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Roz Robinson (Part II)
My job at Vista began in July. In August, the male youth counselor I was hired to work with returned from his vacation and I went to work with the boys. My co-worker was Peter Robinson. It was summer, so most of the days were filled with activities by special "athletic" staff. There was a swimming pool schedule. Sometimes there were volleyball games. There was a room with pool and ping-pong tables. There were also vehicles available for taking the kids off campus to the store, beach, movies, etc. At that time, the youth we worked with were put into residential treatment for being chronic runaways, using drugs, being involved in robberies, assaults and other crimes, sometimes just being truant from school too often. The families were required to undergo counseling and the department of social services placed the young people at Vista until some family changes were made. There were visitations with families on the week-ends dependent upon what was happening during the week. There was a school on the grounds at Vista, so students used to cutting school had no way of doing it while staying there. Pete and I worked a split shift during school times. We were responsible for getting the boys up, ready for school, fed breakfast, and either walked to the school on grounds or sent to school off grounds. Then, we had staff meetings to discuss cases. After that, we had a break until school got out when we would go get the boys in on grounds school, help with homework, attend family meetings with the boys and their social workers, or have cottage group therapy sessions.
Labor Day week-end was the annual Disneyland trip for all the Vista kids. Having arrived in July and having started working 3 weeks after I arrived, I had never been to Disneyland. Pete offered to show me around that day. There was one boy, very into electronics, who really loved Pete and wanted to be with him all the time. He stayed with us that whole day at Disneyland while other boys left and checked in at various places and times. His name was Robert. We had a great time. This was back in the days of "E" tickets. I think we used every ticket in our books. At one point, I asked Pete what was next on the itinerary and Robert said, "Itinerary? Is that something made by Panasonic?"
Pete and I worked Wednesday through Saturday and had Sunday through Tuesday off each week. After the Disneyland trip, Pete asked me what I was doing on my time off. I knew his last name was Robinson and didn't think he was Jewish, but I'd also seen him getting mail from the University of Judaism in the mailroom, so I asked him about the mail and he told me he was Jewish and taking classes at UJ.
As I mentioned before, I hadn't been to very many places since I got to California. I had no car and didn't know my way around at all. After finding out Pete was Jewish I accepted his invitation to spend Sunday off together. He asked me where I wanted to go. I kept telling him that anywhere was okay, but I really felt like going to the zoo and was too embarrassed to tell him that. Well, Sunday arrived and Pete came down to the room on the grounds that I called home, and he said, "This is gonna sound kind of corny, but how would you like to go to the zoo?" No question that Pete and I were on the same wavelength right from the beginning!
Five weeks after Labor Day, is my birthday. Pete told me that he had a surprise for me. My birthday fell on a Sunday. Our work shift the night before ended at 11 PM, so he asked me to stay until midnight when it became my birthday. We sat on the couch in the cottage after the boys had been sent to bed, and at the stroke of midnight, Pete said, "Will you marry me?" I thought maybe he was thinking of eloping for my birthday, so the first thing I said was, "When?" Pete replied that that was a detail to be worked out later, so I said, "Yes" and he said "Don't you want to think about it?"
The next morning, I spoke to my folks for my birthday. After they wished me a Happy Birthday, I said "I'm getting married!" and my mom, thinking I was going off to elope, first replied, "When?" After I told her we didn't know that yet, she asked, "Who are you marrying?" a very logical question since Pete and I were only dating 5 weeks and she had maybe gotten one letter from me about him.
For my birthday surprise, Pete took me on the seaplane over to Catalina for the day. We did all the touristy things like the glass bottom boat ride, the flying fish tour, etc. When we got back to land, we went to our favorite restaurant, the Palmer House and had dinner.
Pete and I were married in Pittsburgh, PA on June 25, 1972. The week before we were married there were torrential rains, the rivers were flooded, roads were closed. People kept calling because they weren't sure one moment to the next whether they would make it to the wedding. As it turned out, our best man never made it, so another friend of Pete's from college who did get there was our best man. I stepped on my bridal gown going up the stairs to the chuppa and almost fell on my face...there was a fly that really wanted to perch on the rim of our wine glass which the Rabbi kept shaking while trying not to spill the wine...other than that, all went smoothly.
We flew back to California and spent a three-week honeymoon driving up the coast to San Francisco, then over to Yosemite and then back to LA. It was all new to me and gorgeous! No matter where we have traveled, I've always enjoyed coming home to LA.
After we were married, I continued to work at Vista. Pete went back to school to finish his bachelor's degree and then went through a series of jobs leading him into the jewelry business. When we had $1,000.00 saved, we agreed I would stop working, so in December of 1977, I gave Vista notice. It was our feeling that after all the years of working with disturbed youth we needed time to reset ourselves for having our own children.
I always wanted to write, so I sent an article about my hearing loss to a magazine and was paid $50.00 for it. Other submissions were not met with the same enthusiasm, however.
