Kathryn Juel Weibel Brookins

1936 - 2020

Kathryn Juel Weibel Brookins

Oct. 31, 1936 - July 25, 2020

SOUTH BEND, IN -

Kathryn Juel Brookins, 83, founder and publisher of the Mission Hill News, died July 25, 2020 from complications of Alzheimer's. She was born in the depths of the Great Depression to Frank and Irene Weibel in North Platte, Nebraska; she spent her early years in Madrid, Nebraska. Following the devastation the Dust Bowl and Depression wreaked on western and Sand Hills Nebraska and other states, her father, an auto mechanic, hit upon the idea of migrating. Frank discovered he could keep busy and earn good money based on his mastery of all things mechanical if he followed construction and mining activities. With the onset of World War II both Frank and Irene went to work in the defense industry, which meant Kathryn became one of the first latchkey kids, as her parents arranged their shifts so that one worked on the overnight and the other work during the day shift. Kathryn was left to manage things around the house by herself. Over the course of her childhood, ending when she entered Reed College as a 16-year-old freshman in 1953, the Weibels lived in many different places because, with her father going to where the work was, meant they moved around freely, and he had employment full-time rather than seasonally. By one count they lived in 45 different places in the far West, including Alaska. Frank Weibel was the engineer/mechanic who made the machines work to create the Tecolote Tunnel that finally delivered water to Santa Barbara in 1955 after several other companies had gone bankrupt trying over the years.

Kathryn grew up in this environment which meant she had limited access to books and little continuity in formal schooling. She and her mother Irene drove the Alaska Highway, becoming probably the first female couple ever to take that 1200-mile trek when they went up to be with Frank. This was shortly before she entered college and there were very few books; she read what was available and was stumped by the word “empirical” with no recourse to find its meaning. The irony of this would be lost if one did not know she eventually became an empiricist! Then came the question of college; she visited University of Oregon and was put off by her discovery that her host student had some 30 to 50 skirts! Kathryn was not into clothes and may have had two or three skirts, for she typically wore jeans and a miner's shirt. She told her father she wanted to go to Reed College, and he expressed concern for her having chosen perhaps the most expensive college in the U.S. It cost something on the order of seven hundred dollars, so she said she explained to him that it was the best school and that's why she wanted to go there, not because it was the most expensive. She went to Reed and her wardrobe distinguished her from other students because she wore her overalls and miner's shirts. Some 40 to 50 years afterwards, while reflecting on her experiences at Reed she recognized that she had been in all probability the first “flower child” anywhere.

At Reed she discovered classical music wafting from dorm rooms, but had only been exposed to what we then called hillbilly music or what we now call country music. These two genres of music dominated her listening throughout the rest of her life, although she liked Pete Seeger and other folk musicians and country blues, especially Howling' Wolf and Jimmy Reed, who was her favorite. She somehow entered Reed College with the notion she was going to major in philosophy but quickly learned she had little interest in discussions of being and similar arcane topics; besides, the readings were many and impossible to comprehend. She struggled with completing the weekly reading assignments of about 500 pages because she was a slow reader, in part because she had learned to read only after she was around age eleven. The 45 moves in sparsely or unpopulated places provided little time and few resources to read and study. She struggled with the demanding workload at Reed but soon developed the skill of almost total recall of whatever she read.

She struggled in science classes as well, but she apparently had a remarkable talent for doing well on examinations. The fact that she was a very beautiful woman and was top of the class in the tests got the attention of Cliff Lloyd, whom she married after her first year. She decided that it was unfair for her father to continue to pay her tuition, so she dropped out and she and Cliff relocated to Washington State College, where they had the good fortune of meeting the man who would ultimately become an eminent economist and editor of the American Economic Review, Robert W. Clower, who was back from England to complete the work of his father who had died. Soon thereafter Clower got a position at Northwestern University and he took Cliff with him.

Despite having two children, Kathryn found time and interest in what was the first African Studies seminar in the U.S., created by Melville Herskovits. Soon came an opportunity to go to the Sudan because her husband, despite being a mere 21-year-old, was deemed acceptable to be appointed to a Smith-Mundt professorship by Bob Clower. Clower was convinced she would never recover from the complications resulting from her second pregnancy with her son Clifford unless she had significant household help, which she could not afford. Cliff applied and got the position and they went off to the Sudan where they spent a couple of years, and again looking for an opportunity to take advantage of whatever might be available, Kathryn read what was available in social anthropology about the Sudanese peoples, which would prove fortuitous.

