“How did you leave the family farm for college, raise five children, complete your master’s thesis at the kitchen table, teach first grade your whole career, and remain calm?”
That was Robbi Muir’s question as she recalled how her mother, Jo Ann Hartman, wrote her thesis in pencil after the dishes were washed and homework was done. It was the 1960s, and Jo, as she liked to be called, earned her bachelor’s degree from Illinois State Normal University in 1954. The master’s came in 1968.
Jo was the oldest of seven children, born June 28, 1933, to Harry and Mattie Bauer, who lived on a farm in Cissna Park. She was responsible for getting her younger siblings to and from their one-room schoolhouse a mile away. She helped make their peanut butter school lunches, and tried, sometimes unsuccessfully, to keep them out of the creek on the way home.
Little girls played school, but for Jo, it was real. Sometimes her brothers would come to her for help when their teacher was too busy with other students.
Twice a day the cows had to be milked, and Jo loved milking time. She would run to the barn, but she ran everywhere. Her job was to make sure each of the 20 cows was in the right stall, but she lost that job when her brothers were old enough and she was given the more feminine chore of gathering eggs from the hen house and making sure the fencing around it was fox proofed.
Winter was her favorite season, even though their home didn’t have central heating. To warm her bed, she would fill two hot water bottles, kicking them out in the middle of the night and finding them frozen solid in the morning.
Jo was an ideal student, loving school, and her mother was her first teacher. She taught in a one-room schoolhouse in the 1930s with a high school diploma, with hopes of earning her bachelor’s someday.
“For a woman at that time, she was most unusual,” Jo wrote in a journal. “Getting her bachelor’s degree was an obsession for my mother. I can remember her driving alone to nearby towns at night to take classes from Illinois State Normal University (ISNU). I was already in college myself before she finally got her coveted bachelor’s degree. While all this education was going on, she was a typical farmer’s wife. No matter how grueling her day was, she still had the energy and drive to read me many of the childhood classics before I could read them myself.”
Jo recalled her mother turning the pages of Heidi and Black Beauty after her five younger brothers were tucked in. That began Jo’s love of reading. The two also shared a love of music, singing hymns at their Apostolic Christian church. Occasionally, her mother would call in sick on a Sunday to keep the family home to play music. She even bought a piano “without all the innards,” Jo said, and kept it a secret from others.
“They weren’t supposed to have musical instruments because it was considered too worldly,” said Becki Streit, Jo’s oldest daughter, who has a bachelor’s in special education and master’s in educational administration from Illinois State. She taught students who were deaf or hard of hearing at the University’s Laboratory Schools.
Music came easily to Jo, who could learn something once, and never have to learn it again. She picked up the saxophone in high school, played in the ISNU marching band, and in later years, sang in the Illinois State University Civic Chorale. A scholarship paid her tuition, and the dairy cows paid for her room and board. She lived in Fell Hall where men and women were separated by floors.
Jo’s mother attended ISNU at the same time, finally earning her bachelor’s degree in education and becoming a fourth-grade teacher back in her hometown.
While at ISNU, Jo met her future spouse, Don Hartman, in a campus coffeehouse. He earned his bachelor’s in agriculture education. They married in January 1954 in her parents’ dining room on a weekend between semesters.
He joined the U.S. Navy after graduation, and they moved to Jacksonville, Florida. Jo started teaching there in 1956, but it was a difficult time. The principal treated her differently, calling her a “northerner,” which bothered her.
“Mom had strong opinions on segregation,” Streit said.
Eventually the family moved back to Illinois and finally, to Bloomington. Jo taught for more than 25 years at Thomas Metcalf School, Hudson Elementary School, and Fairview Elementary School. Their five children attended the University Laboratory Schools and two earned degrees in education. Of her nine grandchildren, two went into education. Ryan Cantrell ’04 of Naperville teaches middle school, and Calvin Streit of Minneapolis has a master’s degree in educational psychology. Jo also has eight great-grandchildren, and one, Cade Cantrell of Naperville, will attend ISU next fall as a fifth-generation Redbird.
When Ryan Cantrell was attending ISU, he worked lunch duty at Grove Elementary School, where his grandmother volunteered for 10 years after retiring.
“I remember the days that Grandma Jo would be over there reading with the kids,” he said. “Teaching is not a job, it’s a calling. It never leaves you and I certainly think that was the case for her.”
Jo was also known for her love of nature, educating and inspiring others with her knowledge of birds. She kept multiple feeders filled on her deck, teaching three generations about meadowlarks, hummingbirds and blue jays.
“Her love of learning and teaching guided her life,” said Muir, who earned her degree in elementary education from ISU in 1982. “She genuinely cared about the whole person. She was a very good listener. She was really focused, she was all in. She accepted everybody, that’s who she was.”
Streit added that her mother supported her children’s choices, and offered simple guidance.
“There was a lot of ‘Be nice, work hard. And don’t assume that you know somebody else’s story,’” she said.
In her last journal entry before she died at the age of 91 last July, Jo talked about what happiness meant to her.
“My happiness is each day, because something good happens at least once a day,” she wrote. “And I appreciate this. I like the simple things. I like that I can get up in the morning and have some hot tea.” Lessons well learned, and so well taught.
