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About the Center's Namesakes
 Dr. Catharine Deaver
Lealtad
The late Dr. Catharine Deaver Lealtad,
Macalester College’s first African
American graduate, earned a double major
degree in chemistry and history in 1915 with highest honors.
After graduation, Dr. Lealtad taught for a year
in Columbus, Ohio,
and then moved to New York City
to work for the YWCA and the Urban League. She was accepted into Cornell University’s medical school,
but left shortly after her arrival due to the racial prejudice at
Cornell. She went on to study medicine in Lyon,
France, where she
received her medical degree from the University of Paris
in 1933 specializing in pediatrics.
When World War II began, Dr. Lealtad was
commissioned as a major in the U.S. Army and went to Germany in
1945 to supervise medical services for children that had been displaced due
to the war. One year later, she went to China
with the U.S. Public Health Service to assist the Chinese doctors in
fighting the cholera epidemic that was sweeping through China at
that time.
Upon returning to the U.S.
at the close of WWII, Dr. Lealtad worked at Sydenham Hospital, the first voluntarily interracial
hospital in New York.
Although Dr. Lealtad retired in 1979, she
continued in her efforts to serve those who had limited access to medical
care. She worked for two years at a mission hospital in Puerto Rico
and for seven years at a free clinic for the underprivileged in Mexico City. In
1983, Dr. Lealtad created an endowed scholarship
at Macalester
College.
The only person to receive two honorary degrees from Macalester, Dr. Lealtad passed away in 1989.
 Esther Torii Suzuki
The late Esther Torii Suzuki came to Macalester College in 1942 at the age
of 16 from a Japanese detention camp in Portland, Oregon, where she was
released specifically because of her acceptance to Macalester
College. The first Japanese-American student at Macalester, Ms.
Suzuki graduated from Macalester in 1946 with an honors degree in
sociology.
In the years following her graduation, Ms. Suzuki played many roles:
community leader, volunteer, activist, and mentor. As a social worker
for Ramsey County, Ms. Suzuki spent most of her
career participating in civil rights groups and developing programs
specifically to assist the Southeast Asian-American population. Later
in her life, Ms. Suzuki established herself as a storyteller and writer and
gave a voice to both the hardships and accomplishments she had encountered
as a Japanese-American.
Ms. Suzuki also served for six years on the Alumni Board at Macalester and
continued to volunteer both at Macalester
and in the St. Paul
community. She contributed a chapter to the book Reflections: Memoirs
of Japanese American Women in Minnesota
and co-authored a play in 1991.
Awarded the Macalester College Alumni Service Award in 1999, Ms. Suzuki
passed away that same year.
Catharine Deaver Lealtad and Esther
Torii Suzuki received the Macalester College Board of Trustees Award for
Meritorious and Distinguished Service on September
13, 2002.
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