The external examiner from Oxford, Norman Leyland, who came to the Sudan to examine the economics students, was being eaten by mosquitoes. Kathryn invited him to move from the hotel where he had been staying to where she and Cliff lived. As a result of their conversations, and being rescued from mosquitoes, Mr. Leyland, who had been Winston Churchill's personal secretary during the War, invited Cliff to Nuffield to study economics. Kathryn met the faculty at Oxford and Margery Perham, an African historian, insisted it would be a waste if she did not enroll in a program of studies. Kathryn's knowledge and command of the studies that had been done on the Sudanese enabled her to readily demonstrate that she was more than ready to do graduate work at Oxford. She was admitted to do the diploma in social anthropology, a graduate program. Two years later exam time came; she said that at the time she had no idea what the nature of the exam was, and had she known that virtually everyone who took the exam failed, she would not have taken the exam. However, she took the exam and was one of the few who passed, earning her diploma in social anthropology after taking something on the order of 20 hours of exams over two days with essentially one year of formal university study at Reed College as a seventeen-year-old. Cliff went on to become the first person to earn a DPhil in economic theory at Oxford, writing his thesis in general equilibrium theory, and was recruited to Purdue University, where Kathryn would ultimately become a research associate in the Krannert School, where she worked alongside Economics Nobel Laureate, Vernon L. Smith. After several years at Purdue, Cliff took a job at SUNY Buffalo. Kathryn wanted to be independent of Cliff, and took a position at Buffalo State College in sociology. Their marriage had apparently been failing, so in 1969 she and Cliff divorced.

By 1971, Oscar (her husband at her death) and she were courting, but in January 1972 he went off to lecture in Ghana. Kathryn remained at Buffalo State and soon hit upon the idea of joining him by bringing a group of students to experience Africa first-hand. They pulled off what certainly was a first-ever on that scale that any institution, let alone a lowly State College would successfully pull off: a nine-week study program in West Africa. In the summer of 1972, they escorted 23 students who paid just $900 for all expenses including tuition, room and board, home stays, and airfare!

Six months after the study program ended, Kathryn returned to Ghana in early 1973 and married Oscar on March 10, 1973. She gave birth May 1974 to a healthy Laura in the Kumoji Maternity Hospital in Osu Circle, Accra. With an expanded household and local pay, money ran short so Kathryn and Oscar returned and moved to Notre Dame in 1974.

By 1978 they were living at 620 W. LaSalle Ave. and had gotten involved in the restoration of historic homes and communities. At one point they saved a huge house and then moved it to 615 W. Lasalle Street across from their home.

Their focus shifted in January 1980, when it was announced that the South Bend public schools were going to be voluntarily desegregated. The Justice Department and school system apparently developed this odd and unprecedented tactic of entering into a consent decree even though there was no active lawsuit to avoid having anyone intervene, and they could proceed to agree on whatever they chose without really informing the public. Oscar got appointed to the school board; then Kathryn, on behalf of her daughter Laura, sued, claiming in part undue impact of the program. She took it all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court with David Albert as attorney, where it was not heard.

During this same time period Clarence Abdul Nabaa, a black Muslim publishing the South Bend Communicator in South Bend, needed money and sought to borrow from Oscar, who drove a hard bargain and got Mr. Nabaa to agree that in exchange for a loan he would take on Kathryn as a regular news columnist. This was quite an unusual thing to propose, but that was how Oscar approached it. Nabaa agreed, so here was a black Muslim newspaper with a white female columnist writing in its pages.

From this beginning she would later begin her own paper, the Mission Hill News in Boston in 1992. Hers was a well-respected, controversial outlet given its irreverent pitch of politics in Boston, especially in the surrounding Harvard University and Mission Hill where she lived. In addition to the revelations she regularly reported on, she also prosecuted a number of zoning lawsuits pro se that altered zoning and development practices.

Perhaps her singular legal accomplishment would be related to higher education, where over the years she pursued the idea that the Harvard University endowment was sufficiently large that there should be no tuition charged, or certainly there should be much more financial aid given to students. She took a case up to the U.S. Supreme Court and although the writ of certiorari was never granted, she and others are convinced her suit motivated Harvard in 1990 to eliminate the required family contribution for families with incomes of $60,000 or less, making Harvard accessible to many more lower income families than before her lawsuit.

She lived a full life and will be missed by many as the machinations of politicians may go unchecked by her forthright challenges.

Mrs. Brookins is survived by her husband and her six children, Anamaria Lloyd of Seattle, Clifford and Sally Lloyd of Hamilton, Ontario, Elizabeth Fulton of Paris, France, Ariana and Michael Packard of Providence, Laura Brookins and Önder Demir of DC, and Julia Brookins and Paul Foster of Austin, 12 grandchildren, and one great-grandchild.

Donations on her behalf may be made to Addie Travis Brookins Endowed Council Scholarship at Jackson State University via this link: jsums.edu/giving/annualgiving/.

Private services were held July 28, 2020 with Brothers of Hope serving. Further details may be found at: https://Kathryn-Brookins.forevermissed.com.