My Friend and Teacher Sue Willner

                I express my deep gratitude to Sue and Art Willner
                  for providing me with materials about their lives.

When I came to California for a long time, Beverly, the coordinator of the program «Literacy for Adults» assigned Sue Willner to be my English language instructor. At first our conversations with her were about my life in Moscow and Carpinteria, problems of health, weather, my daughter and grandsons. I told Sue about my engineering and scientific past, about my present hobby for literary creativity. Gradually we started discussing some international events. It turned out that our points of view had much in common.

In her turn, Sue told me that she was born in New York City in 1945, she was the daughter of a Jewish American father born to Russian (Odessa) immigrant parents and a Sephardic Jewish mother, born in Alexandria, Egypt. She grew up in the Bronx, New York, where her hard-working father took her to a Library every day of her young life and her also hard-working (outside of the home) mother taught her how to love and accept people how they were, without judgment. Her family was relatively poor and that was the neighborhood where they could afford to live.

Well educated by the New York City Public School System, Sue graduated from Queens College of the City University of New York. While in college as a history and political science major, she met her future husband, Arthur Willner. Fifty years later, with two daughters and three grandchildren, and having lived in NYC, Northern California, Oregon, Massachusetts, and now Southern California, they are still very happy to have found each other.

Sue returned to Graduate School when her youngest daughter was five. Completing her education in the Health Information Management Program at Northeastern University in Boston, she entered the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, where she worked as an Assistant Director for
Medical Records and where she managed over 60 employees whose job was to ensure the accuracy and completeness of all patient clinical information.
Sue’s professional career blossomed after that initial experience. The family returned to California, where Sue had progressively more responsible jobs in managing and teaching health information in the hospital, clinic, and academic settings. Sue retired from Santa Barbara City College in 2009.
 
Sue is an active volunteer who loves what she does in her retirement years. As she says it is time to “give back”. She currently spends much of her time volunteering for «Compassionate Care of Carpinteria», The Santa Barbara Foodbank, Carpinteria’s Seal Sanctuary, the Santa Barbara Adult Literacy Program, «Carpinteria Beautiful», and «Dollies Make a Difference». In her spare time, Sue loves to read, knit dollies blankets, and go to movies and theatre. She also likes to travel. Sue showed me a photograph  where she and Art were taken against the background of the Church of the Resurrection of Christ in St. Petersburg.

«Compassionate Care of Carpinteria» is a hospice-type organization whose goal is to support people with life-threatening illnesses. Volunteers are specially selected for certain patients and entire families with different needs: some need care for a child, others need help related to daily activities and homework, others need friendly communication, and there are those who need transportation for receiving medical services.

In the fur seal sanctuary, where Sue volunteers on Mondays from 9 to 11 am, her duty is to protect animals' sanctuary from invading by people. This is due to the fact that from January 1 to May 31, passage through the reserve is forbidden, because, at this time, females of marine animals bear and then raise their Pups. Any violation of their calm can lead to irreversible consequences. It happens that some people forget about their responsibility to the wild, and then volunteers like Sue come to the rescue.
 
“Carpinteria beautiful” is a voluntary organization whose purpose, as the name implies, is to keep the city beautiful. There are many different types of activities, and Sue is responsible for maintaining the cleanliness of the streets and public spaces within half a mile of her home.

«Dollies Make a Difference» is a California-based women's organization that sends dolls and teddy bears to children around the world. Sue knits blankets for handmade dolls into which they are wrapped, and then these dolls are sent to a child who needs a “friend”.

When a meeting of mentors and students took place in the local library of Carpinteria, Beverly came to this meeting from Santa Barbara. Sue and her husband Arthur were among volunteer mentors, and I was among the students. A table was installed in the courtyard of the library on which the meeting participants put different treats. I wanted to introduce my new acquaintances to some Russian delicacy and baked a carrot cake. When the time came to taste it, everyone began to wonder what it was made of. I specifically added a little cocoa to the dough to make it harder to guess its composition. After several unsuccessful attempts, someone realized that the cake was made from carrots.

During classes, we exchanged impressions with Sue about the events of our lives over the week. Once, Sue asked what my pension was in Moscow. I replied that with all the additional supplemental incomes from the mayor's office and money for medications, it is about $300 (according to the dollar at that time). Sue said that in California, without exception, all single residents with a monthly income of less than $1,507 per month can receive food packages from the Food Bank. For a family of two, this amount should not exceed
$2,030. I have repeatedly seen that near the school on our street, food distribution was organized several times, and many residents carried large bags filled with a wide variety of products, including fruits and vegetables.

