Past Teachers Turn Efforts to Writing Books

Two longtime Ventura schoolteachers have become self-published authors in their retirements.

Imogene Bercaw, who turned 90 last week, has published “Horizons Unlimited,” part memoir and part travel book, and Don Meyer, who retired in 1992, has published “Barging Through Life--an Autobiography . . . Sort Of.”

Bercaw, a 43-year veteran of classrooms, choir rooms and auditorium stages, wrote and mounted dozens of musical productions at Ventura and Buena high schools.

She wrote her 787-page book on yellow legal pads, then published it herself through “Bercaw Publications.”

“It took me 13 months to write the book,” Bercaw said recently as she sat in her Ventura home, surrounded by souvenirs from the 200 countries she has visited or led tours to. “Writing it was just like I was back there. One morning I looked up and it was 5:30. I’d been writing all night.”

Bercaw, who regrets that she can no longer travel to the four corners of the world because of her arthritis, narrates tales of her worldly adventures in “Horizons Unlimited.”

She has a few--she has been poking around the world for 60 years.

“I first went to China in 1937. I was able to travel by exchange teaching with teachers from other countries for a school year.

“I saw ‘Aida’ on the banks of the Nile. And I also rode down the Nile in a felucca.”

Meyer is 71, born the same year as Marilyn Monroe, as the first sentence in his memoir says.

His book, published earlier this year, includes a 50-page prose poem.

The free verse recalls his teenage years in the Marine Corps, when he saw combat in the Pacific Theater during World War II.

Since those long-ago days, he has spent his life teaching English in high schools and creative writing and English as a Second Language at Ventura College and UCLA.

“I figure I’ve taught several thousand Venturans in my career,” he said recently. “I’ve taught students who now have PhDs from Yale, UCSB . . . from everywhere.”

He and his wife, Young, have five children, four of whom became teachers.

Meyer has written other books of poetry and meets regularly these days with the Senior Plus poetry group in Oxnard. He also occasionally reads at coffeehouses on the county’s poetry circuit.

Meyer, who has Parkinson’s disease, underwent brain surgery to control the difficult physical symptoms the disease can cause.

The brand-new treatment was very successful.

“Before the operation, I had quite pronounced tremors,” Meyer said. “Now, no more. Now I run two miles each morning.”

Born in Santa Paula, Meyer has spent time teaching in other countries, but he is glad to be living back in his home county.

“Ventura hasn’t changed as much as the rest of the world,” he said. “You won’t find a lovelier place in the world.”