Dr Bob K Lennan 1977-1989

In 1977, Dr Robert Lennan became the second school superintendent. He was no stranger to CSDR as he had been there since 1957.  Lennan was born in 1927 and grew up in New York City. At 17, he enlisted in the Navy like his predecessor to fight for his country in WWII. 

After the war, Lennan went to Springfield College in Massachusetts where he earned a BS in Physical Education in 1949.

Lennan obtained a job with dual duties for teaching PE and supervising boys in the dorm at the American School for the Deaf.  He learned to enjoy working with the deaf. With a clear focus, he went on to Gallaudet University for an MA in Deaf Education in 1953.  

Lennan then landed a teaching job for PE at the New York School for the Deaf, fondly known as Fanwood.  Four years later, he moved west to Riverside for PE and coaching duties.  Below is a full PE department for 400 students in 1957 with two man teachers for boys: Bob Lennan and Bill Thornton and two woman teachers: Anna Rush and Aletha Emerick.

In 1963, Lennan had a lateral transfer to Junior High School for social science.  In the ensuing year, he took a leave of absence from teaching for his another MA in leadership with the deaf from CSU Northridge.

Dr Brill appointed Lennan to supervise the Pilot Project with 16 emotionally disturbed boys on campus for a three-year federal grant from 1966 to 1969.  The PP experiment was so successful that the State Department of Education agreed to establish a new permanent department called the Deaf Multi-Handicapped Unit at CSDR in Fall 1969. This kind of focus was the first in the nation. Both Drs Brill and Lennan were visionary. Other residential schools soon followed suit. The school student population in the same year reached 615, the largest ever.

With the new DMHU under Lennan as the program superintendent, he started his EdD studies in instructional technology at USC and successfully earned the terminal degree in 1974.   Statistically, the prriod of 1953 to 1969 saw a small number of deaf teachers and dorm counselors campus-wide. Then in 1969, CSDR saw an explosion in the hiring of deaf teachers and dorm counselors for the expanding DMHU.  The new program received wide attention from all over the world for how deaf students with multiple disabilities benefit from the program.

Upon Dr Brill’s retirement in 1977, Dr Lennan was selected to run the whole school.  He encountered a number of new challenges that his old boss didn’t deal with before:

PL-94-142 enforcement, collective bargaining for unions, declining student enrollment, new age of computers for office modernization and classroom education, to mention a few.

After twelve years of peaks and valleys at CSDR, Dr Lennan finally felt it was time to close his 37-year career in Deaf Education in February 1989.

In 1991, Lennan sold his single-family house on David Street (two blocks from CSDR) to Mark and Zibby Bayarsky in which they still reside. Lennan and his wife, Mary, moved to Cambria on the coast in Central California for the next 29 years. In 2020, he moved back to Riverside to be closer to his five children. 

Dr Lennan paid his surprise visit with a cane to see the old campus for the last time around 2020. Soon thereafter, Patricia Davis, ‘63, and I went over to see him in the Riverside retirement home for a two-hour visit. Although he had been retired for 30 years, he was still able to sign for himself. He was also able to follow our signing.

There were two things that Lennan was surprised about CSDR. The school saw massive upgrading in infrastructure and buildings in the tune of $300 million. He had thought that the school had a low priority for state attention in favor of deaf student integration in public schools. Still, he was happy to hear about the school getting a big lift. Secondly, he was pleasantly surprised to get a complimentary copy of The CSDR Story 1945-2003. He said he was going to read from cover to cover with all the free time on his hands.

Dr Lennan passed away at 95 on August 13, 2022.

Kevin Struxness, ‘76, MA

Editor, CSDR Old Times

31 October 2024