Globe: One by one, sisters earn Harvard honours
Post
Monday June 26 2006, One by one, sisters earn Harvard honours, Anthony Reinhart & Jane Armstrong, Globe and Mail
TORONTO AND BERESFORD, N.B. -- As much as he liked to impart knowledge to his five daughters, Dr. Samuel Briar Maxwell never told them why he cut his own hair in the upstairs bathroom at home in Beresford. He never mentioned the time he was turned away at a barber shop after he arrived from Ghana in 1949, or how he felt when hospital patients told him they didn't want to be treated by a "nigger."
When it came to parenting, Dr. Maxwell and his wife Irene, a white nurse from New Brunswick, set their hard-earned frustrations aside and resolved to ensure their girls never lacked for opportunity, by serving them a steady diet of encouragement along with dinner every night.
If he were alive today, Dr. Maxwell could safely say it worked: All five daughters -- Cindy, 35; Linda, 32; Rita, 29; Ada, 26; and Dina, 21 -- went on to earn undergraduate degrees at Harvard University, an unprecedented feat at a 370-year-old institution long seen as a bastion of white American privilege.
"They are the reason why we are here today," said Cindy Maxwell, herself an doctor now, at Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital. "We were the priority; we were the focus of our parents' lives."
At a recent gathering in Cindy's office overlooking University Avenue, the Maxwell sisters explained how their father's stern but positive guidance, combined with their mother's warm and protective support, made them the women they are today.
On paper, they're impressive enough. Cindy, in addition to delivering babies, is an assistant professor of maternal-fetal medicine; Linda, also a doctor, is an ear, nose and throat specialist with an interest in reconstructive facial surgery; Rita is an assistant Crown attorney working the courts downtown; Ada is articling at Borden Ladner Gervais, one of the country's largest law firms; and Dina, who graduated from Harvard earlier this month, is bound for law school at McGill University.
In person, it becomes clear that their parents valued more than mere academic achievement, central as that was. Unfailingly polite and accommodating, they carry themselves with grace and good humour, and show as much respect to each other as they do to people they don't know.
These qualities left an impression on Harvard, where faculty and staff still talk about the Maxwell sisters from New Brunswick.
"They have generated more goodwill at Harvard, as a family, than hardly anyone we can remember," said S. Allen Counter, a neuroscience professor and director of the Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations, a cultural institute on the Cambridge, Mass., campus.
"If you meet them, your first impression is their warm, honest, innocent smiles. You see in their eyes human decency and respect for humanity," Prof. Counter said.
All five Maxwell sisters worked part-time at the Harvard Foundation to help pay for their education. Scholarships, loans and contributions from their parents covered the rest. The academic achievements, combined with their charming personalities, prompt the question: What kind of home produced such accomplished women?
The literal answer is: A modest house in a small, seaside town in northern New Brunswick, where the blue shimmer of the Bay of Chaleur can be seen if you look east from the front yard. The only oversized items in the modestly furnished split level were the dreams Samuel and Irene Maxwell held for their girls' futures.
Today, the bookshelves in the living room are crammed with trophies won by all five sisters throughout their high-school careers. There are awards for debating, essay prizes and plaques from the televised brainteaser Reach for the Top.
Irene Maxwell says she and her husband did not set out to produce academic superstars. At times, Ms. Maxwell, who was the 10th of 15 children, was awed at her girls' intelligence and depth of character.
"You know how daughters look up to their mothers?" she asked. "Well, I looked up to my kids. They're really nice. I'm very proud of the people they have become.
"I had an exceptionally interesting life, being the mother of these girls," she continued. "They all had such inquisitive minds."
And yet, it was Ms. Maxwell who first raised the subject of an Ivy League education as she drove Cindy, her eldest, home from Bathurst High School one day. Up to that point, Cindy had only considered applying to two Maritime universities.
"She planted that little seed and it went from there," said Cindy, who became the first Bathurst student to apply to Harvard. Still, she wasn't out of the woods yet -- she first had to write two Scholastic Assessment Tests, or SATs, in Moncton, a 2½-hour drive away.
On the day of the tests, in early winter, Ms. Maxwell and her daughter set off in the car, but a snowstorm forced them to turn back.
Prodded by her mother, Cindy wrote back to Harvard and explained the situation. She was allowed to take the tests at her high school, alone in a room with a teacher standing by.
Weeks later, she cried when Harvard's assistant dean of admissions called with the good news.
In the fall of 1987, Samuel Maxwell slid behind the wheel of the family vehicle, a little blue Plymouth Reliant K-car, and drove Cindy off to her future, with Linda and Rita along for the ride. Boston was the first big city the girls had seen, and its bustle was like a "wall of sound," Cindy said. "It took me a while to get used to that."
