Harold Lee Kund (1942-2025)

Harold Kund had his first contact with deaf people when he played basketball in a high school league competition against the Illinois School for the Deaf (ISD) at Jacksonville in the late 1950s.  When Kund got a scholarship to Illinois College, he was offered work at the ISD, only a block away from the college.  He worked and slept at the ISD campus. That was how he became interested in working with deaf children.  Eventually, Kund received his BA degree in History from Illinois College.

With his jersey number 45, Kund stands with his Illinois College basketball team.

After college, Kund reported to his first job managing the after-school recreation program at ISD in 1965.  He soon transferred to the Residence Program as an Assistant Dean.  He later took a leave of absence to pursue his Master of Science degree in Public Recreation, with a minor in Recreation for the Handicapped, at the University of Illinois.  He received the MS in 1967.

When Dan Leinbach at CSDR found out that Big Boss Mary Scully of the Residence Department was going to retire in June 1974, he immediately recommended Kund’s name to Dr Brill as a possible successor to the Dean of Students' office.  CSDR Athletic Director Lynn Davidson also vouched for Kund, as they had been classmates in Illinois.  Leinbach called Kund and advised him to stay close to the phone for Dr Brill's call.  When the important call came, Kund recognized that Dr. Brill had an Eastern accent.  Kund later learned that Dr Brill had lived most of his life in New Jersey.  Dr Brill offered to fly Kund to California for a campus tour and an interview at the school's expense.  Kund had never flown and visited California before. How exciting.

Leinbach picked up Kund at the Ontario airport and enjoyed a long chat until late at night.  The next day, Kund was shocked to see heavy fog surrounding Riverside, but he soon found out that it was smog, a big issue of concern for Riverside and the Inland Empire area at the time.

Kund had his first meeting with Dr Brill in the Superintendent's office.  James Hoxie, Assistant Superintendent for Instruction, took Kund on an electrical cart for a sprawling campus tour.  Kund said if he had walked alone, he would have become lost because so many red brick ground-level buildings looked alike everywhere.

Mary Scully was the first Dean of Students (Director of Residence) from 1953 to 1974. Dr Brill recruited her at Columbia University. Scully had both left arm and left leg nonfunctional from a bout of polio.

At the Dean of Students' office, Kund only talked with Mary Scully for a few minutes before continuing with the tour, and he never saw her again.

At the end of the tour, Dr Brill asked Assistant Superintendent Hoxie for his opinion on Kund.  Hoxie replied that he was favorably impressed.  Dr Brill turned to Kund and asked him if he would like to work at CSDR. Kund said it would be an honor to work at such a fine school.  Dr Brill and Kund then sat down together and worked out a job offer. It was all done in one morning.

Kund was surprised that he did not have to compete with anyone else for the top residence hall position. He suspected that Dr Brill had had a phone conversation with Superintendent Ken Mangan at the Illinois School for the Deaf about Kund’s candidacy.  At the time, Dr Brill and Dr Managan were both highly revered in Deaf Education. It is interesting to note that Mangan had applied for the Superintendent position at CSDR back in 1950 to compete with Dr Brill.  His daughter, Kathee, was a professor of Deaf Education at San Diego State University, where Kevin Struxness, ‘76, completed his 90-unit teacher training in 1995.  Although Kund was concerned about smog, he decided to accept the job offer from Dr Brill, who at the time made final decisions for hiring staff; today, the one-person hiring power is no longer a standard personnel procedure.  With the retirement of Mary Scully, Kund reported filling her shoes in August 1974.

In 1978, Kund received his Master of Arts in Educational Administration from the University of California at Riverside to help him better administer the large residential department with 80% of students quartering in dorms.

For a break from the administrative stress in 1991, he left his position and taught woodworking on campus.  At the time, he studied law at the California Southern School of Law in Riverside. After his rigorous coursework and many hours of preparation, he was one of the only two law students who passed the California bar exam on the first attempt.  Kund received his Doctor of Jurisprudence (JD) in June 1994 and set up a private practice serving both hearing and deaf clients. He was the only attorney at law with proficiency in ASL in the Inland Empire area.  Kund had only three years of general law practice before he went back to education when his old position in the Residence Program became available for application in 1997.  He told Kevin Struxness that he had difficulty in collecting fees from clients for his legal work.  He preferred steady work and income. 

