Debora Curry
English Dept - Administrative Assistant
Email: debora.curry@gcccd.edu
Office Hours: Monday-Friday 8am to 10am and 2pm to 4pm - email Debora for link for her Zoom Office hours
Source: Migma 63-64: A Yearbook and Photographic Directory of the Grossmont College Staff. La Mesa, CA: Grossmont Junior College / Monte Vista High School, 1964. p11.
Source: The Gallery, 1974: A Photographic Directory of the Grossmont College Staff. El Cajon, CA: Grossmont Junior College District, 1974. p99.
Jane Louise Spooner graduated from Fresno State College in 1944, where, double-majoring in Drama and Speech, she was actively involved in producing theatre productions for the college. After a brief interval at Stanford University, Spooner became a speech correction specialist on staff at Fresno State College and with the Fresno County Schools Department, for which she also served until 1948 as moderator to the county spelling championships. By 1950, she and her husband relocated to Arizona for Spooner’s graduate studies in Speech education at the University of Arizona, and Jane would teach Speech courses until 1961. By fall of that same year, she took work at the Tucson Community School for the Pima County Easter Seals Society for Crippled Children and Adults, teaching to deaf pre-school children and their parents. During this time, she published her 1961 children's book, Tommy Plays with Sounds.
The following year, Spooner published an historical text about Tubac, one Arizona’s early pueblo missions, after which she returned to California and took a full-time staff position at Grossmont Junior College as a Speech, Education, and English instructor. During the first several years of its operation, some of Grossmont College’s professors taught in two or more related disciplines. By 1963, even before the English Department and other departments in the Communications Division were increasing staffing and splintering into discipline-specific departments, Spooner broke ranks with English to take her seat in the Speech Department, where she remained on faculty until her retirement in 1983.
It wouldn’t be long, however, before Spooner returned to her love of theater production and stage craft, and she began auditioning at local stage houses like Coronado Playhouse and landing roles in productions such as William Gibson’s The Miracle Worker, Neil Simon’s Barefoot In the Park, and George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart'sYou Can’t Take It With You. She even appeared in television commercials during this era. She was no less involved, though, in her charitable and social causes, and, in 1980, Grossmont’s Latter Day Saints Club gave her their “Good Samaritan Award” from for her community service work.
Three years later, Spooner retired from the Grossmont-Cuyamaca College District, but found herself suddenly related to one of the College’s charter English instructors as the new sister-in-law of Fred Stollenwerk, who married Jane’s younger sister. She later returned to Arizona and enjoyed the insouciant life of a crime fiction and mystery writer as a member of Southwest Mystery Writers Group. She passed away in Tucson in 1999.
Debora Curry
English Dept - Administrative Assistant
Email: debora.curry@gcccd.edu
Office Hours: Monday-Friday 8am to 10am and 2pm to 4pm - email Debora for link for her Zoom Office hours
8800 Grossmont College Drive
El Cajon, California 92020
619-644-7000
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