‘Uncommon but extraordinary’ tenure
Betty White sits at her office desk at Sacred Hearts Academy. She is often one of the first people on campus each morning. (HCH photo | Anna Weaver)
By Anna Weaver
Hawaii Catholic Herald
If you want to see where it all started for Betty White at Sacred Hearts Academy, just look at her office wall. There hangs a framed copy of her original 1972 agreement to be a part-time, substitute teacher at the all-girls Catholic school in Kaimuki.
She was paid $4.75 an hour, and the principal, Sacred Hearts Sister Mary Rose, told her if she did well, “she would consider me for the following year.”
“And that’s what I did,” White said with a chuckle.
She’s been at the Academy ever since, moving from history teacher to department head to vice principal to interim principal and finally to head of school. She took over the top job in 1991.
White said that she decided to retire this year because it marks her 50th as an educator (and her 48th at Sacred Hearts).
“God has really blessed me with health and energy, and I’m thankful for that every day,” she said. “But to stay in a school for 50 years is a long time. You want to let the younger people come in and see what happens.”
From Virginia to Hawaii
An early yearbook photo of Betty White (Photo courtesy of Sacred Hearts Academy)
Betty Orr grew up in rural Lee County in southwest Virginia. Her father, Robert, was a mechanic and her mother, Georgia, oversaw the family’s home life.
Betty has five sisters and one brother, with herself sandwiched in the middle. Despite their county having a low college attendance rate and her parents never having gone themselves, all of the Orr children went on to higher education.
“Our parents just expected us to do well,” she said in her calm, low, vibrant tone that still has a distinctive Southern lilt to it decades after leaving Virginia.
Betty earned her bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and went to the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg for a year of graduate studies in political science. It was while studying at the school library that she met law student Emmet White.
The two dated long distance for a year while Emmet continued his law studies and Betty went back to teach at her hometown school, Lee High School. The principal, who had been Betty’s principal, told her she’d do well in education as long as she remembered that not all students were as hard-working and focused as she was.
Betty and Emmet married in 1970, and she switched to teaching elementary school at the Catholic Walsingham Academy in Williamsburg while he finished his studies.
When Emmet had the opportunity to start a law practice in Hawaii with a former college classmate, the couple decided to relocate.
Not long after they were on Oahu, White saw an ad in the newspaper for a temporary history teacher at Sacred Hearts to fill in for a teacher on maternity leave, and the rest is also history.
Sacred Hearts Sister Katherine Francis Miller, the school’s longtime campus minister and faculty member, remembers when White first started teaching at Sacred Hearts.
“She was very young, blonde, pretty, and she had a heavy Southern accent,” she recalled. “And she made her students work.”
Sister Katherine Francis recalls the Model United Nations projects White assigned her students each year and the student “moot court” cases she supervised. Her students were also required to read the daily newspaper to keep up on current events.
The Sacred Hearts community, including many alumnae, gathered for a “Celebration of Careers” lunch at the Ala Moana Hotel May 18 to recognize four long-time faculty and staff members who were retiring. From left, teachers Lynn Fonseca and Gaylen Isaacs; new head of school Scott Schroeder; Betty White; admissions director Karen Muramoto. (HCH Photo | Anna Weaver )
“She was very organized, very hard working and a challenging teacher,” she said, but also kind.
White managed to juggle having three children all while working at the Academy. In 1990, the principal at the time went on sabbatical, and White, who was vice principal, took over the job first on an interim and then a permanent basis.
“As an administrator, she had a tremendous vision for what the school needed in terms of how she could keep Sacred Hearts Academy on the forefront of all women’s education,” Sister Katherine Francis said.
White did that in part by being active with the National Coalition of Girls’ Schools for many years, also serving as a trustee. On June 25, the organization is honoring her for all of her contributions to all-girls education with the Ransome Prize, given to a woman who has been an outstanding advocate for the coalition and her member school.
“I believe in this single-gender environment for girls very strongly,” White said. “Because they need a school where their confidence can soar and they can really find their footing so that when they go into a co-ed environment they have that confidence.”
