Pearl Rieger spent decades testing and working closely with children from around the country in an effort to identify disorders, conditions and other impediments to learning.
During a career that began when she was in her 40s, Rieger also cofounded the Rush University Medical Center’s Rush NeuroBehavioral Center.
“One of the most important lessons I learned from her and (working) with her is looking at the evaluation process being less about getting (testing) information for educators or parents but (instead) really focusing on the child and letting them understand who they are as a learner and how they interpret and process information,” said Josh Price, a school psychologist and friend who took over Rieger’s practice when she retired.
Rieger, 98, died of heart failure on July 23 at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, said her daughter, Nancy Halbeck. Rieger had been a Gold Coast resident and previously had lived in Hyde Park for many years.
Born Pearl Handelsman in 1928 in Chicago, Rieger grew up in a home on South Kimbark Avenue in Hyde Park and graduated from Hyde Park High School. She then attended the University of Michigan, where she earned a degree in speech therapy.
After college, Rieger worked at Michael Reese Hospital as a speech pathologist and also volunteered there as a candy striper, her daughter said. After marrying physician Eddie Newman — who famously treated all manner of local celebrities — Rieger stepped back from work to raise her family.
Rieger and her first husband divorced, and in her 40s, Rieger returned to school, earning a master’s degree in educational psychology from the University of Chicago. She then began operating her own individual practice, evaluating youngsters with learning disabilities.
“I sit down with each child and show him or her their strengths, and tell them what their weakness is,” Rieger told the Tribune in 1997. “The child who owns his learning disability is the child who makes the greatest progress.”
Rieger also worked for the private Ancona School in the Kenwood neighborhood for a time. Later, she teamed up with several other professionals in the early 1990s to start Rush’s NeuroBehavioral Center, which created an award in her honor in 1997. She also served on the academic advisory board of the Cove School in Northbrook, which serves K-12 children with complex learning disabilities.
Retired psychiatrist Karen Pierce, a fellow cofounder of Rush’s NeuroBehavioral Center, called Rieger “brilliant” with “a gift of humanity that you don’t really see (often).”
“What I got to learn about Pearl was her curiosity and her need to learn even more about the kids she was seeing,” Pierce said. “That to me was magic. In testing a child, she would sit with a kid and really get to know them, but she was probably one of the earliest clinicians who would say, ‘Hmmm, this kid seems to be brilliant in this area. I’m going to try four other tests and see if that’s true.’ She was the first educational person I had ever seen who would do deep dives on kids out of her curiosity of understanding. That’s why she had the following she did — she knew, and we all know, that we all live by our strengths.”
Price said Rieger drew parents from Indiana, Wisconsin and even California, asking her to diagnose their youngsters.
“Making the kids feel so comfortable and feeling heard … really translated to the parents feeling confident that they had a good understanding,” he said. “For a lot of kids, going through the testing can be hard, and they all came out with huge smiles on their faces. They loved the engagement. She wanted to know more about them, and not just test results. That’s what shone through beyond her general warmth.”
Halbeck said that what stood out to her about her mother was that no matter what, Rieger believed that “it didn’t matter if you came from the most underserved family, in the worst areas of Chicago, or from the absolute most elite families in the country.”
“In her eyes, the kids were struggling, and she felt that regardless of who they were, she saw them all on the same playing field and she treated them and advocated for them regardless of who they were,” Halbeck said.
Rieger told the Tribune in 1997 that she found her work “fascinating” and “like a puzzle.”
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“Each child — each child — is different,” she said. “To be able to find out what is wrong with this child and to try to come up with a plan to follow them and to advocate for them, that’s very exciting.”
Rieger retired from Rush when she was in her mid-70s. However, Rieger continued seeing her own patients until she was 87, her daughter said.
Outside of work, Rieger had a range of interests. She helped found Hyde Park Day School, which opened in 2000, and she also helped found Wolcott College Prep, a West Town high school for students with learning differences that opened in 2013. Rieger also was part of a Torah study group, her daughter said.
“Pearl absolutely adored this group of women and their time together — not just studying but (traveling) together,” Halbeck said.
Rieger had a second home in Vail, Colorado, where she skied until she was 87. She sold the home at age 89, her daughter said. Rieger and her second husband, Mitchell — whom she married in 1973 — spent summers, two weeks each December and two weeks every February in Vail. Rieger also served as a consultant to the Vail Mountain School there.
“Vail was not just skiing and hiking,” her daughter said. “And her marriage to Mitch was a standout relationship.”
For the past decade, Rieger appreciated the assistance of her caregiver, Alex Agoncillo, her daughter said.
“Alex was more than a caregiver — he was her companion. A true gift,” Halbeck said.
Mitchell Rieger died in 2008. In addition to her daughter, Rieger is survived by a son, Steven Newman; another daughter, Mary Ann Moseley; five stepchildren, Karen Gross Cooper, Jill Levi, Linda Hanan, Susan Perlstein and Geoff Felsenthal; 16 grandchildren; and 17 great-grandchildren.
Services were held.
Bob Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.