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Teresa Batto
The family of Teresa Batto is sad to announce that Teresa passed away at home in Greencastle at the age of 80 after a battle with bone cancer. Teresa’s life defies a neat, simple depiction.
Teresa was born in Dallas in 1941 to German immigrants as the seventh of 10 children. She grew up within a devout Catholic family, and her ever-strengthening faith would be the bedrock of her life.
Teresa went to St. Edwards Catholic High School and then became the first member of her family to graduate from college, earning a degree in German at the University of Dallas. After graduating, she spent a year in Germany, where she lived with her mother’s family while taking classes at the University of Freiburg. Upon returning to the U.S., she completed a masters program in German at the University of Texas in Austin.
It was there that she met Bernie Batto. The two were married in 1967, and they would spend 54 years devoted to each other. Together, they raised five children, Rachel, Nathan, Amos, Jeremiah and Sarah.
While highly educated and qualified for a variety of lucrative jobs, Teresa chose not to pursue a career in the private sector. Bernie and Teresa were not wealthy — his career as a professor of religious studies provided the young family with enough, though not always much more than that. Teresa opted to stay at home to take care of her young children and ensure that they had a stable and loving environment in which to develop throughout the five states they lived. However, she adamantly rejected the label of “housewife,” stating indignantly, “I am not married to a house.”
In addition to her five biological children, Bernie and Teresa welcomed many others into their home. Three nephews each spent a year with them. In Pennsylvania, for six months they took in a pregnant teenager who needed a place to live, and they twice participated in a program for city youth to spend a few weeks in the countryside during the summer. In Indiana, they hosted several exchange students and assisted refugees from violent homelands. Many of these became part of Bernie and Teresa’s family. Miraculously, they had enough love and attention to go around, and each addition made the whole family richer and stronger.
Teresa believed passionately in the power of education. Her house was stuffed full of books, and she helped many people discover the joys of reading. Her children collectively earned five master’s degrees and a PhD, and she inspired many others to go to college and pursue lifelong learning. In Greencastle, Teresa taught ESL and served as an informal cultural ambassador and guide to many Japanese families bewildered by small-town Indiana.
Drawing on her Catholic faith, Teresa was driven by a deep obligation to pursue social justice. After moving to Indiana in 1988, Teresa began visiting prison inmates, where she found good use for her open personality, quick smile, warm friendliness, gift for gab and genuine compassion. She fervently believed that these men, whom society had rejected and forgotten about, were still humans and deserving of compassion and understanding. Over more than 30 years, she visited hundreds of prisoners, listening, chatting, praying, working, laughing, and crying with them. Some eventually got out of prison and became productive members of society, but that was not necessarily the point. Many she visited were on life sentences or even on death row; she let them know simply that she saw them as valuable human beings. And she did value them. When Brandon Bernard, whom she had visited on death row for over 10 years, was executed in 2020, she grieved bitterly for the senseless waste of a life. Brandon was nothing like the teenager who had been incarcerated, and he may not have even been guilty of the crime in the first place. He is but one poignant example of the love and care she lavished on the least valued members of society.
While prison visitation was a main focus of Teresa’s life, it was by no means the only area in which she pursued social justice. She was active in community dialogue after the Baltimore race riots in the 1960s. Beginning in the early 1990s, as El Salvador emerged from a bloody civil war, Teresa was part of an organization that sponsored a rural village and raised money to build a school, buy textbooks and pay for a teacher for over a decade.
Teresa and Bernie were also active in their local community. They volunteered as poll workers, and Teresa went to countless civic forums to speak for causes she believed in, even though she knew they had no chance of being adopted. They worked through the local St. Vincent de Paul program to provide help to people in need. A number of local charities knew that if they needed help, Teresa would be happy to do whatever she could. She maintained a long list of charities to which she regularly donated surprisingly large sums. In keeping with her calling to help the people most overlooked and in need, none of these charities are large, well-endowed or glamorous.
Teresa had many passions, though perhaps none quite as gratifying as her garden. As a committed environmentalist, she insisted on organic methods. Her garden began as a barren patch of land, but with over 30 years of compost and loving care, it flourished. Every year her garden got a little bigger and included a few more types of plants, though, as with her family, the ever-expanding garden never seemed to stretch her too thin. In the height of summer, it was a wild cacophony of vegetation, a raucous celebration of life. The garden was her happy place, and it was an apt metaphor for her life. Teresa just loved watching plants – and people – grow.
Teresa Batto passed away at the end of January 2022. She is survived by her beloved husband, five adoring children, two delightful granddaughters, four vivacious brothers and sisters, dozens of “adopted” family members and hundreds of other people whose lives she enriched. A memorial service will be held at St. Paul the Apostle Catholic Church on Saturday, Feb. 19 at 10:30 a.m. and livestreamed through the church’s facebook page.
In lieu of flowers, Teresa requested donations be made to some of her favorite charities in memory of her dedication to social justice and improving our world:
1. CoCoDA (Companion Community Development Alternatives)
2. Casa Marianella in Austin, TX
3. PVS (Prisoner Visitation & Support)
5. Beyond Homeless, Inc. Putnam County Homeless Shelter
6. St. Vincent de Paul noted via donations to St. Paul the Apostle Catholic Church in Greencastle
7. Corrections Ministry of the Archdiocese of Indianapolis.
Please contact Bernard Batto if more information about these charities is needed.