Hettie Simmons Love. Photo by Dani Fresh.

Michelle Obama. Barack Obama. Ben Crump. Martin Luther King Jr.

Honorees for U.S. Sen. Bob Casey Jr.’s 2023 Black History Month ceremony were naming their most-admired African American activists. Then centenarian Hettie Simmons Love took her turn.

“I don’t really understand how anybody can not be an activist in this time and age, that we all have an opportunity to be who we want to be, to encourage our children to be what they to be, and to provide for them so they can become the people they want to be,” she said to amens and applause.

The life of Hettie Simmons Love has taken her from the segregated South to Philadelphia to Harrisburg. To a growing circle of admirers, she is now known as the first African American to earn an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

To friends and colleagues who gathered last fall for 10 cakes’ worth of 100th birthday celebrations, she is a treasure and an inspiration. Hettie Love was denied opportunities to apply her prodigious skills professionally, but on her own and in partnership with her husband, the late George Love, she enriched the Harrisburg community by contributing her talents to her church, her service sorority and education.

Hettie lives in the same hilltop, mid-century modern home in Swatara Township that she and her husband bought when they came to the Harrisburg area in 1978. She and her daughter, Karen Love, sat down with me and shared her life story.

An Awakening

Hettie grew up in Jacksonville, Fla. Her father’s independent meat market catered to white and Black customers. Her mother bought and renovated houses for renting to Black tenants.

Hettie attended an all-girls’ school, where she was valedictorian. Her brother left to attend the University of Michigan. If he could do it, Hettie thought, so could she.

After graduating from Fisk University in Nashville, she returned home. She worked for an African American life insurance company. Her brother drove her to and from work every day.

It was stifling, but she called that time “an awakening.”

“I’d done a lot of reading, and I felt like the North was the place to be,” she said. “There was nothing to do in my hometown that used what I had. I had no freedom. Back in those days, every job you could get had to be with a Black company because no one else was hiring Black women.”

Wharton accepted her application. The first day on the Penn campus, her brother asked a student for directions. Hettie and that student, George Love, would start keeping company.

Hettie was the only Black person in her class, rarely interacting with her classmates. Three Jewish students befriended her, but they were gone by her second year.

“Having come from the South, it didn’t bother me, because I wasn’t used to talking to white people, anyway,” she said. She found her circle through George and his large Philadelphia family.

“There were all kinds of organizations in the Black community who were glad to accept me,” she said.

Giving Heart

The Loves married in 1948 and raised their son and daughter in Philadelphia. George was the first African American high school teacher in Philadelphia. Hettie did some substitute teaching and co-founded a group of parents who organized family outings.

When the Loves moved to Harrisburg, George made his mark as Pennsylvania Department of Education assistant commissioner, overseeing desegregation efforts. He was also widely admired as a Harrisburg School District teacher and administrator and president of the Harrisburg NAACP chapter.

Hettie became active at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, where she served as treasurer for 22 years. She connected with the local Epsilon Sigma Omega chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha—the sorority she joined while at Fisk—when a member knocked on her door.

“That has been a blessing,” said Karen Love, a retired Susquehanna Township School District teacher and partner with Hettie in community engagement. “The church and the sorority were both a way to network into the community.”

Hettie was “overqualified and brilliant” when she worked as a part-time bookkeeper for RSVP, meticulously tending the accounts, said Trudy Gaskins, of Lower Paxton Township. Their friendship continued through church, where Gaskins recalled Hettie leading an effort to help a new bishop set up housekeeping.

Hettie’s “silent power” is listening, seeing a need, and quietly filling it.

“She’s just a gentle soul, and yet, a strong and powerful woman who was able to maintain her dignity through very difficult periods of her life when she was not able to work within her areas of expertise,” Gaskin said. “She never turned away from doing things that weren’t up to her professional capacity. That takes a woman with a deep, deep sense of self. She never lost her personhood or self-awareness.”

Members of AKA are steeped in lifetimes of community service, said Barbara Thompson of Lower Swatara Township. Since Hettie welcomed Thompson into the local chapter in 1985, the two have promoted literacy, packed purses with toiletries for women’s shelters, and organized heart health events.

“She has such a giving heart,” said Thompson. “She never says no. If you want her to do something, she is always willing to do it, and she’s so positive about participating. As a result, you just love being around her.”

Through all this, few knew about Hettie’s place in history. That emerged after 1990 Wharton graduate Lana Woods learned that her AKA sorority sister had graduated from the school in 1947. Woods’ sleuthing found that Hettie was the first African American, female or male, to earn a Wharton MBA.

Woods organized recognitions, and word got around. Philadelphia-area students wrote and illustrated a children’s book, “Hettie Simmons Love: Penn Pioneer.” Wharton’s first Black female dean, Erika H. James, told Hettie, “I would not be here today if it weren’t for someone like you who paved the way.”

Karen rattled off her mom’s explanations for all the fuss. It’s just because she’s old. They don’t have anyone else to honor. They ran out of people.

Hettie chimed in.

“I don’t understand why you’re here, getting information,” she told me.

“Because you have so much history of this town in you, and you’ve done so much for the community,” I said. How do you explain that we cherish the rare opportunity to personally thank someone who has spent her 100 years on this earth quietly serving others?

Inspires Them

Hettie’s 100th birthday kicked off a round of celebrations. Karen described car parades, readings to schoolkids, and parties in Harrisburg, Martha’s Vineyard and an Airbnb for the family.

In the middle of the litany, Hettie looked at me.

“They just use me to have parties, that’s all,” she said.

Hear that sound? That’s me and Karen still laughing uproariously.

American Literacy Corp. Executive Director Floyd Stokes met the Love family through his literacy advocacy. Hettie was 80 then, “actively volunteering and making an impact in the community.”

“And to do it so humbly,” said Stokes. “It blew my mind. Even more, as she crept closer, closer, closer to 100, and to still see her move around the community the way she has—it’s cliché, but I get tired just looking at her.”

Hettie’s expressive readings to students set an example that they will remember, he added.

“It inspires them,” Stokes said. “If she can do it, then reading has to be something important, and something really, really cool.”

Karen Love appreciates the community’s love and the energy her mother draws from it.

“I learned that I have a mother I have to share, because she’s got so many wonderful qualities, and I’m so grateful that people are embracing her and supporting her,” she said. “Just knowing that other people are aware of her accomplishments helps to motivate them to keep moving, but it also motivates her to want to be here and be a part of the community that she really does love.”

As for Hettie, Wharton pioneer and community stalwart, she sums up her century by looking back—and forward.

“I’ve had a good life,” she said. “I haven’t regretted anything so far.”

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