers while growing up in Alhambra during World War II.

“It was our little neighborhood war effort,” she said. The children ran errands, mowed lawns and made themselves useful in any way they could.

“The problem was, I was never a good speller, so on the side of the wagon I misspelled ‘stripers.’ ”

The future nun had carefully lettered “Junior Strippers” on the wagon. “The neighbors got a kick out of that,” she said.

In her view, mothers occupy a singular place in people’s lives and hearts: “It always struck me in the life of Christ -- he divested himself of everything but a mother. She was there when he came into the world and there when he went out of it.”

Lechtenberg said her own mother, Jennie Ryan, was a fine role model.

Lechtenberg’s mother was busy with nine children, but was dignified, wise and kind, had integrity, and seemed to understand people of all ages, she said.

Lechtenberg said her mother was sustained by optimism and strong faith through family tragedies, including the loss of three young children.

“When you look up, you see the stars; when you look down, you see the mud,” her mother would say.

As a child, Lechtenberg learned how to add numbers very quickly in her head, thanks to her mother. As a second-grader, Little Jennie was so good at that, her teachers had her compete against the eighth-graders.

“How did you learn to do that?” her teachers asked.

“I play cards with my Mom,” she said, much to her mother’s embarrassment.

Lechtenberg said hers was the kind of mother who packed her a sandwich when she announced at 7 or 8 that she was running away from home. And when a sudden downpour ended her adventure and sent her home, her mother asked simply: “Do you want some soup with your sandwich?”

Choosing to work through a religious community and live chastely has not kept Lechtenberg from thinking about what it would be like to have a child of her own.

“I would love to hold a little baby and know that’s my flesh and blood,” she said.

Instead, she has thousands of children borne by others. The little ones she encounters at the center are her special joy, especially when she sees how success lights up their faces.

“She’s a great mother,” Rosenson said.