Sr. Esther Heffernan

Sinsinawa, Wisconsin Sister Esther Heffernan, OP, died Friday, November 20, 2020, at St. Dominic Villa, Hazel Green. Private services will be held at Sinsinawa. Burial will be in St. Clara Cemetery. Sr. Esther became aware of poverty and inequality in the world as a child and worked for social justice her entire life. She taught at St. Cecilia Cathedral, Omaha, Nebraska, for three years before dedicating nearly 50 years as a professor in the social science department at Edgewood College, Madison, Wisconsin, where she was also department chair. She served as staff at St. John College, Cleveland, Ohio; provincial vicaress for the Southeast Province of her congregation; and post-doctoral fellow at Catholic University, Washington, D.C. Sr. Esther organized conferences on incarceration through Money, Education, and Prisons (MEP), an organization she led, and through Edgewood College. An outgrowth of those conferences became Madison Organizing in Strength, Equality, and Solidarity (MOSES). Her doctoral study on the Women’s Reformatory of the District of Columbia served as the research for her book, Making it in Prison: The Square, the Cool, and the Life. She was honored by induction into the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters in 2002 and with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Wisconsin Network for Peace, Justice, and Sustainability in 2009. Born as Jean Dolores on April 22, 1929, in Seattle, Washington, to John and Mary (Donahoe) Heffernan, Sister Esther is survived by her Dominican Sisters.