In 1978, I became pregnant. From the beginning, Pete insisted we were going to have twins, but the doctor kept saying that he only heard one heartbeat. With all the symptoms about unusual weight gain in the baby books, I had agreed that we were probably having twins, but the doctor disagreed, so we ordered one crib and one dresser. The due date for the baby was April 30th.
On March 17, St. Paddy's Day, my mom and mother-in-law made me a shower in the restaurant at the top of the Beverly Hilton Hotel. Coming down in the elevator, I felt the babies shift and then I was sure there were two. I called the doctor's office on Monday and got a Tuesday appointment to see the one doctor in the practice that I hadn't met yet. After trying to count fetal heart beats with a nurse on one side and him on the other side, he asked for a count and the nurse didn't have one, so I got sent to x-ray for one picture. When it came back, the doctor said there were two babies. They had been one on top of the other, so that's why it sounded like one heartbeat. He told me to go home and relax.
The following Friday, I carried in some groceries and felt "weird". So, I took a rest. Later, I went to the bathroom and peed a LOT, so I thought maybe my water broke. I called my parents; they called the medical number and whoever answered the phone told my folks to bring me to the hospital to get checked out.
Peter was the manager of a privately owned jewelry business at that time. That particular evening was the night before the oldest son's bar mitzvah and it was Pete's job to close up everything and take care of the bank drop, etc. My parents called Pete to let him know we were all over at Holy Cross hospital.
Meanwhile, I was told that I was in labor and dilating, which was why I felt "weird" and they checked me into the hospital and hooked me up to heartbeat machines to keep track of the babies. My mom and dad were allowed to stay with me until Pete showed up and my dad commented that that was longer than he had been allowed to stay with my mom when my sister or I had been born.
Pete arrived after 11 PM and we both stayed up all night. If I recall correctly, my dad took care of the bank papers or delivery or whatever it was for the business Pete worked for. My usual doctor was "on call" for the weekend beginning Saturday morning at 8m so he came to see me when he arrived. Since the babies were premature and twins, he wanted me to relax and stay calm and not do anything to speed up the labor. He said if the babies had problems, they would be airlifted to Valley Presbyterian Hospital where they have infant intensive care. I told him if they went, I went! I was dying of thirst and the lemon "pops" weren't cutting it. I told the doctor that, too. He promised me a glass of water after the babies were born!
Finally, at 4 PM, the doctor came in and said that the head of obstetrics, and the head of pediatrics were both in the hospital and an operating room was available. He felt it was a good time to help my babies along. Pete was allowed in the operating room and was the only one without a mask, so I could lip-read him due to my hearing loss. I really must say, however, that "push, stop and congratulations" didn't take a lot of skill to follow. The doctor punctured the sac and at 4:50 PM, April was born. The next 20 minutes was probably the longest in my life as we waited for Dawn to make her appearance. The head of obstetrics was literally pressing on my abdomen to try and push her out! At 5:09, Dawn was finally born. The babies were incubated but not removed from Holy Cross. When the doctor walked into recovery I asked him where the water was that he kept promising me and he turned around and left for a couple minutes returning with my glass of water.
The Robinson Family
I had also thought I was hungry after all that labor, but when they brought me a late dinner I hardly ate any of it. The hospital was very accommodating. Two big things about my hospital stay: one was that I knew I felt very weak after the twins were born, but I just assumed that's how it was for everyone. It wasn't until later that the doctor told me I was very anemic after the birth and they talked about giving me a blood transfusion but decided to leave me alone since I was up and walking around. Well, of course I was up and walking, my babies were in incubators in the nurse's station, so if I wanted to be with them, I went down there! Second was the night before Pete and I were due to take the twins home, the hospital made us a candle-light dinner with wine and food that we ordered from a special gourmet menu. They told us that once we had the babies at home to ourselves it would be a while before we would be able to sit down to a nice dinner like that again.
I stayed home with the twins and Pete continued to work for the jewelry store in Thousand Oaks until the twins were six months old. One night, my parents came over to baby-sit so that Pete and I could go out to dinner. Pete walked in and announced that he had quit his job. I remember my dad saying, "I guess you two have a lot to talk about at dinner."
That's when Pete went out on his own in the jewelry business. I did the bookkeeping and typed appraisals while I was home with the girls. When the girls were three, we enrolled them in pre-school classes at Congregation Beth Kodesh in Canoga Park two mornings a week. While the girls were in school, I began going to work with Pete and learning to do simple soldering and polishing of jewelry, as well as stringing pearls and other beads. The nice thing about having our own business was that if the girls were "student of the month" at school, we could just close up shop early and go. Unfortunately, because we did repairs, appraisals, and custom orders for other businesses, there were always times when we would show up at a store to pick up the work and someone would tell us that the store had decided to hire their own repair person to sit in the store all day and do the work as soon as it came in; or we might be told that the store decided to send their work to someone else whose prices were lower than ours.
