Betty Witczak (Wood) (1928-present)

When Riverside was selected as a new home base for the second California School for the Deaf in 1948, the city had a tiny deaf community with no more than ten deaf residents according to the late Burt Schmidt.  The city saw a gradual rise in the deaf population starting in 1953 with new deaf faculty, staff and young deaf families for the new school’s opening.

In 1959, the next young deaf family arrived in a new town from Wisconsin.  The new family was the Witczaks with Emo and Betty as deaf parents with three young children in tow: Wayne, Wanda and Walt.  Betty attributes the family decision to resettle in Southern California to three reasons: Emo had a respiratory condition that could only improve with the warmer and dry climate, better educational services for the kids and through the friendly persuasion of a lifelong deaf Riverside resident namely, Ailene Schmidt, the wife of Burt Schmidt who taught printing at CSDR from 1968 to 1988.

In 1928, Betty had a life start with the deaf Wood family in Washington DC.  She and her older sister, Estella, started their compulsory education at the Kendall School for the Deaf on the 99-acre campus of Gallaudet University. 

It is interesting to note Gallaudet University is likely the world’s only university where the TK through doctoral education is offered on the same campus.

See the yellow circle on the Gallaudet campus where the historic Kendall School Hall is found

The historic Kendall School Hall

Mr Richard Brill at Kendall School in 1935

In 1935, Betty had a new teacher for second grade. The teacher’s name was Mr Richard Brill, and he had just completed his teacher training at Gallaudet. Little did Betty and Mr Brill realize that they would become colleagues 31 years later, in 1966, at CSDR. Until 1970, Kendall School offered a full K-12 education.

Below is Betty in her high school years at Kendall. From 1934 to 1944, Betty was required to sleep on campus despite her family’s residence in Washington DC.

In 1944, Betty left the Kendall School early at the age of 16 to start her college education at Gallaudet during the 35-year emeritus presidency of Dr Percival Hall in his last year (1910-1945).  She had a wonderful college life with higher education and friends.  In May 1946, Betty left the College for a break in her college studies. Her boyfriend Edmund better known as Emo from Illinois went back to hometown in Chicago. 

During July 1946, Emo and Betty exchanged a vow of marriage in a church in Chicago. Several years later, they moved to Racine, Wisconsin.

Betty made an interesting remark that she and Emo exchanged the now famous I-love-you hand sign in the early 1940s when the ILY hand sign was not yet prevalent in the Deaf community.

In 1959, with a new family experience in Riverside, the family bought a single-family home on Molly Street.  The house was within the walking distance with only three blocks away from the new school.  Emo gained employment as a linotypist at Riverside’s Press Enterprise newspaper plant where he worked for 19 years until his death in 1977.

Wayne and Wanda were assigned to the elementary classes at CSDR to start. They ended up staying at the school for the next 11 years until their graduation in 1970.  Wanda went on to Gallaudet and stayed there for six years and earned undergraduate and graduate degrees. With a sense of nostalgia, Wanda taught at the same school where Betty had attended in the 1930s and the 1940s. In 1987, Wanda moved to our sister school at the relatively new campus in Fremont where she worked as a career guidance counselor. She now resides in Central California for retirement. Wayne, ‘70, stayed in Riverside and worked as a groundsman until he retired. He now lives in Murrieta, not far from Riverside.

Meanwhile, Walt as a CODA  attended Victoria and Washington Elementary School, Gage Middle School, and Poly High School, culminating in a high school diploma in 1972.   He had no clue that he would return to the old Riverside neighborhood with a job offer as a teacher at CSDR in 1979 and was employed for the next 25 years.  He met his future wife, Kathleen, at San Diego State University.  She had already known ASL when she met him.  Like Walt, she gained employment at CSDR as an interpreter with the NAD’s highest Level V skill certification where she worked for a long time. She later became an ASL teacher in the nearby Menifee School District.  Walt transferred from CSDR to Murrieta School District to teach for 14 years before retiring in 2019 with 40 years of teaching.