Needless to say, the Maxwells and Harvard soon got used to one another, although each sister insists she made her own decision to attend, free of pressure from the others or their parents.
Ada recalls being a teenager and her mother turning to her, while they were washing dishes, and saying, "You don't have to go to Harvard. Be yourself and do whatever you want."
In late November of 1995, Samuel Maxwell fell ill with pancreatic cancer and died two months later. Even then, he insisted his girls return to their classes after Christmas holidays, rather than stay by his side.
"He didn't want his illness or his passing to interfere," Cindy said.
But his presence in the house is palpable. More than a decade after his death, Ms. Maxwell quotes him in nearly every anecdote.
Her late husband's quiet, smiling demeanour masked a fierce will and an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, she says. He had a penchant for quoting African proverbs and metaphor-laden parables, which the girls ate up, Ms. Maxwell recounts with a laugh.
"The children were always mesmerized by what he had to say."
Despite his own academic pedigree, Dr. Maxwell's career was stalled by racism, a fate he endured mainly in silence.
"They saw his black face and they'd make up their minds about him," Ms. Maxwell said of her husband's patients and colleagues. "My husband did not get a fair shake in Canada."
Yet these setbacks never embittered the African-born doctor. Instead, he poured his heart into teaching his daughters his own love of learning.
"Here's where it all happened," Ms. Maxwell said, pausing in the doorway of the dining room.
"He'd go around to all the girls and ask them, 'How was your day? What did you learn at school today?' " she said. "He didn't accept 'nothing' for an answer. He'd say, 'Well surely something must have happened. You spent the whole day there.' " Life wasn't all work. On Sunday, Dr. Maxwell played his music -- everything from jazz, blues and reggae to rock, country and classical -- while the girls read.
By the time the Maxwell sisters reached junior high school, they were all top students. Ms. Maxwell says she remembers a junior high teacher telling her there was nothing more she could teach Cindy. Instead of allowing her to bask in her success, Dr. Maxwell told his daughter to read more. "If you know everything your teacher is saying, get another book on the subject," he said.
Stern as such lessons might sound, the sisters say their father delivered them selflessly; he wanted them to set high expectations for themselves, not simply meet his, or each other's.
The fact that all attended Harvard speaks more to their closeness and their cumulative familiarity with the institution than a sense of obligation or competition.
So, when they gathered in Cambridge earlier this month for Dina's commencement ceremony, they did so as friends.
"We root for each other always," Rita said, her sisters nodding in agreement. "We want each other to do well, so whatever we can do to make that happen, we will."
TORONTO AND BERESFORD, N.B. -- As much as he liked to impart knowledge to his five daughters, Dr. Samuel Briar Maxwell never told them why he cut his own hair in the upstairs bathroom at home in Beresford. He never mentioned the time he was turned away at a barber shop after he arrived from Ghana in 1949, or how he felt when hospital patients told him they didn't want to be treated by a "nigger."
When it came to parenting, Dr. Maxwell and his wife Irene, a white nurse from New Brunswick, set their hard-earned frustrations aside and resolved to ensure their girls never lacked for opportunity, by serving them a steady diet of encouragement along with dinner every night.
If he were alive today, Dr. Maxwell could safely say it worked: All five daughters -- Cindy, 35; Linda, 32; Rita, 29; Ada, 26; and Dina, 21 -- went on to earn undergraduate degrees at Harvard University, an unprecedented feat at a 370-year-old institution long seen as a bastion of white American privilege.
"They are the reason why we are here today," said Cindy Maxwell, herself an doctor now, at Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital. "We were the priority; we were the focus of our parents' lives."
At a recent gathering in Cindy's office overlooking University Avenue, the Maxwell sisters explained how their father's stern but positive guidance, combined with their mother's warm and protective support, made them the women they are today.
On paper, they're impressive enough. Cindy, in addition to delivering babies, is an assistant professor of maternal-fetal medicine; Linda, also a doctor, is an ear, nose and throat specialist with an interest in reconstructive facial surgery; Rita is an assistant Crown attorney working the courts downtown; Ada is articling at Borden Ladner Gervais, one of the country's largest law firms; and Dina, who graduated from Harvard earlier this month, is bound for law school at McGill University.
In person, it becomes clear that their parents valued more than mere academic achievement, central as that was. Unfailingly polite and accommodating, they carry themselves with grace and good humour, and show as much respect to each other as they do to people they don't know.
These qualities left an impression on Harvard, where faculty and staff still talk about the Maxwell sisters from New Brunswick.
"They have generated more goodwill at Harvard, as a family, than hardly anyone we can remember," said S. Allen Counter, a neuroscience professor and director of the Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations, a cultural institute on the Cambridge, Mass., campus.
"If you meet them, your first impression is their warm, honest, innocent smiles. You see in their eyes human decency and respect for humanity," Prof. Counter said.
