Paying it forward
This is a story about giving back, and paying forward.
It’s the story of a student encouraged by her mentor to follow a career she loved. The student became a successful practitioner and, years later, used that training to help her former teacher.
And it’s the story of a family whose respect for the life’s work of their beloved wife and mother led to an endowment in her memory.
In 1951, Velma Russ left her family farm in Hamilton County to study occupational therapy at the University of Illinois. In those days, the program began with two years on the Urbana-Champaign campus, followed by two years at the U of I Chicago Medical Center.
Velma fell in love with an industrial arts student she met on campus from Chicago named Richard Reichenbach. They married in 1952 — a marriage that lasted more than 64 years — but kept it secret from OT director Beatrice Wade. It was not customary then for married women to have careers, and Miss Wade had made it clear she didn’t want to waste her time training students who didn’t intend to practice.
“I think she knew, though,” Richard says with a chuckle. “She was a smart cookie, Miss Wade.”
Occupational therapy was a small program and Wade took a personal interest in her students.
She “had the amazing ability to recognize the potential in each of her students, and somehow set up opportunities where that potential could be achieved,” recalled Velma’s classmate, Nedra Gillette, in a letter read at Velma’s memorial service in 2017. “For Velma, it was in working with the elderly, and she became absolutely superb in that role.”