Betty also have two Witczak relatives, a niece named Bonnie, ‘73, and a nephew, Walter, ‘74, (Wally) attended at CSDR. The Witczaks had a long family presence on campus from 1959 to 2005.

In 1966, CSDR ran a three-year Pilot Project with the federal grant to evaluate the learning effectiveness for 16 emotionally disturbed young boys.  Dr Brill hired four new teachers to work with four boys each in a small class. One of the new teachers was Betty who had just finished her BA degree from CSU Fullerton with no interpreter services in the pre-ADA days.  She relied on her classmates using carbon papers for class notes. She also completed her teacher training at CSU Northridge. Dr Brill had known Betty since her second grade year at the Kendall School in 1935.  Thirty-one years later, they became colleagues at CSDR.

Betty taught 23 years until she retired in 1989 when she was 61.  She taught mostly in the ACE (Alternate Curriculum Education) program, the relatively new name for the formerly DMHU program name.

Betty in dark blue top as a pioneer DMHU teacher stands with her younger colleagues in her last year of teaching in 1989. Note all of the colleagues have retired.

Betty contributed to the betterment of the Riverside’s Deaf community not only through her employment as a classroom teacher of the deaf, but also as a volunteer civic activist in the California Association of the Deaf, the Gallaudet University Alumni Association chapter and the Riverside Silent Club.  She maintained her visibility in the local Deaf community for six decades.

On the left side, Betty represents the CAD to accept caption decoders for all dorms. On the right side is Dr Larry Newman, the school’s assistant superintendent for instruction. Taken in the mid-1980s.

The caption decoder to create visible sentences on the bottom of the TV screen. The price tag was $400.

With the ever-growing popularity of ASL as a high school course throughout the country, Betty noticed the glaring lack of ASL course offerings in the Riverside Unified School District in which the world famous CSDR is located where ASL was thriving.  Betty took the initiative to explore the feasibility of offering such classes at nearby Poly High School and Martin Luther King High, up the hill from CSDR. The principals took a wait-and-see attitude about adding ASL to their curriculum.  Betty tried her luck at the RUSD headquarters office and got runaround that lasted two years.  A break finally came when the new RUSD superintendent saw good things in the ASL studies for the district.  She pushed the course proposal through the red tape process for eventual fruition. Thanks to Betty’s perseverance as a no-quitter, Poly High and Martin Luther King High now have two full-time ASL teachers on their respective campuses, thereby making Riverside a much more deaf-friendly town.

Betty is now 97 and understandably slowing down in her social life with deaf friends and activism in local deaf affairs.  She lives comfortably with Walt and Kathleen in their Menifee home.  She takes pride in her good health and enjoys watching sports on a large TV screen. 

Of special interest to the Witczaks and Deaf Studies scholars, Amos Kendall is in Betty’s maternal family tree. Amos once owned the Gallaudet property and helped open the Kendall School on his farmland in 1857.

Wanda, ‘70, stands next to the cemetery headstone paying her final respects to Amos Kendall in the northwestern part of Washington DC. It was discovered recently that Betty Wood’s family and the Kendall family are related. It adds a special significance to Betty that she received her education through his education gift given in the 1850s and to Wanda for her employment as a teacher in the 1970s and the 1980s.

Betty closes a six-hour oral interview with a reminder that today’s younger deaf people have the civic responsibility to protect the successes of the past and push for new advancements of the deaf for the future, locally and beyond.

Riverside has had a long way to come since 1959 when the Witczak family transplanted from Wisconsin. With the help of the past leaders like Betty, Bummy, the Newmans, the Bayarskys, the Bernsteins, Bob Greathouse and Greg Decker, to name a few, Riverside has a growing and vibrant Deaf community today.

Kevin Struxness, ‘76, MA

Editor, CSDR Old Times

2 April 2025

Through the California Association of the Deaf, I had the privilege of meeting Betty for the first time in 1985 and have had periodic visits with her over the decades.