In May 2000, Kund accepted a different administrative position as Director of Student Services.  He oversaw a large group of staff specialists in providing student services, such as admission, counseling, assessment, behavior modification, health services, lEP coordination and student database management.

In December 2001, Kund was promoted to oversee the general operation of the state special school at Riverside as the fifth site superintendent since 1951.

Unfortunately, Kund witnessed on campus that much discord developed among many staff members and students.  He saw an urgent need to bring the school community together into one extended family again through a healing process.  He recognized that the CSDR community was a diverse culture within cultures.

Kund placed an order for flashing lights to be attached to the TTYs scattered campuswide. This was an unacceptably long void in communication access for deaf staff for 50 years. Still, his action was a step in the right direction. Deaf staff had pushed for equality in all spheres of the school organization.

Acknowledging that many at CSDR pushed for a deaf Superintendent again in the near future, he remained committed to extending every opportunity for qualified deaf people to hold positions of increased responsibility within the school hierarchy.

Kund demanded that the entire school organization adhere to the newly revised communication policy that encourages the use of both ASL and written English. The State Department of Education is also committed to the new policy.  CSDR has witnessed several major changes in communication, from oralism with fingerspelling in 1953 to Simultaneous Communication (sign and speech) in 1968 to the combined ASL/English communication approach in 1990.

Kund sought input from the staff to discover their concerns and suggestions for improvement.  He welcomed parents and community citizens as partners for feedback and joint action, primarily through the Community Advisory Committee.

Students remained the most valuable resource on campus, as they were our future leaders.  Thus, both credentialed and classified staff must teach, encourage and nurture student development through active participation with the administration and staff.

Like Dr Rachel Stone, Kund began again the school's commitment to the new state standards for educational performance in public schools. The High School Exit Examination was a new state mandate enacted by the California legislature for public school seniors to pass in order to receive a regular high school diploma effective in 2004.

Since January 2000, the school faculty have undergone training and revamped the school curriculum to meet the new state benchmarks called Standards-Based Education. The old letter-grading tradition was replaced by the new grading policy called Rubrics, not only at CSDR, but also throughout the California public school system.

Kund expanded the Outreach Department in order to work more effectively with local education agencies, special education programs in Southern California, the Deaf community, alumni, local government officials, businesses and other organizations.

With the approval of the State Department of General Services for a large construction and renovation project campuswide in the tune of three hundreds of millions of dollars over a long period of time, Kund plunged himself into the planning details that Dr Brill had done from the ground up fifty years earlier.

The long-term building and renovation plans involved the following:

razing all except for two 1950s dorms and constructing smaller home-like buildings called cottages;

constructing an Elementary/Middle School multi-purpose building calmed the Multi Activity Center behind the Dining Room;

completing the new Middle School complex on the Pachappa-Rubidoux playing field;

building a bigger gym with two basketball courts on the same gym site;

setting up a new warehouse and maintenance shop on the former Deaf MultiHandicapped Unit modular building site along Maude Street;

erecting small buildings as support cores to provide duplication and media services in different academic department locations;

razing the Superintendent House built in 1952 and current Career/Technical Education (CTE) building and constructing a new CTE complex on the old softball field and the Superintendent House area;

putting a new bus loop near the Elementary School along Horace Street;

adding a new wing classroom building for PreSchool classes;

constructing an auditorium with a sloping floor.

As of 2025, only the new warehouse and auditorium have not happened, but they are still in the plans.

Over the years, CSDR has always remained a closed campus conducive to a safe environment for students. During the Randall era, the number of security staff was expanded to provide around-the-clock campus security, compared to only night shifts in the past. Also during his era, a new policy was issued to require all visitors to register in the Brill lobby for a visitor's badge.

