Antoinette Rodez Schiesler
Mary Antoinette "Toni" Rodez Schiesler (December 13, 1934 – April 8, 1996) (née Carole Virginia Rodez) was an American chemist and director of research at Villanova University. She was also a former Roman Catholic nun and Episcopal deaconess. Early life Carole Virginia was born in Chicago, Illinois. Her mother, Gladyce Cunningham Rodez, was a singer from New Haven, Connecticut, who had moved to Chicago to search for work with the big bands. There, at the age of 26, she was raped by a "Cuban man named Rodriguez", and became pregnant. Gladyce raised her daughter as a single mother, choosing to move back to familiar New Haven rather than raise her daughter in a strange city, despite knowing that she would be shame and excluded from her family for having a child out of wedlock. Carole only discovered her history when she was in her mid-thirties. Carole described her mother as having a "terrible, terrible temper", but explained that "when she could manage it, gave her all." Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, in her book I've Known Rivers: Lives of Loss and Liberation, writes: "Toni remembers sitting on her grandmother's knees by the radio listening to her mother sing, loving the mellow, soothing voice. She aches in knowing that her mother had wonderful talents but was unable to make it as a musician 'because of the circumstances'." Carole knew that her mother considered her to be gifted and tried to nurture her talents, but that she had not wanted to have children. Carole's early life was tumultuous. Her relatives treated Gladyce like "sort of an outcast". Her mother did domestic work but often struggled to find jobs, so Carole was sometimes left with acquaintances while her mother worked out of state. When Carole was seven years old, Gladyce married a cook named Lafayette, whom Carole described as "the meanest man I'd ever known". Carole travelled down to Florida for the wedding, and stayed there for a year with Lafayette's sister Betty. She then returned to New Haven to live with her mother and Lafayette in the projects. Lafayette was cruel and abusive, and Gladyce eventually sent him away. Carole was a bright child: she learned to read by reading advertisements on the bus, dismantled her toys to understand how they worked, and performed chemistry experiments with a set she was given for her birthday. In New Haven, she attended public school, and was so far ahead of her peers that her teachers suggested she skip fifth grade. When Carole was twelve, Gladyce enrolled her as a boarder at St. Frances Academy, in order to provide her with a stable life and a proper education. St Frances Academy was a Catholic girls' school for "colored girls" grades eight to twelve, run by the Oblate Sisters of Providence. It was the first school for black children in the city, run by free black Roman Catholic nuns of mainly of Haitian descent: "disciplined, proud impeccable black nuns". According to Lawrence-Lightfoot, Carole "was 'terrified' of being taken to