A Close-Up Look At People Who Matter : Winokur’s World, and Welcome to It

Never mind Carmen Sandiego. Where in the world is Gene Winokur?

The 73-year-old has traversed Asia and touched the tip of Chile. He’s “done the Soviet Union” when it still was the Soviet Union and he’s felt an ocean liner list after being rammed by a Greek freighter.

His passport is up to date and the frequent flier miles are spinning like a slot machine. So, where in the world is Gene Winokur?

At the moment, he’s taking a group of third-, fourth- and fifth-graders from the fabled Fountain of Youth in Florida, to dairy farms farther north, and back home to the West Coast.

In a tidy classroom at Nestle Avenue Elementary School in Tarzana, the students are learning the lay of the land in a class known as Geography with Gene.

Winokur has already taken the children across the rest of the globe--a journey that students in the Los Angeles Unified School District don’t usually take in elementary school.

The semi-retired businessman began volunteering at Nestle four years ago, prompted by the answer of a child he asked to locate Alaska and Hawaii. “Right between California and Mexico,” the child responded.

Winokur was perplexed. Then he looked on a map. Sure enough, there was the Alaska and Hawaii inset--right between California and Mexico.

“I thought, ‘My God, I better get into the school system,’ ” he recalled.

Now, Thursday is Geography Day for a dozen or so gifted students who spend an hour learning about latitude and longitude, the Prime Meridian, the North Pole and the South Pole and all that stuff in between.

Some students recently spent their last day with Winokur before rotating to other volunteers teaching opera, French or Spanish.

“Gene, how come we have to quit geography class?” pleaded Sofya Peysekhman, sitting in the front row.

“You know too much,” Winokur told the 10-year-old. “The students can’t know more than the teacher.”

On this last day, Winokur condensed North American geography into the hour by providing vignettes of explorers and immigrants to the new world.

“Who ever heard of Lewis and Clark?” he asked.

Looks of recognition flashed across the room and hands shot into the air. “Actors!” one child shouted. “Superman,” another whispered.

Winokur again looked puzzled. The children were thinking of “Lois and Clark” a television series about Lois Lane and Clark Kent, not of the famed explorers Meriwether Lewis and Lt. William Clark.

Winokur shook his head and continued.

“They get so much television, these kids. They don’t read books. They don’t pick up a newspaper,” Winokur said after class. “I try to give them what I can, what I know.”

What Winokur knows could give the students he teaches a boost when they hit higher grades, said Nestle Principal Edward Catlett

“He’s a world traveler. For our gifted kids we thought that would give them an edge in junior high,” Catlett said.

Winokur, who in addition to teaching geography, also tutors students Tuesdays and Thursdays. “He’s been a blessing,” Catlett said. “He’s given us something we could never, ever repay him.”

But Winokur said the schools couldn’t pay him; the reward he wants isn’t money.

Teaching was Winokur’s first love. He started teaching in New Jersey in 1946, for a starting salary of $1,400 a year. Ten years later, when he was nearing the top salary of $4,800, he decided to give up teaching, move to California and start a business.

Now that he’s made his money, Winokur is back to that first love.

“When I’m helping a child with a problem and they look up at me and say, ‘Gene, I get it.’ That’s the biggest paycheck in the world for me,” he said. “I go home tired, but I’m glad to see some of it has sunk in.”

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