Cultural Diversity Key to Peace, Woman Teaches

As a youngster in Cuba, Ileana Tomeu Gulmesoff lived the good life with her wealthy parents and grandparents.

“It was an amazing life. I was like Alice in Wonderland. I thought everyone had a nannie,” said the Cypress woman, whose parents owned a plantation and raised cattle.

At age 11, Gulmesoff had to adapt to a different lifestyle after Fidel Castro gained power in 1959. The regime seized all her parents’ wealth.

They fled to the United States with $600.

“After we arrived here my parents always emphasized education,” said the Cal State Dominguez Hills graduate. “They told me no one can take your education away from you.”

Added Gulmesoff: “I always wanted to be a teacher. When I was a little girl I used to teach my dolls.”

Her parents also emphasized love and understanding among people of different cultures.

In fact, she left her job as a Cypress Elementary School District teacher to develop a school program called “Around the World,” which teaches elementary school students about love, caring and understanding of different cultures.

The 40-minute program promotes world peace through cultural understanding and has been presented at a score of elementary schools since the program began late last year.

She charges $375 for the program.

“I think it is important for children to learn about different cultures,” said the mother of three who has been married for 14 years to Dimiter Gulmesoff, an insurance adjuster. “Even though we live in different places and look different, we all have the same basic need to be loved, accepted and understood.”

About 50 children are recruited for each of her school assembly programs and outfitted in a costume native to a country, and each performs a native song or dance.

Many of the costumes have been made by Gulmesoff’s mother, Migdalia Tomeu, of Cypress.

“Parents are so busy they often forget to teach love and kindness at home,” Gulmesoff said, “and the media is not teaching kindness. We are all exposed to an incredible amount of violence, which shows there are a lot of angry people out there.”

And some of them also are hungry, said Gulmesoff, who each week makes 100 baloney sandwiches that are delivered by a group of Cypress and Buena Park volunteers to the homeless in downtown Los Angeles.

She also is a Meals on Wheels volunteer and during the summer teaches a six-week storytelling class at Cypress College.

What is needed, Gulmesoff contends, is for people to learn how to get along with each other. She plans to promote that idea in a series of videos.

“I want to make multicultural educational videos using children wearing costumes of their native countries,” she said. “Children watching children is the best way to learn.”

And if the videos are a business success, Gulmesoff said, she would like to open a homeless shelter where survival skills would be taught.

“We should all have a goal in life to do what we can to make it a better world and to make a difference,” she said. “I know there are people out there who think what I do could be classified as corny, but it can really work.”

After 30 years as a teacher, the last four teaching kindergartners at Cox Elementary School in Fountain Valley, Jerry Bolliger has retired.

The Santa Ana resident, who once wrote true romance novels while raising her three children, has also been writing children’s books, an enterprise that she plans to continue.

Bolliger, who has been teaching kindergartners who do not speak English, said she has mixed feelings about her retirement.

“This has been a really happy year for me,” she said.