Teachers
This week I am on a road trip which is taking me to Statesville, North Carolina; Jane Lew, WV; Butler, Pa.; Pittsburgh, Pa.; Wheeling. WV and surrounding Ohio cities. The primary purpose of the trip is routine medical and dental appointment, to touch base with some clients I “see” via long distance and visit a few friends. Although I will not have as much time as I normally do to write a blog I am determined to continue to spend some time writing. Since I will be visiting a number of individuals who have been my teachers, mentors and spiritual guides I thought I would attempt to share a little about some of the teachers/guides I am going to be visiting.
My first stop has been to see Beverly Knox Taylor Bouthwell and her husband David. Bless them. They drove from Green Mountain to Statesville, NC to visit. I had not seen them for over a decade although we make sure we stay in touch every so often.
I think I met Beverly in 1973 or 1974. I had just finished some additional training in California and was looking for a temporary job within driving distance (10 hours) of Pittsburgh where my son was living with his mother. My understanding was that my son’s mother did not intend to stay in Pittsburgh and, thus, I did not mind being 10 hours drive from Pittsburgh. This was a short distance compared to the distance between Southeast Alaska and Pittsburgh. We had been living in Alaska when we made the sad decision to separate and divorce.
At any rate, Beverly was a psychologist responsible for some outpatient programs for the Southwest Indiana Mental Health Programs. Her responsibility included overall direction of the some programs to serve those dealing with addictions. Since I had just finished some training in addictions, had recently been a director of an Alcoholism treatment center and had a masters degree she decided I might be able to learn to be an effective counselor.
I flew to Evansville from Portland where I had been staying with friends I had formerly known when living in the Washington, DC area. As I got off the plane and went searching for this Mrs. Knox-Taylor who I had pictured, given her telephone voice and her credentials, as this tall, elegant, no nonsense woman. The only person I saw was this short woman on crutches in a worn swede coat that did not look very warm standing by a car which could only be opened on one side. Oh dear, I thought. This is really the backwoods. After all, who had heard of Evansville, Indiana.
I did receive an offer for a job and I accepted. Soon I was residing in a small apartment in one of the large, old Riverfront, Victorian homes built along the Ohio River.
It turned out that this Mrs. Knox-Taylor was the person she originally sounded like on the phone. She is this extremely bright, competent, psychologist who was very serious about training folks to be very competent therapist who treated clients and colleagues with loving respect. She expected me to not only video tape a lot of the individual and group therapy sessions, but they expected us to go over them with and explain why did everything we did, how we arrived at diagnosis and a treatment plan (this was years away from evidence based, measurable goals and objectives). She was also demanding in terms of how we took care of ourselves as clinicians, whether we were getting additional training (thanks you Dr. Lytle and Mr. Nichols) what my plans were for getting another masters degree in psychology.
This was a take no prisoners approach to being the best one could be and, thus, insuring that clients/patients got the best which was available.
I later found that that she had these amazing parents. Her mother, Grace, I later met. Grace and Beverly’s dad, somehow knew that when Beverly got polio at age 12 that she had to regain all the confidence of the physically active, bright, child and horsewoman before the onset of polio The doctors insisted that she should never walk again – that she would be confined to a wheelchair the rest of her life. Yet, eventually she taught herself to use the two crutches to move by shift wait from one foot to the other and to scoot on her posterior up and down steps. In her senior year her parents decided that she needed to live in an apartment by herself if she was going to have the life of a differently abled person and not a disabled. Although Beverly was not pleased with the thought of living alone, she later came to really appreciate the gift of this loving push toward freedom. No only did she get a graduate degree in psychology she traveled the world, often by herself. Along with Franklin Roosevelt she invented and lived the term differently abled.
Today she is near 80 and retired. The post polio syndrome which has come to visit many who had polio as a child has again restricted her movement but when I called to see if she could drive to meet me a couple of hours from where she is now living she did not hesitate. Neither did her husband who also lives as a differently abled man. Another time I will write about David who has and is a teacher for me.
Some will know that I left out pieces of the story in terms of relationship with this amazing woman. I might or might not tell the stories such as the one about her ex-husband knocking me sprawling on the floor because he thought we were having an affair. Actually he was a bit premature. But then, as I said, I will save those stories for another time.
I am again reminded that much of who I am is because of amazing teachers and friends such as Beverly. Thanks.