Still, Kund saw room for security improvement and placed an order for high-tech surveillance cameras for strategic locations, such as the cafeteria and infirmary, so that the security staff could monitor the multiple screens simultaneously. New iron wrought fence was installed on the Horace side for added security. Pat Davis, ‘63, stands next to the Brill memorial block on the right.

Kund also made an effort to make CSDR a more people-friendly place. One example is the recent decoration of the infirmary lobby room as a "jungle" with artificial animals and plants, converting from a sterile environment into a more inviting and friendly setting.

Even with many accomplishments under his belt from the past five years, Kund at the age of 63 in 2006 reached a critical point that he should pass his duty to operate the Horace Street site to the next school chief with many ongoing issues that required immediate resolution.

It was important for Kund to impress on the entire school organization that he stood tall for all the successes he had achieved from 1974 to 2006 as a school administrator. He was ready to move on to the next step as an active retiree in his life journey.

As a retiree, Kund enjoyed his free time to play golf, travel, read, admire vintage American vehicles and fish. 

Kund was married for over 60 years to Pamela, a retired senior registered nurse at Kaiser Hospital in Riverside. They grew up in the same neighborhood in Illinois. They have two children, Greg and Susan. After 19 years on the gold watch retirement, Kund passed away on March 8, 2025.  He was 82.

Greg Decker, ‘66, with 37 years of teaching at CSDR remembers Kund for running a tight ship both as Dean of Students and Superintendent.  He dedicated himself to his administrative duties and to his family.

Paul Ventura with 36 years of employment in the residence program recalls an embarrassing anecdote.  When Ventura was sitting in the dorm watching TV.  Kund brought in Director of State Special Schools Kadish.  Kund saw Ventura watching TV while no students were around.  Kund kicked the couch to alert him that Dr Kadish from Sacramento was touring the dorm at a bad time for Ventura.

Mary Jane Fertig with 40 years in the residence program has fond words for her former supervisor.  Kund was kind, a gentleman and an encourager. He was good at solving problems at hand. He loved to laugh.  She can still hear him.

Kund had a towering frame at 6’ 4”. He had to tolerate the tiny office space for decades. At the right is a TTY, a device used to enable users to type over the phone. TTY was a medium of communication with the deaf from the 1960s to around 2005.

Peter Stecher, ‘88, never lived in dorms as he lived in downtown Riverside.  He only remembers him being very professional - he wore a suit and tie all the time.  He was sometimes strict, and I was sometimes afraid of him.  When Peter gained employment in the residence program in 1994, he found Kund to be a fine man and nothing to fear after all.

In 2017, Kund visited his old boss, Dr Bob Lennan, in Cambria, California where he lived in retirement.

Ken Andrews, ‘84, looks back on an important day when he was a limited term as a residential counselor.  He went to Kund’s tiny office for discussion on his job status.   Kund broke the good news to Ken that his status was now full-time permanent.  Ken walked out with a boost in his pride.  Here is Ken still working with 29 years thus far and plans to retire in 2026.

CSDR Interpreter Kathleen Witczak taps the name sign with “K” on the throat twice for Kund’s name sign. In 2000, the CSDR community merged at the softball field to honor Kund for his exemplary leadership as interim superintendent twice.

Dr Ron Kadish supervised Superintendent Kund from Sacramento. Ron remembers Kund loved to speak of his Chevrolet Corvette and profess his deep love for his wife, Pam, on numerous occasions.

Holly Bernstein with 37 years of teaching at CSDR remembered seeing Kund at the Illinois School for the Deaf where she was a student in the early 1960s.  She had no clue that she would see him again in 1974 at CSDR.

Kevin Struxness, ‘76, MA

Editor, CSDR Old Times

6 April 2025

I was sad at this moment when I found out I had missed the memorial service for Kund. I thought the service was set at 2:00, but I missed the service by an hour. Oh, no. I had known him for 51 years. Truthfully, I came up with a plan to invite him for a museum tour with me in hopes of seeing a change in his attitude toward the campus museum. Thirty years earlier, he shared his opinion with me that a museum didn't belong on campus. When I learned of Kund’s passing, my invitation plan for him to the museum fizzled out. Still, I salute him for his long service at CSDR.