Seniors Break Down the Language Barrier in Longtime Spanish Class

Call them the mayores, the old ones. They are 25 students, ages 60 to 90, who never learned that they’re too old to learn a foreign language.

They’ve all attended the same advanced Spanish conversation class in Ventura’s adult education program for up to 20 years. None of these students has ever graduated. None wants to. The class is too much fun.

“We’re going to keep coming to this class until we die,” said 70-year-old Alison Pullon, who has been in the class for three years. “It’s the only way you graduate,” agreed Jo Bowker, 77, who joined the class 13 years ago. Graduating would mean leaving the Friday morning friendships that have developed over the years.

The class has already eased one Spanish teacher into retirement; now it’s working on its second, Susan Martz, who took over eight years ago. Martz, who lived and studied in Salamanca, Spain, and at the University of Guadalajara in Mexico, is also a certified Spanish-to-English translator.

She’s also a stickler for attendance, although acceptable excuses for absence include hip replacements or trips to foreign countries for a Spanish immersion class.

Or, as Pullon and Bowker suggested, death. One student did in fact succumb to a stroke in class years ago. Her peers were devastated, but some were later philosophical: For them, there are worse ways to go than while translating Gabriel Garcia Marquez with longtime friends.

“The thing that brings them together every Friday morning for decades is simply the love of the Spanish language,” Martz said. And not just tourist Spanish.

“They’re all world travelers, cosmopolitan, and they all speak Spanish well,” she added. Some understand better; some speak better. Some could teach the language and do.

Strangely, they all agree that conjugating an irregular verb in the subjunctive tense correctly delivers something akin to a runner’s high.

“Also, I just like its usefulness,” said Martha Churchyard, one of the younger students at 67. “I like to understand people and talk to them. I like to understand signs, what’s being said around me. It’s everywhere.”

No surprise, since California still wears its Spanish origins in everything from its very name to the names of many of its cities, the food in its cafes, its architecture, its art.

Dwane Wilkolm, 72, a PhD retired from Rand Corp., teaches Spanish in Oxnard’s adult education program, but he attends the Friday morning class for the amistad (friendship) and the challenge of dissecting a Pablo Neruda love poem in the original Spanish with his peers.

Practical reasons brought many students to Martz, who also teaches beginning and intermediate levels at the downtown Senior Recreation Center.

Walter Voris, 84, has been there the longest. He began studying 20 years ago when, as a retired Red Cross volunteer, he helped many Oxnard Latinos during the 1982-83 winter floods. “But I couldn’t help people like I wanted because I couldn’t talk to them. So I started the class as a beginner.”

Voris has advanced from memorizing colors and days of the week to such fluency that he has taught a lunch-hour Spanish class at the county government center.

About learning Spanish after you’re 64, he said, “The thing is, you have to enjoy your homework.”

Bernhard Penner, a retired surgeon, took his first Friday class 12 years ago at age 64.

“I worked at the county medical center, and most of my patients were Spanish-speakers. I wanted to talk to them, and not just with a dictionary.”

Now, although he has retired to Santa Barbara, Penner still commutes to the class. “It’s a habit with me. I love Spanish and the people in this class. I love to speak it. It’s an incredibly idiomatic language -- every word can have a dozen meanings.”

Gonnie and Paul Schotel, 84 and 81 respectively, have an even more practical reason for attending. The Schotels have a Spanish granddaughter, Lola. “Our son has lived in Spain for 20 years. Lola is the reason for us to stay sharp in the language.”

Ruth Chilcote, a Ventura TowneHouse resident, took up Spanish because “I love Latin music. I started studying so I could understand the music.”

At the time, in the 1950s and ‘60s, she and her husband toured Baja California extensively in a little motor coach, “and I also learned it so I could talk to the people. Though I’m afraid I use ‘Favor de repetir’ [please repeat] too much.”

Chilcote doesn’t believe in stating one’s age. “There’s no reason to talk of one’s age just because you’ve achieved an impressive one,” she said.

Her eyesight has failed in recent years, “so now I come to class and just listen and talk. But understanding the spoken word is the most important thing anyway.”

Sam Povar was 60 when his wife dragged him to his first night class in Spanish in Woodland Hills 10 years ago.

“I was never good at languages,” Povar said. “I just went to this night class with my wife and they were playing guitars and singing and we had a hell of a time. I’ve been going ever since.”

For Povar, that has meant immersion classes in Costa Rica, as well as Morelia and Ensenada in Mexico.

Povar even defines his moods to his wife in a new way. “I say I’m having a subjunctive moment ... or, ‘Honey, I just feel like a false cognate today.’ ”

The classes have “become a love,” he said. “I’m even learning better English. Now I get excited about conjugations and the subjunctive. Our group is so eclectic, but Spanish is the glue.”