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: Source: English Department Gallery Photos. Private Photograph and Documents Collection. Copyright Homer B. Lusk. Digitally reprinted with permission, courtesy of Homer Lusk, Grossmont College Professor Emeritus and former English Department Chair.
Source: The Gallery, 1970: A Photographic Directory of the Grossmont College Staff. El Cajon, CA: Grossmont Junior College District, 1970. p29. [Cropped.]
Source: The Gallery: A 25th Anniversary Photographic Directory of the Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community Faculty, Administration, and Staff. El Cajon, CA: Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community College District, 1987. p83.
Source: "Digital Driftwood: Pictures from Retirees." GCCCD Grapevine vol. 18, no. 2 (July 2008): p4.
Leonard R. Pellettiri earned his 1954 Bachelor’s of Science in Psychology from Brooklyn College and continued on to a Master's program at Long Island University, during which time he met and subsequently married his wife, Emma. By 1962, the Pellettiris moved the family to Arizona for graduate study at Northern Arizona University. While completing his course work in literacy education, Len taught for one year at a local high school in Phoenix then relocated with his wife to the San Francisco area, taking work as a teacher of sophomore, junior, and senior-level English courses at San Ramon Valley High School in Danvile. He also played an active role in the technical direction of school plays such as Joseph Fields and Jerome Chodorov's Junior Miss and Thornton Wilder's Our Town. Ten months later, Len Pellettiri and wife Emma moved to San Diego, where Len continued teaching for Pomona Unified School District.1
Meanwhile, in 1966, Northern Arizona University finally catalogued Leonard R. Pellettiri’s thesis completing his research on freshman composition in Arizona public colleges. This officially earned him his Master’s in Safety Education and Literacy and credentialed him to start teaching college-level English in 1968 as a newly hired full-time faculty member of the Grossmont Junior College. At Grossmont, Pellettiri quickly made his mark, not only teaching courses such as Masterpieces of the Short Story, but also stepping into the role of Parent Effectiveness Training Instructor, an unorthodox title for an English teacher entered into official staff directories of the time. In fact, by Spring of 1975, courses such as "Readings of the Aquarian Age" would further hint at the out-of-the-box direction into which Pellettiri’s professional and academic pursuits would soon be headed.
In September 1975, Leonard and Emma Pellettiri met with 117 other co-founders of the Association For Holistic Health in Newport Beach, California, after which Leonard became the charter editor for the San Diego based Journal of Holistic Health, published jointly by the Association For Holistic Health and the Mandala Society. Pellettiri would continue editing the journal for the first three issues. During that same time, he and Emma attended conferences in Japan and undertook doctoral study in Kuala Lumpur's University for Humanistic Studies (now the University of Malaya). In 1977, Len submitted his doctoral dissertation about transpersonal concepts in the teaching of composition, and earned the title of Dr. Leonard R. Pellettiri, Ph.D.
Also during this time, the Pellettiris had been cultivating their interests in non-Western medicine, Eastern philosophies, and Asian cultures, including hosting Japanese foreign exchange students. After a tour of mainland China in August 1978 as part of their involvement with the Association For Holistic Health, they made some inquiries to the Chinese liaison office in Washington, D.C. about applying for teaching positions in the People’s Republic of China. They were answered in December, and, with only weeks to set in order their affairs and teaching contracts with the Grossmont College District, the Pellettiri family departed for China in February 1979, where, with little fluency in Chinese, Len and Emma taught English to Chinese students and teachers at the Foreign Trade Institute on a monthly salary of $200.
When Leonard returned at last to his teaching duties with Grossmont College, his involvement in transpersonal approaches in education led him to adapt his own Ph.D. dissertation into one of the earliest examples of a "New Age" textbook, Writing for the Whole Person: A Transpersonal Approach to Freshman Composition, which included study units devoted to such topics as parapsychology, biofeedback, gestalt psychology, hypnotism, and transcendental meditation. By the early 1980s, Pellettiri decreased his teaching loads and took more personal leave to focus his energies on his commitments to his New Age endeavors.
By 1986, however, Len’s wife had become critically ill with cancer, at which time he opted for an early retirement to be with her during her final days. Then, on April 20, 1988, the terminally ill Emma Pellettiri took her own life with the facilitative support of her husband, Len, the controversy of which put Pellettiri into the middle of a national debate on physician-assisted self-deliverance. Though Len garnered sympathy and support from many of his Grossmont colleagues, others were scandalized by his direct involvement in his wife’s euthanasia. Unswayed, Pellettiri became an advocate for the Hemlock Society and made some guest appearances with his son on television talk shows, including a June 1991 taping of the Sally Jessy Raphael Show. Less than two weeks later, on June 14, the California State Senate passed a bill supporting a person’s right to refuse life support in the event of terminal illness or injury.
In the years after his retirement and loss, Leonard R. Pellettiri continued for a time to teach part-time for Grossmont College, which is when he courted, and later married, Grossmont College Counselor, Mary B. Rose. Len and Mary remained in San Diego to become, together, even more involved in social advocacy, planned parenthood, and intercultural causes through the San Diego Unitarian Universalist Church. Leonard also served as Chair of the Partner Church Committee for the Philippines, where, in March of 2008, he traveled to the Phillipines to help direct several humanitarian projects to provide electrical systems, food services, coastal erosion aid, and public library resources.
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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