Nancy Joy Kerr
(1933 - 2001)
 Professor Nancy Joy Kerr, who passed away on October 17, 2001, was an outstanding rehabilitation psychologist, profound teacher and scientist, and above all a splendid human being who was also a devoted mother to her children -- Kerrie Anne, Linda, and Jeffrey -- and best friend, confidant and, in later years, wife of Lee Meyerson.
She will be missed and her loss will be deep to those of us who have lived within her shelter and under her influence and care for so long. Is it possible to live a life of more devotion to purpose than that of Nancy J. Kerr? Could one help more people with greater kindness to assist them in leading fuller lives? Is there a way to have taught students more about good and compassionate work? -- it is difficult to conceive how in one life one could do so much, so well, and for so many.
On the surface, Nancy's life was not an easy one. At a very young age, she had meningitis that nearly killed her and blinded her in one eye. In the 1950s, she was one of the last individuals to contract polio resulting in her being in a wheel chair. And, in the early 1990s she had a stroke that required more than five years of rehabilitation -- mostly, self-initiated and self-directed -- to successfully recover her lost speech and language functions.
It is not possible to know how this latter set of circumstances influenced her, since each time she bounced back quite strongly with an even greater sense of dedication to her work and her determination to make a difference. In this regard, Nancy was fearless and worked tirelessly for her causes.
Initially, Nancy's career was to be that of a dress designer but destiny led her to psychology at the University of Houston where she began a life-long collaboration with Professor Lee Meyerson. After Houston, she was employed by Arizona State University, first as a research associate on Myerson's research project and then as a tenured professor of Educational Psychology in the school psychology program.
During her distinguished career, Nancy served on several national boards and advisory committees including the board of directors of Easter Seals, and was a past president of the Division of Rehabilitation Psychology, a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, a past editor of the journal, Rehabilitation Psychology, and a past chair and member of the State of Arizona Board of Psychologist Examiners.
Throughout her life, Nancy never compromised in her belief of the necessity of being supportive and encouraging of the scholarly endeavors and intellectual curiosity of undergraduates and graduate students -- maintaining that there was never a substitute for one-to-one mentoring, no matter how much time it took.
And, Nancy never jumped on bandwagons, preferring instead to emphasize fundamentals in her teaching and mentoring, as well as in her own research and scholarship. For example, within the university setting, where the specialist is often the most highly regarded faculty member because she or he manufactures (or publishes) parts of things with great frequency, Nancy proclaimed that she was opposed to what she referred to as overspecialized technicians whose language was such that they could only communicate with a small number of others in the world.
For Nancy, the problem with such compartmentalization and specialist publications was not merely in the cleavages that this promulgated in various disciplines, but also in the halting of the flow and interchange of ideas between scholars in various disciplines who were interested in the same subject area such as disability. Thus, psychologists, orthopedic specialists, media arts specialists, computer scientists, sociologists, educators, and architectural experts may never talk to one another because the university environment encourages faculty to be specialists rather than interdisciplinary collaborators in their scholarly endeavors.
Nancy preferred these types of interactions because she felt it maximized advancement in knowledge. She also encouraged her students to cooperate with scholars in other disciplines -- indicating that the students might learn something from these scholars about disability and that they might learn something from the students -- and that ultimately the consumer would profit from each exchange of knowledge and cooperative endeavors.
Nancy knew from her own experiences with disability that it was more important for researchers and practitioners from different disciplines to work together than in isolation. Nancy also maintained that knowing a person was disabled contributed very little to assisting and understanding them.
What was more important was the nature of the interaction between the person and her or his environment, a position that she would promote to all who would listen. She further maintained that knowledge which sat unused in a musty journal was not knowledge at all.
Consistent with this view was her belief in the integration of knowledge and theory from different areas of psychological science and different disciplines when attempting to understand various aspects of a particular subject matter --- especially, disability. For example, a discussion with her, and sometimes a single sentence, may have contained fond references to Jean Piaget, Kurt Lewin, B. F. Skinner, and/or Beatrice Wright whose ideas may have seemed disparate to others, but to Nancy they would be delicately woven together and put to good explanatory use.
It was not important to her, for example, that Skinnerians may have had little interest in Piaget or vice versa; what was important was the knowledge that each theoretical perspective and body of research could provide in advancing knowledge in the area of disability.
Within the psychological science community, Nancy was well known for developing a fundamentally new method for helping individuals to learn (e.g., young children and individuals with mental disabilities). Called Auditory-Visual-Combined (AVC), the model is an ingenious integration and advancement that builds on the work of such diverse theorists as Piaget and Skinner. The work has been widely influential and, within the last year, a major international journal devoted an entire issue to research and discussion of her AVC model.
Nancy lived in a modest home on Elm Street in Tempe, Arizona - a house that she wrote about in her article, "I Live in a Tree" (Kerr, 1974), in which she described the emotionally draining and arduous process of regaining language to describe something as basic as where one lives.
It was in her very large kitchen/family room area of the house that many a graduate student and visiting colleague would interact with her, her three children, and Lee Meyerson. It was in this kitchen/family room area that her children's lives developed as did the intellectual lives of numerous students. It was in this area that many, many theses and dissertation topics, as well as manuscript ideas, were born. And, it was in this house that graduate students, faculty colleagues, and visitors felt at home, relaxed, and genuinely accepted. The "family" metaphor is easily applied to this situation. The house was rich humus for sprouting many things good. It was a varied mix of family (the Kerr children were frequently present and participating), ideas, scholarship, science, practice and good times. All of those present were allowed, perhaps expected, to make mistakes and through that to gradually grow. Even if one had been away from Nancy's house for several weeks, months, years, or even decades, she or he would always be accepted back into the kitchen/family room area followed by a greeting, "I hope you are doing good things." This was always a challenge to those of us who knew her because we knew she was always doing good things.
To paraphrase Black Elk, a spiritual leader of the Sioux, someone who holds a vision lacks the power of the vision unless the person is able to bring it to fruition and make it happen in the real world for people to see.
Nancy had the vision and the power and used it daily. Her important work took place in her community, broadly construed. Although we will miss her dearly, it is reassuring to know that her vision and belief system not only lives on in her children, but in the many students that she mentored and practitioners and scholars who had the good fortune to spend time with her. Thoughts of Nancy's accomplishments are both inspirational and humbling. The many good things she did herself, that she taught or assisted others to do, and those that she inspired will continue to reverberate, but Nancy Joy Kerr, the soulful origin of "good things," will still be missed.
In Memoriam: Nancy Joy Kerr (1933 - 2001)
Joe Witt, Ph.D.
Louisiana State University
Department of Psychology
Richard J. Morris, Ph.D.
University of Arizona
Department of Special Education, Rehabilitation, and School Psychology
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