Wednesday, May 17, 2000
Book collection dedicated
School honors Jean Rothenberg
By Sara J. Bennett
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Jean Rothenberg at Tuesday's dedication.
(Glenn Hartong photo)
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Jean Rothenberg decided more than four decades ago that therapists helping people with hearing and language disabilities should have all the books they need.
“So I said they get books — whatever they want. No red tape,” the 91-year-old East Walnut Hills woman recalls.
The collection has grown to nearly 1,000 volumes. It's housed at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center's Health Sciences Library, and it now bears Mrs. Rothenberg's name.
On Tuesday, the school dedicated the Jean W. Rothenberg Collection in Hearing, Deafness and Language Acquisition.
For Mrs. Rothenberg, who herself lives with severe hearing loss, the dedication is an honor. It's also a chance to focus attention on the need for money to help people with hearing and language disorders.
Her library collection is paid for in part with interest from a fund she started at the Greater Cincinnati Foundation. In place of gifts for birthdays and other occasions, she asks friends to donate. And she takes every opportunity to encourage others to give.
“I would do anything for people to recognize the isolation of a person with a break in communication,” she said. “If you have a break in communication, nobody wants to talk to you. You embarrass people, and so nobody gives.”
Mrs. Rothenberg lost her hearing during a 1937 flu epidemic. Coming from a family of doctors, she received all the help she needed, and she wanted others to have the same advantage.
In the mid-1950s, she established what today is called the Cincinnati Hearing, Speech and Deaf Center, an agency that hired the first doctorate audiologist in Cincinnati. She served as the first board president and even worked at the center for more than 20 years.
UC gave her an honorary doctorate of humanities in 1994.
Today, the library collection she started is in a cozy alcove that faces a collection named the Robert C. Rothenberg Collection in Leisurely Medical Reading, for her late husband.
At Tuesday's dedication, Mrs. Rothenberg also presented a monetary award to Gloria Valencia, a graduate student in audiology from Colombia who now lives in Blue Ash. The annual award — also paid for through Mrs. Rothenberg's Greater Cincinnati Foundation fund — is given to a student who shows more concern for people than for their disabilities.
“I am very proud to be the person who best represents Mrs. Rothenberg's ideals as someone who cares for the person first, not just the hearing loss,” Mrs. Valencia said.
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