Profile in Courage: 70-Year-Old Philly Freeway Flyer Juggles Classes and Chemo

by Monica Yant Kinney Cecilia Ready lives up to her name. We’d just started talking about what it’s like to be a 70-year-old adjunct professor working through a third bout of cancer when Ready’s tongue grew heavy and she began slurring her words. “Come,” she insists calmly after calling her doctor, “we’ll do the interview in the E.R.” I hesitate, but am assured by her colleagues in the English department at St. Joseph’s University that Ready’s unbridled determination is not a reaction to chemo or steroids. The Springfield, Delaware County, grandmother (pictured, left) is part of a legion of underpaid workhorses […]