This week I am on a road trip which is taking me to Statesville, North Carolina; Jane Lew, WV; Butler, Pa.; Pittsburgh, Pa.; Wheeling. WV and surrounding Ohio cities. The primary purpose of the trip is routine medical and dental appointment, to touch base with some clients I “see” via long distance and visit a few friends. Although I will not have as much time as I normally do to write a blog I am determined to continue to spend some time writing. Since I will be visiting a number of individuals who have been my teachers, mentors and spiritual guides I thought I would attempt to share a little about some of the teachers/guides I am going to be visiting.
My first stop has been to see Beverly Knox Taylor Bouthwell and her husband David. Bless them. They drove from Green Mountain to Statesville, NC to visit. I had not seen them for over a decade although we make sure we stay in touch every so often.
I think I met Beverly in 1973 or 1974. I had just finished some additional training in California and was looking for a temporary job within driving distance (10 hours) of Pittsburgh where my son was living with his mother. My understanding was that my son’s mother did not intend to stay in Pittsburgh and, thus, I did not mind being 10 hours drive from Pittsburgh. This was a short distance compared to the distance between Southeast Alaska and Pittsburgh. We had been living in Alaska when we made the sad decision to separate and divorce.
At any rate, Beverly was a psychologist responsible for some outpatient programs for the Southwest Indiana Mental Health Programs. Her responsibility included overall direction of the some programs to serve those dealing with addictions. Since I had just finished some training in addictions, had recently been a director of an Alcoholism treatment center and had a masters degree she decided I might be able to learn to be an effective counselor.
I flew to Evansville from Portland where I had been staying with friends I had formerly known when living in the Washington, DC area. As I got off the plane and went searching for this Mrs. Knox-Taylor who I had pictured, given her telephone voice and her credentials, as this tall, elegant, no nonsense woman. The only person I saw was this short woman on crutches in a worn swede coat that did not look very warm standing by a car which could only be opened on one side. Oh dear, I thought. This is really the backwoods. After all, who had heard of Evansville, Indiana.
I did receive an offer for a job and I accepted. Soon I was residing in a small apartment in one of the large, old Riverfront, Victorian homes built along the Ohio River.
It turned out that this Mrs. Knox-Taylor was the person she originally sounded like on the phone. She is this extremely bright, competent, psychologist who was very serious about training folks to be very competent therapist who treated clients and colleagues with loving respect. She expected me to not only video tape a lot of the individual and group therapy sessions, but they expected us to go over them with and explain why did everything we did, how we arrived at diagnosis and a treatment plan (this was years away from evidence based, measurable goals and objectives). She was also demanding in terms of how we took care of ourselves as clinicians, whether we were getting additional training (thanks you Dr. Lytle and Mr. Nichols) what my plans were for getting another masters degree in psychology.
This was a take no prisoners approach to being the best one could be and, thus, insuring that clients/patients got the best which was available.
I later found that that she had these amazing parents. Her mother, Grace, I later met. Grace and Beverly’s dad, somehow knew that when Beverly got polio at age 12 that she had to regain all the confidence of the physically active, bright, child and horsewoman before the onset of polio The doctors insisted that she should never walk again – that she would be confined to a wheelchair the rest of her life. Yet, eventually she taught herself to use the two crutches to move by shift wait from one foot to the other and to scoot on her posterior up and down steps. In her senior year her parents decided that she needed to live in an apartment by herself if she was going to have the life of a differently abled person and not a disabled. Although Beverly was not pleased with the thought of living alone, she later came to really appreciate the gift of this loving push toward freedom. No only did she get a graduate degree in psychology she traveled the world, often by herself. Along with Franklin Roosevelt she invented and lived the term differently abled.
Today she is near 80 and retired. The post polio syndrome which has come to visit many who had polio as a child has again restricted her movement but when I called to see if she could drive to meet me a couple of hours from where she is now living she did not hesitate. Neither did her husband who also lives as a differently abled man. Another time I will write about David who has and is a teacher for me.
Some will know that I left out pieces of the story in terms of relationship with this amazing woman. I might or might not tell the stories such as the one about her ex-husband knocking me sprawling on the floor because he thought we were having an affair. Actually he was a bit premature. But then, as I said, I will save those stories for another time.
I am again reminded that much of who I am is because of amazing teachers and friends such as Beverly. Thanks.
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