Psychology Professor, 80, Finds Staying Busy the Best Self-Help

Usually, Carmen Ramos Chandler of Cal State Northridge is a good inside source on what’s going on at that campus, but when she called with her latest tip, she was greeted with all the enthusiasm of a Simpson juror facing a 10th day of DNA testimony.

“Because the Cal State University system is so low on money, this particular professor is going into a new line of work,” Chandler said.

So, it sometimes seems, is a quarter of the population of California. And many are in the unemployment line.

Is this a duh, or what?

But as usual, Chandler was right. Nora Weckler is not only a column item, but also an inspiration.

She’s an 80-year-old psychology professor, and this is the second time CSUN has given her her walking papers. But she’s too busy for regrets or recriminations. She’s eager to get on with her new career.

“Actually, it’s the career I first had my eye on. When I was an undergraduate at the University of Toronto, I thought the city’s educational system was in trouble and that psychology might offer some answers,” she says.

“With all the confidence of youth, I wanted to set the system right.

“After I got my master’s degree and doctorate there in psychology, I got sidetracked into college teaching. But, now, with all the evolving interest in making local schools relevant to the community and the students, I would like to be a part of that.”

She’s willing to lend her expertise and ideas as either a volunteer or consultant.

Flash back to shortly after the turn of the century. Weckler was born in Toronto in 1915 and completed her education there.

She met anthropologist Joseph E. Weckler at a gathering while she was visiting friends in Chicago. The two married and moved to Washington, D.C., in 1941 after he was offered a job at the Smithsonian Institution.

In those days, everyone was interested in helping with the war effort, and Nora Weckler was no exception.

“I was asked to join military intelligence in the propaganda section,” Weckler remembers. “First, civil service found out I was still a Canadian citizen and told me there was no way I could be a government staff member. Then, the powers that be hired me as a special consultant. Civil service said they didn’t hire women as special consultants.

“At that point I gave up,” Weckler says, with a laugh.

After the war, the couple moved to Los Angeles, where Joseph had been offered a position with the USC anthropology department. For a few years she concentrated on having, and raising, their two children.

Then, in 1955, she joined the psychology department of Cal State Los Angeles at what was then the Vermont Avenue campus. By 1956, she was on the faculty of a brand-new entity: Valley State College at Northridge. She stayed for almost 30 years while it made the metamorphosis into Cal State Northridge and went from 500 students to more than 26,000.

Then, she was booted off campus in 1985.

It wasn’t her anti-administration attitude during the turbulent late ‘60s and ‘70s that had caused her academic eviction, although she’ll readily admit to siding with the students as the university underwent growing pains.

What she was guilty of was committing the sin of turning 70 years old.

“The anti-age discrimination laws didn’t seem to cover college professors,” Weckler says.

Instead of doing some fishing in the Klamath River, which she enjoys, she taught at Pepperdine University, was active in numerous professional groups including the American Psychological Society and still has a thriving private practice specializing in family and adolescent therapy.

With the relaxation of age regulations, Weckler has been back on the CSUN campus for the past two semesters teaching in the psychology department, but department head Richard Doctor has told her he is not holding out much hope for funding for her job next year.

Weckler, who exhibits the enthusiasm of an undergraduate, seems to be of the philosophy that as one door closes, another opens.

“I’m very excited about getting into this new field and helping children and adolescents. Change is healthy and good,” she says.

Message From an Old Friend Brings on a Glut of Reverie

All journalists have slogans they live by.

A note from a friend recently reminded me how I came to one of mine.

But not the first one.

The first was, “Your opinion is not news,” courtesy of my Valley College journalism instructor, Ken Devol, who later went on to become a professor and head of the journalism department at CSUN.

He was one of those instructors who inspired eagerness in, as well as introducing the basics of the business to, his students.

We Valley Star editors used to crawl through one of the unlocked windows in the journalism bungalow so we could get an early start on the week’s paper.

“Get it right, write it fast and forget about making it fancy,” was the advice of Dial Torgerson, a gentleman as well as a consummate journalist, who went on to become a Los Angeles Times foreign correspondent.

When I met up with him, I was the new “girl” reporter at the Associated Press in Los Angeles. My predecessor had been fired when the bureau chief sent her a “get well” card and told her not to come back.

In addition to being a mentor at the AP, Torgerson had a much-appreciated, wicked sense of humor. Whenever I got panicked over the bureau chief’s thunder, he would make me laugh by telling me to remember that, “If this guy had a testimonial dinner, they could put all the guests in a phone booth in the middle of the desert.”

It helped.

“You might want to reconsider that headline,” was a bit of advice from Kurt Liepman, my first editor at The Times, after I had put a headline on a story about the telephone company.

The headline read: “Pole Erection Set for Woodman Ave.”

The green, red-faced journalist changed it. Ah, well.

Liepman was one of those editors who would sit around after work and talk about the business with his reporters.

The staff also spent many Saturday mornings drinking coffee at his house in Beverly Glen to the music of some USC student named John Milius, who rented the guest quarters from Liepman, as he pounded out the first of his many movie scripts.

I got lots of advice, not all of it good, from my editors at People magazine during seven years writing cover stories about the rich, famous and infamous. Probably the best advice given during this particular journalistic adventure was offered not by an editor or journalist, but by Larry Hagman.

It was shortly after the “Who Shot J. R.” episode, and the magazine had sent me and a photographer to Dallas to spend a week with Hagman.

Hagman started every day with champagne and continued through breakfast, lunch and dinner. He expected his guests and/or attending journalists to do likewise. The photographer kept saying none of his pictures were going to be anywhere near in focus.

One day, Hagman looked at me seriously and said, “I have something to tell you.”

I scrambled for my pen and notebook.

Hagman cleared his throat and stared at me with surprisingly unbloodshot blue eyes and said, “Never drink cheap champagne.” Words to live by.

The note I received that started all this remembering was from Burt Prelutsky. I met him while I was a copy editor on West, one of the first magazines put out by The Times, circa 1970.

That staff was something way beyond gung-ho about putting out this particular publication, working late nights and weekends if necessary, bringing in families on Saturdays so as to spend “quality” time with them.

Prelutsky was a West columnist and a consummate professional who has since gone on to become an award-winning scriptwriter. His words of advice are words all writers live by: “Above all, get the names spelled right.”

Once after Prelutsky had beautifully written up a sensitive interview with Alec Guinness, Guinness’ first name was spelled Alex through some error in the composing room, if memory serves.

Prelutsky, a meticulous wordsmith, was white-faced with embarrassment because of the error and the implication that he, the writer, had not known, or taken the time to learn, how to spell a subject’s name.

His reaction made an indelible impression.

So, if you’re being interviewed, and I or some other interviewer asks you to spell your name about six times, it’s probably because he or she would rather be safe than sorry.

Of course, it could be that he or she is going deaf in that ear.

Overheard:

“I hate driving with Daddy in the car. He’s always turning off the CD player. How does he expect me to concentrate on driving in all that silence?”

Sixteen-year-old to her mother in Woodland Hills.