At my request to tell about her husband, Sue replied that she would ask him to write me a letter with a brief summary of his biography. Art fulfilled my request. He wrote:
- I'm Art Willner, writing you from the little beach town of Carpinteria, California, just south of Santa Barbara, and about 75 miles north of Los Angeles. My wife and I enjoy this funky little beach town of 13,000 population after having previously lived in large metropolitan areas.

Further, he wrote that his career has focused on business applications in the information industry. Although in a variety of industries, health care has been the most prominent from two employments covering ten years with Kaiser Permanente. He was also a founder and Senior Vice President of Genesys Software Systems, a vendor of human resources software packages. Other stops along the way included Metropolitan Life, a small restaurant chain and two small consulting firms.
 
He started out as a programmer, moved into management positions, as a Director and then two Vice-President positions with startups, then consulting, leading two practices, mostly on the Year 2000 (providing temporary assistance and expertise regarding the change in the century when it was thought there would be many computer errors), then his own company, and finally teaching. He did independent consulting featuring management consulting, project management, project audits, and reviews, in addition to teaching.

He also taught at the University of Phoenix for more than ten years and enjoyed it. He holds a Bachelor in Sociology/Mathematics from Queens College of the City University of New York, and a Master of Business Administration in Health Services Management earned jointly from the University of California, Berkeley, and Golden Gate University.

A good picture of him starts with the word eclectic. He has many interests, has done many things and has lived in many places. The interests include tennis, social issues, games and trying to understand politics. He was raised in the Bronx, New York, and has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, Oregon, Boston area and now the Central Coast of California.

He is retired from his professional career work and now does a lot of volunteer work as a Hospice volunteer providing socialization and companionship to people with terminal illnesses; a Speaker for Partners in Education, a group that provides support for high school students; a Driver for “HELP of Carpinteria” providing transportation to people in need in our town; Adult Literacy Tutor for help with English, Civics, etc. He likes change and variety. He also likes to do things and to get things done. Variety may be the spice of life but he finds participation to be the key.

Sue and Art have two daughters. The older one is 47, she lives in Los Angeles with her husband and three young children ages 9, 7 and 5. She works fulltime for the Federal Government and is a published author of children’s books and poetry. Their younger daughter is 44 years old.  She now lives in Los Angeles, having recently moved there from Austin, Texas, where she still has a successful telepractice as a mental health therapist. She now has her new practice in downtown Los Angeles.

One day, Sue had to undergo surgery. But even in this difficult period for her, she did not conduct classes with me only when she was in the hospital. After her discharge, I came to her home. Willners own half of a beautiful two-story house. A large living room, kitchen and , and bathroom are downstairs, three bedrooms and two bathrooms are on the second floor. A garage is located near the entrance to the house. A small but cozy patio, surrounded on all sides by a green hedge of trees and shrubs is behind the house. The interior of the house is quite modest and at the same time elegant.

Once I invited Sue and Art for dinner to a rented apartment where I lived at that time. I wanted to treat my guests with Russian dishes. I prepared salmon with mayonnaise and a salad of fresh vegetables for an appetizer. For main dishes I cooked a chicken soup with vermicelli, and dumplings with cherries, sour cream, and jam. For dessert, I offered fruit platter, doused with whipped cream, pumpkin pie, tea with lemon. The apotheosis of dinner was vodka with cranberry juice. In Moscow, I usually soak vodka on cranberries, so I get a very aromatic and strong drink. And here, for lack of fresh berries, I had to be content with cranberry juice.
 
Among my dishes, pumpkin pie was certainly not a Russian dish, but I did not have time to bake charlotte. I was a little afraid that Sue and Art wouldn’t like it, but it turned out that my doubts were in vain. Pumpkin pie is their favorite treat. Guests admired delicious dishes and Russian hospitality. Unfortunately, then they have not eaten the whole pie, and when my daughter came to visit me, I invited her to try an American pie. But my daughter, like me, did not find it tasty. If it is millet porridge with pumpkin or mashed pumpkin soup, then I like it very much !

The most appealing thing about Sue is that she is an attentive listener and a sincere adviser. She not only studies with me the history of the United States and its political structure, not only tells me how to pronounce certain words correctly, but she is always interested in all my experiences and is concerned about my health with sincere sympathy. If necessary, she is always ready to take me to the doctor and be a mediator between him and me at the appointment. Sue has one more remarkable quality that sets her apart from all other mentors: she speaks very clearly and slowly, so students who even have a poor understanding of spoken language are able to understand her.

On the occasion of my flight to Moscow, instead of our last class, Sue invited me to a restaurant for lunch, where, in the name our friendship that arose and grew stronger over the past year, we clinked with our glasses: Sue - with her glass of water and ice, and I – with my glass of green tea. I am happy that my life gave me a chance has to meet this wonderful woman. Sue is as merciful as Mother Mary, and as reliable as the cornerstone upon which the Church of Jesus Christ is founded, although she has never been a believer.