While some single-gender schools have gone co-ed to raise enrollment in recent years, White said the Academy hasn’t needed to consider that.
Always innovating
Besides keeping the school on a sound financial footing, White’s many accomplishments at Sacred Hearts include transitioning the school from an institution that was primarily led and staffed by Sacred Hearts Sisters to one with an almost entirely lay faculty and staff that keeps the sisters’ spirit alive.
She’s led the school’s multi-year building expansion which added a new student center, performing and visual arts centers and a renovated gym. And she’s made sure the school has kept on top of maintenance for the century-old school buildings and chapel.
“You can never be satisfied with the status quo,” White said. “You’ve got to keep reaching, keep improving.”
Bernice Ramos Clark was among the well-wishers greeting Betty White after the Celebration of Careers on May 18. (HCH Photo | Anna Weaver)
She and the school’s campus ministry program has emphasized service learning to students, and not just for their college resumes.
Sacred Hearts has twice been named a National School of Character, the only Hawaii school to achieve that designation. In fact, the school wins many awards and grants each year, in large part because of White’s initiative in getting students and teachers to apply for them.
The Academy has also developed a strong reputation for its STEM programs, repeat state championship sports teams such as in air riflery, and sending its graduates on to top colleges.
“We’ve had some very innovative programs,” White said. “But we also teach justice and moral values. And I think in innovation, you don’t throw out the things that have proven to be very effective and part of your mission, but you keep improving and making each year better.”
She takes great pride in her students and has an amazing recall for details and names when she runs into them years later.
“I’m always convincing them that they’ve had an uncommon but extraordinary education, and to use that education to make the world a better place,” White said. “They should use the gifts that God has given them to become the very best people they can be.”
Sister Katherine Francis said that White, although not Catholic, applied her Protestant faith to the head of school role and made sure she was in line with and up to date on the Sacred Hearts charism and Catholic Church in general.
White, who was raised Methodist and joined the United Church of Christ after marrying her husband, said she has an ecumenical spirit and hopes she’s made the sisters proud all these years.
“I would like to be known as a head of school who worked very hard to keep the mission of the school intact as it grew and developed,” White said. “I’ve always felt very sensitive, very aware that the sisters had entrusted the school to myself and primarily a lay faculty and lay administration. And it was very important that we not let them down.”
One of her former history students, Celeste Akiu, said White still influences her to this day.
“As you get older, people ask you about who has been that one person to touch your life,” she said. “I’ve always said she’s been that little person on my shoulder.”
Akiu went on to become a middle and high school history teacher in California before entering school administration. She just finished her first year as principal of Holy Family School in Honolulu.
She said White’s teaching style had a big impact on her. “She was passionate about what she taught and I remember what she taught to this day,” Akiu said.
“I can only hope she can realize how many lives she really touched.”
The new head of school, Scott Schroeder, takes over White’s office July 1 and officially steps in as head on July 31.
Schroeder is the outgoing dean of the School of Business and Communication at Chaminade University. He is Catholic and has been on the Sacred Hearts board since 2013 and its chairman since 2017. White feels confident he’ll do well as the school’s new leader.
“New blood is good,” she said. “It brings in a sense of enthusiasm.”
White said she and her husband, Emmet, who also retired recently, don’t have specific plans for the future other than spending even more time with their three children and seven grandchildren, all of whom are in Hawaii.
Otherwise, White, who shocked this Sacred Hearts graduate when she was a student by revealing she read People magazine to relax on the weekend, still enjoys browsing that publication. She also plans to have more time to enjoy gardening, watching TV and seeing movies.
She’ll miss the school she’s worked at for half a century, but won’t call what she’s done a legacy.
“I don’t like to talk about my legacy because I think that the legacy of the school is definitely the work of the sisters who began the school 110 years ago,” White said. “And it’s the work of many people that have brought it to this point.”
Anna Weaver is a Sacred Hearts Academy graduate and went to the school during Betty White’s head of school tenure.
