Book Awakened Compassion for Indians’ Plight

Ever since he read “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee” in 1968, Richard P. Ettinger Jr. has had a mission: to improve the life of American Indians whose lands were confiscated, whose cultures and ways of life were nearly eradicated by the white man.

According to the most recent U.S Census figures, American Indians remain among the most disadvantaged groups in the United States, economically and socially and they suffer from proportionately higher rates of heart and chronic liver disease than any other ethnic group in the nation. Statistics show that the suicide rate among American Indians is more than double that of all other minorities.

The way to make an impact, Ettinger decided, is through education. For several years, he and fellow heirs to the Prentice-Hall publishing fortune have underwritten a summer college preparatory program designed to encourage hundreds of American Indians to stay in school, to give them educational opportunities that are sorely lacking on most reservations.

“I wanted to do something to help right the wrongs,” said the soft-spoken 69-year-old philanthropist from Corona del Mar. “I decided that the best way to help Native Americans is not to send food packages or build houses for them, not to keep them dependent on government largess but to give them the educational tools so they can excel.”

Now that the 5-year-old summer program has moved to UC Irvine, Ettinger hopes it can become a model to share throughout the United States, perhaps even the basis of a truly intertribal college preparatory school for American Indians--one he hopes to found somewhere in the Southwest by 1994.

“We want to encourage these kids to excel, to represent their people and particularly to get into the professions, especially teaching, so that Native American children can see that teachers don’t have to be non-Indians,” he said. “That’s how things will change for the better.”

The American Indian summer program has been a family affair since it began in June, 1988, in Sedona, Ariz. Ettinger’s wife, Sharon, donates much of her time to fund raising and oversight of the program. Many of their 11 children--the product of three marriages--have helped in one way or another with the program.

Perhaps the most involved is their 19-year-old son, Matt, who attended the classes that first summer. This year, the Whittier College theater major helps to organize drama and arts activities for the students and, as a dormitory counselor, makes sure his young charges have their noses in their lessons a good part of each evening.

“I love it, that’s why I keep coming back,” said Matt Ettinger. “At the end of each summer at graduation, there’s not a dry eye between the students and the faculty. It’s the most touching thing you’ve ever seen. And you know these kids are going to do well when they get back home. . . . It’s really great and really rewarding.”

His father has a standing bet with the 50 Navajo youngsters in that first class back in 1988. Each of the seventh-graders received a certificate promising $100 upon proof that he or she had enrolled in college.

“We’re hoping all 50 of them will take me up on it,” Ettinger said.