All five Maxwell sisters worked part-time at the Harvard Foundation to help pay for their education. Scholarships, loans and contributions from their parents covered the rest. The academic achievements, combined with their charming personalities, prompt the question: What kind of home produced such accomplished women?
The literal answer is: A modest house in a small, seaside town in northern New Brunswick, where the blue shimmer of the Bay of Chaleur can be seen if you look east from the front yard. The only oversized items in the modestly furnished split level were the dreams Samuel and Irene Maxwell held for their girls' futures.
Today, the bookshelves in the living room are crammed with trophies won by all five sisters throughout their high-school careers. There are awards for debating, essay prizes and plaques from the televised brainteaser Reach for the Top.
Irene Maxwell says she and her husband did not set out to produce academic superstars. At times, Ms. Maxwell, who was the 10th of 15 children, was awed at her girls' intelligence and depth of character.
"You know how daughters look up to their mothers?" she asked. "Well, I looked up to my kids. They're really nice. I'm very proud of the people they have become.
"I had an exceptionally interesting life, being the mother of these girls," she continued. "They all had such inquisitive minds."
And yet, it was Ms. Maxwell who first raised the subject of an Ivy League education as she drove Cindy, her eldest, home from Bathurst High School one day. Up to that point, Cindy had only considered applying to two Maritime universities.
"She planted that little seed and it went from there," said Cindy, who became the first Bathurst student to apply to Harvard. Still, she wasn't out of the woods yet -- she first had to write two Scholastic Assessment Tests, or SATs, in Moncton, a 2½-hour drive away.
On the day of the tests, in early winter, Ms. Maxwell and her daughter set off in the car, but a snowstorm forced them to turn back.
Prodded by her mother, Cindy wrote back to Harvard and explained the situation. She was allowed to take the tests at her high school, alone in a room with a teacher standing by.
Weeks later, she cried when Harvard's assistant dean of admissions called with the good news.
In the fall of 1987, Samuel Maxwell slid behind the wheel of the family vehicle, a little blue Plymouth Reliant K-car, and drove Cindy off to her future, with Linda and Rita along for the ride. Boston was the first big city the girls had seen, and its bustle was like a "wall of sound," Cindy said. "It took me a while to get used to that."
Needless to say, the Maxwells and Harvard soon got used to one another, although each sister insists she made her own decision to attend, free of pressure from the others or their parents.
Ada recalls being a teenager and her mother turning to her, while they were washing dishes, and saying, "You don't have to go to Harvard. Be yourself and do whatever you want."
In late November of 1995, Samuel Maxwell fell ill with pancreatic cancer and died two months later. Even then, he insisted his girls return to their classes after Christmas holidays, rather than stay by his side.
"He didn't want his illness or his passing to interfere," Cindy said.
But his presence in the house is palpable. More than a decade after his death, Ms. Maxwell quotes him in nearly every anecdote.
Her late husband's quiet, smiling demeanour masked a fierce will and an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, she says. He had a penchant for quoting African proverbs and metaphor-laden parables, which the girls ate up, Ms. Maxwell recounts with a laugh.
"The children were always mesmerized by what he had to say."
Despite his own academic pedigree, Dr. Maxwell's career was stalled by racism, a fate he endured mainly in silence.
"They saw his black face and they'd make up their minds about him," Ms. Maxwell said of her husband's patients and colleagues. "My husband did not get a fair shake in Canada."
Yet these setbacks never embittered the African-born doctor. Instead, he poured his heart into teaching his daughters his own love of learning.
"Here's where it all happened," Ms. Maxwell said, pausing in the doorway of the dining room.
"He'd go around to all the girls and ask them, 'How was your day? What did you learn at school today?' " she said. "He didn't accept 'nothing' for an answer. He'd say, 'Well surely something must have happened. You spent the whole day there.' " Life wasn't all work. On Sunday, Dr. Maxwell played his music -- everything from jazz, blues and reggae to rock, country and classical -- while the girls read.
By the time the Maxwell sisters reached junior high school, they were all top students. Ms. Maxwell says she remembers a junior high teacher telling her there was nothing more she could teach Cindy. Instead of allowing her to bask in her success, Dr. Maxwell told his daughter to read more. "If you know everything your teacher is saying, get another book on the subject," he said.
Stern as such lessons might sound, the sisters say their father delivered them selflessly; he wanted them to set high expectations for themselves, not simply meet his, or each other's.
The fact that all attended Harvard speaks more to their closeness and their cumulative familiarity with the institution than a sense of obligation or competition.
So, when they gathered in Cambridge earlier this month for Dina's commencement ceremony, they did so as friends.
"We root for each other always," Rita said, her sisters nodding in agreement. "We want each other to do well, so whatever we can do to make that happen, we will."
Home