In 1988, things got to the point where we decided I should leave the business and try to find another job. My original teaching credential had expired back in 1976, but I told Pete the only job I could see myself doing for 25 years or so until retirement was teach. This began a very low point in our lives. I started looking in the newspaper for schools looking for people as teachers or even classroom assistants. I would find the address of the schools in the phone book and send a resume asking them to leave a message on our phone and telling them I would call back through CRS. What I got in reply were form letters saying they weren't hiring! I knew they were hiring because I found them through their ads. One day I even went to an employment office and sat while the counselors were told over and over that a hearing impaired person couldn't do the job they had available and I couldn't even get an interview.
Finally, in desperation, I went to Vocational Rehabilitation. They sent me for hearing tests. They told me they could help me get into CSUN to work on a credential beginning in the fall, but that was a long way off. In the meantime, they sent me to Sandra Dickenson's sign language class at North Valley Occupational Center. That was the beginning of my sign language experience.
In March, I was offered a job as a substitute, at the HELP Group teaching autistic students. Since I did not have the proper credential, but was working on an emergency credential, they told me that any time a person with the correct credential showed up, they would have to let me go. Knowing I could lose the job anytime, I enrolled at CSUN full time that fall.
It was during those first special education classes that I actually saw a chart of hearing losses and discovered that I was profoundly deaf. I remember looking at the chart, finding my audiogram and calling Pete to come over and look. All those years I'd been told things like "You have a 100 decibel bi-lateral sensory-neural hearing loss" but I never knew what that meant!
When I began my studies at CSUN I had only one sign language class and I asked for note takers in my classes. I was told that other deaf students had already asked for sign language interpreters and that both services were not offered for one class. I was told that sign language interpreters with clear speech would be arranged so that I could probably lip-read the interpreters...and so I got thrown into improving my signing skills to survive my classes. Luckily for me, there was usually one hearing student willing to make copies of their notes for the deaf students in class.
I took ASL classes at CSUN which brought me to TBS. I not only went to TBS to experience the services, but also to do interviews with deaf people to help with my classes. Rabbi Alan Henkin was at TBS at that time. I had visited TBS a number of times when one of the Sunday school teachers quit and I was asked if I would be willing to take over the class. I did.
TBS gave back to me what I had been missing for many years: religious services where I could follow along comfortably. I was awed by Rabbi Alan's finger spelling as he read Hebrew from the Torah. I loved TBS and the fact that the people reached out to my husband and daughters as well as myself.
I stayed at the HELP Group until 1990 when one of the autistic students banged his head into my face and broke my nose. After that, I went to work for LAUSD, where I've been ever since.
My husband and daughters were recruited over time to help with the TBS religious school until there were no longer enough students to make the school worthwhile.
In 1992 I received my Master's degree in Special Education with a specialization in deaf and hard of hearing. My credential is in severely handicapped, not communicatively impaired. I took all the classes and student-taught in a regular education setting. Then, I took all the classes and student-taught for my severely handicapped credential. I also took all the classes necessary to teach a deaf class, but I refused to leave my job to student-teach a third time, so despite the fact that I petitioned the state twice, I never got that third credential.
In 1994, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I was teaching religious school at TBS at the time, as well as working for LAUSD at West Valley Special Ed Center. The cancer was not caught early. It was stage three. I had a mastectomy, went through six months of chemotherapy, and assumed I'd be dead before I was 50.
Strangely enough, I think becoming deaf helped me cope with the cancer. People can't see that I'm deaf, so often it would be up to me to tell someone who might otherwise talk to my back that I was deaf. My self-image had to change from that of a hearing person to that of a deaf one. At first, that was difficult for me. After my mastectomy, no one could see that I was missing a breast either because I could wear a prosthesis. Still, my self-image was changed and I had to deal with that.
The cancer returned in 1999, when I was president of TBS and we were trying to sell the synagogue property. Again, I went through chemotherapy. When that was over, I was offered stem cell replacement therapy at City of Hope, which I did. The stem cell was followed by radiation.
I became the lay leader/acting rabbi of TBS for the high holiday services the fall following the end of those treatments. I've really enjoyed the experiences I've had rewriting the high holiday prayer books and the Hagaddah for Passover, as well as writing many sermons and columns for the Congregation News. I am a teacher and I enjoy doing that, no matter the population I am addressing. From feedback and support I've received over the years I know I'm blessed with a lot of love and support in my life outside of my immediate family.
My daughters were 15 when I was first diagnosed with cancer. I promised I'd see them graduate from high school, but I was blessed to see them graduate from college also. I'm proud of the legacy of the two beautiful (inside & out) daughters that Pete and I brought into the world.
I couldn't have a better husband. There have been some really tough times in our lives but Pete has always been there for me and I truly believe we are soul mates.
The cancer is back again. This time, it has spread to my liver and the past two series of treatments have been ineffective in controlling it. I am currently in chemo with Gemzar, which has a 25% chance of helping me. It's been over 10 years since the original diagnosis (closer to 11 really), so if this is it, I have no complaints. It's been a great life full of wonderful people. More Profiles...