Sandy Withrow Whiting

Profile Updated: April 19, 2020

(City) State or Country	Lake Oswego, OR USA

Spouse/Partner	Widow

Children, grandchildren	Timothy Robert Whiting. born 1979 Sean Kyle Whiting, born 1981

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After teaching at Harding my first year after OSU graduation, I drove across America with a friend and lived in downtown Boston. I taught first grade in Hingham Bay on the Cape. I loved Boston and snooping around the East Coast. Then I moved to Northwest Portland and worked for the Director of Medical Education at Good Samaritan Hospital. Part of my job was to put on medical meetings and conferences for the doctors. Meeting and visiting with Gloria Steinem and Margaret Mead remain two favorite memories from that job..
The following year, Dr. James Schimschock,a pediatric neurologist in the Portland, asked me to help him start a clinic at the hospital for children with special needs from birth to school age, most of which had severe seizure disorders. This was before school districts were mandated to provide schooling for special needs children. As Administrative Director, I set up and ran classrooms on site for children birth to age 3, ages 3 to 5, and age 6 through high school. I headed up a team of specialists and ran a multidisciplinary clinic which provided full evaluations for about 200 children per year. The information was used to initiate educational and medical programs for these children. At this time, this was the only program of it's kind in the nation. We had visitors from all over the United States observing our program. Our team also traveled to medical centers to present our program data. We did a great deal of lobbying at the legislature and helped to push through the law 94-142 which mandated public school districts provide services for special needs children.
To help fund the Clinic programs, I wrote grants and organized the first wine tasting benefit held in Portland with Al Guisti (New Italian Importing Wine Co.) and Arlene Schnitzer, owner of the Fountain Gallery. Mr. Guisti donated 12 wine tasting stations and Mrs. Schnitzer covered the walls with art of which a percentage of each sale was donated to the Clinic. It became a fun annual event which other organizations soon replicated.
In July of 1975 I married. On Christmas Eve, 1979, I had my first son who happened to be Down Syndrome and was diagnosed by Dr. Schimschock. Timothy attended and benefited from my Child Neurology Clinic program for a couple of years. He then entered public kindergarten which was a result of the passage of the new law 94-192. Timothy loved school and graduated in 2000 with his younger brother. He has worked at Safeway for 15 years. He loves his job. He has a girlfriend that he is crazy about and they have been together for 13 years. He is now moving into a group home in Beaverton run by Edwards Center and is very excited.
After leaving the Child Neurology Clinic, I worked for the Washington County Education Service District and started a program called Early In which is still operating today.
For the next 20 plus years, I taught kindergarten through third grade in the Beaverton School District.
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School Memories

When I was in Mr. Thetford's class in Junior High, we decorated his door when he had his last child - a baby girl named Tina. My senior year at Oregon State, I student taught at Harding Elementary and Mrs. Edwards hired me to teach first grade at Harding the following year after graduation in 1966. I was very excited to have my own classroom and was surprised and thrilled when Mr. Thetford knocked on my classroom door the first day of school to congratulate me. He also introduced me to one of my new first grade students - his Tina!! We had a wonderful year and many years later, I attended Tina's wedding!!

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