89-Year-Old Whittier Teacher Says Age Should Not Be Barrier to Keeping Active

At an age when most people have long since retired, 89-year-old Elizabeth Leighton believes in keeping busy.

Leighton works six days a week, sometimes putting in 10 or more hours a day, tutoring students in her Whittier home. She teaches reading, writing and math, and gives organ and piano lessons to about 60 students.

To keep up with the trends in teaching, she attends an international conference on reading every two years. She has been to Sweden, Japan, Germany and Australia. In 1992, she plans to go to Thailand.

In her spare time she sews afghans for five sons, eight grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

“People give up too easy,” she said. “They think they’re too old. But age should not stop you. It’s a matter of the mind.”

Leighton came to California in 1920 after graduating from Buena Vista College in Storm Lake, Iowa, with a bachelor’s degree in music. She has a degree in English from Northwestern University and a doctorate in music and reading from International Graduate School in St. Louis, Mo.

Even injuries have not stopped her. In 1986, after falling down the stairs in her home and breaking her hip, she continued to teach. “I had the students come to my bedside,” said Leighton, whose husband, Roy, died in 1975. At the reading conference in Stockholm, Leighton used a wheelchair because the hip had not completely mended.

Leighton’s teaching career has spanned nearly 70 years. She has taught in both public and private schools, and began private tutoring about 26 years ago.

A former student, Edward Barajas, now 35, remembered being tutored in reading by Leighton when he was a fifth-grade pupil at Longfellow elementary in the Whittier City School District. “She taught me to love reading,” said Barajas who is now sending his son, Gilbert, 9, to Leighton for reading instruction.

Two Cerritos College student athletes, Erik S. Bonnar and Tiffany South, have been honored for their academic and athletic achievements. Bonnar was selected as the Wilson Sporting Goods California Community College 1990 scholar-athlete of year. Bonnar, who had a perfect 4.0 grade-point average, was captain of the swimming team and selected as the most improved water polo player.

South, who also had a 4.0 grade-point average, was chosen as the woman scholar-athlete of the year by the college’s athletic league, the South Coast Conference. South also was one of 14 finalists for the state scholar-athlete award. She was an outstanding cross country and track and field athlete.

Jordan High School graduate Eugene McCown was one of 225 honor graduates from across the country to visit the nation’s Capitol recently as part of the National Young Leaders Conference Postgraduate Program. The young scholars met with members of Congress and other government officials.

McCown, 17, maintained a 3.4 grade-point average at the Long Beach school. He will attend San Diego State, where he will major in electronic engineering. McCown also plans to try out for the football team. In high school, he was an outstanding player and was secretary of athletics on the student council.

ABC Unified School District nurse Teri Book created a series of posters about three years ago aimed at teaching children to take responsibility for some aspects of their own health. Today the posters are not only used in the ABC district but in many other school systems throughout the nation.

Book will be honored by KNBC-TV as part of its community awareness campaign highlighting outstanding contributions to education. One-minute vignettes featuring Book and her contributions will be aired at various times from Aug. 28 to Sept. 5 on Channel 4.

* Sergio Menezes has been honored as one of the outstanding federally funded Job Training Partnership Act program alumni by the city of Cerritos. The program, which provides employment and training to low-income residents, is administered by the Private Industry Council of Southeast Los Angeles County. Menezes is a custodian for the ABC Unified School District.

* Nora Levy has been named marketing director of Los Cerritos Center. Earlier this year, Levy was chosen marketing director of the year by the Hahn Co., the developer of the Los Cerritos Center.

* Cerritos resident George Marsh has been appointed to the 19-member Private Industry Council of Southeast Los Angeles County, a organization that helps create jobs for low-income people.

* Miguel A. Santana, a senior at Whittier College, recently completed a five-week leadership training program with 25 other outstanding students from across the country. The students attended sessions in Greensboro, N.C., Leadville, Colo., and Dallas.

* Norwalk resident Janet Jenks has been selected Woman of the Year by the Spirit of ’76 Charter Chapter of the American Business Women’s Assn.

Uptown Bixby Knolls The Bixby Knolls Parking and Business Improvement Area Advisory Board has given a $250 award to Pam Kissick for designing a new logo for the uptown Long Beach business district. Kissick’s entry was selected from among 30 others, said Kimi Mann, executive director of the business association.

The turquoise-colored logo shows a sun rising from behind a mountain, which represents a re-emergence of the area, Mann said. Kissick said the intent of her design is “to incorporate a new and up-to-date look, but capture the friendly down-home feeling of Bixby Knolls.” Kissick and her husband, Michael, are owners of MJK Construction Inc., which is located in the Bixby Knolls area.