Lion President Judith Grosenick Loves Club’s Irreverence
When Dr. Judith Grosenick, Professor Emerita from the University of Oregon, steps up to the microphone to chair a meeting of the Eugene Downtown Lions Club (EDLC), you might expect her to be a model of decorum. After all, this is an accomplished woman who has chaired numerous academic meetings, conferences, symposia and professional organizations.
But, your expectations would mislead you. Lion Judith will tell you that what she loves best about the club is its jarring irreverence. At most meetings, you will hear Lion Judith trading barbs with members, delivering them with a sly smile and a touch of bravado.
This is not to say that President Judith is not serious about Lions Club and its mission of service. Judith’s father was a Lion, and she recalls a house bulging with cases of salted-in-the-shell peanuts that the Lions were selling. When the Lions struggled to sell all of them, Judith’s Girl Scout troop took over and helped sell them for a cut of the profits. So, she had an early introduction to Lions’ fundraising and to the service projects those funds support.
Judith’s Lion father was an educator, and education would come to dominate Lion Judith’s life. Starting as a band director, her father eventually became a superintendent, which led to an inevitable series of moves around the state of Wisconsin as his career advanced.
Such moves are tough on kids. Lion Judith recalls having to say goodbye to old friends and having to make new friends with each move. Particularly difficult was a move when she was between seventh and eighth grades. Another tough one was between her junior and senior year of high school.
The effect of all this on Judith’s personality may be that people sometimes perceive a tough exterior or an unwillingness to let others get emotionally close to her. She is, in fact, a warm person with a large circle of friends, but there is no doubt that her early experiences made her emotionally wary: why make close friends when you know you will soon be telling them goodbye?
Still, that same emotional toughness served Lion Judith well in her professional life. It made her unafraid of encountering new people and places. Her first dream was to become a psychiatrist, a dream that her homemaker mother quickly discouraged. Like most women of her time, Judith’s mother believed girls should major in practical subjects, while fully expecting to find husbands in college. Also, her parents made it clear that they did not wish to finance an eight-year educational program.
Funding, as it turned out, would not be a problem for Lion Judith, as she qualified for scholarships and fellowships all through her undergraduate and graduate years. She did, however, heed her mother’s advice and changed her career plan. She attended Wisconsin State University at Oshkosh and completed requirements to become an elementary school teacher.
But, despite her mother’s certainty that she would find a husband in college, that did not happen. Although Judith has had several serious long-term relationships with cherished men, she has never married. She was part of a new generation of independent minded American women who did not see marriage as one of life’s necessities.
Lion Judith’s first career step was a second grade teaching job in Janesville, Wisconsin, which helped determine the future direction of her life. Although she stayed only one year, she enjoyed her work. But, two factors converged to point her in a different direction.
First, she noted the wide divergence in her classroom between some truly gifted students on the one end, and some deeply challenged kids who, despite having repeated first grade, were still unable to read.
Second, she was fortunate to have a teacher mentor who had been named Wisconsin’s state teacher-of-the year. Her mentor’s advice: “Special education is the wave of the future. Ride it!”
Lion Judith listened to that wise counsel and left Wisconsin to pursue graduate studies at the University of Kansas. She did so well in her master’s program that she was invited to continue, with a full fellowship, to pursue a Ph.D. Toward the end of her studies, she landed a job at the nearby University of Missouri, heading up a education program preparing teachers to work with the emotionally disturbed student. She also was director of a school program for elementary aged emotionally disturbed children on the MU campus.
Lion Judith stayed at Missouri for seventeen years, then came to U of O where she remained until her retirement in 2000. Her time at Oregon saw the university disbanding its teacher education program, then adding a teacher certification program for non-education majors, and finally restoring its teacher education program.
Lion Judith found through her years of directing programs and supervising faculty that her forte is in creating and developing new programs, a strength that still serves her will in her work with Lions.
Although Lion Judith came to the EDLC in 2000, she has had a long history of community service, from volunteering at Winnebago State Mental Hospital while she student-taught, to being a CASA volunteer and volunteering at Hospice.
Lion Judith came to Lions by an unusual route. Lions Dan French, Wayne Musgrove, and Gene Gustafson had been recruiting Judith’s older brother Conrad to be Lion. Conrad, a retired Lutheran minister and Judith’s only sibling, turned them down. It was Judith who accepted the invitation to join, and Gene became her sponsor.
“You’ll find your niche in Lions,” Gene assured her, and find it she did. She enjoyed the Food Rescue project, but she really hit her stride with the newsletter, which at that time was paper only and included advertising. Eventually, it evolved to its present electronic format, with paper copies for members without computers. Through it all, Lion Judith has remained at the helm.
As a Lion, Judith has been active beyond the local level, serving on the board of directors for the state Sight and Hearing Foundation, as well as attending conventions and leadership training.
So, why is such a serious minded educational leader attracted to the “irreverence” of her beloved club? The irreverence is really about two important life lessons. First, never take yourself too seriously. If you tend to be pompous, the EDLC will quickly deflate your ego.
The second lesson is to laugh at adversity. EDLC members would rather joke about life’s tragic side than to allow tragedies to consume them.
Lion Judith Grosenick, our president, embraces and supports this sustaining philosophy, while she ably leads us in our serious mission to serve humanity.
Reported by Lion Jim Newton
