Lisle mourning teacher, longtime library board member

Sharon Callais didn't like to draw attention to herself.

Whether it was as a teacher in Lisle Unit District 202 or as a longtime Lisle Public Library board member, those mourning her death this week say she was a modest and quiet woman with great intelligence and a dry wit.

Callais, 63, died Feb. 18 at her Lisle home. She is survived by her husband, Charles, and two daughters.

Funeral services were held over the weekend.

"Sharon was really amazing," said Rhonda Snelson, public relations and programming director at Lisle Public Library where Callais was a board member since 1990. "She was on the board almost 20 years. She was so modest and self-effacing we hardly noticed her. She was so intelligent, positive and good-humored. (It's) a loss we probably haven't realized the magnitude of -- a terrible loss to the library -- and to the community."

Callais was born in Chicago, grew up in the city and taught for a time in Chicago Public Schools. She moved with her husband to Lisle in 1972 where she was a member of St. Margaret Mary Catholic Church in Naperville.

She was appointed to the Lisle Library Board in August of 1990 and elected for the first time in April 1991. She's been serving on the board ever since.

"She was an outstanding board member," library Director Bill Strecker said Monday. Callais was quiet, he said, but not afraid to make her opinions known. And like many her knew her, he was aware of her very dry wit.

"Sometimes it took a second or two before you realized she was kidding," he said.

Callais also taught at several levels in Lisle Unit District 202, most recently teaching computers skills to first- and second-graders at Tate Woods School and to third- through fifth-graders at Schiesher School.

Judy Bauman, LRC director at Tate Woods, said Callais worked at the school for three years and clearly enjoyed spending time with the children.

"She would be very quiet and then say something dry that was so funny," she said.

Bauman said her last conversation with Callais involved an assignment she wasn't sure Callais would have time to tackle.

Callais would hear none of it.

"'No,'" she told Bauman, "is not in my vocabulary."

• Daily Herald correspondent Joan Broz contributed to this report.