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Janet E. Waldron Witter ’36, MALS ’62

Janet E. Waldron Witter ’36, MAT ’62, February 2, 2007, in Oregon. Janet's first exposure to Reed was in the company of her aunt, Alice Waldron, who was a librarian at the college in 1921–25. Janet attended Reed for two years, and then attended the Portland Art Museum School for a year, before deciding to become a teacher. She enrolled at Oregon State Normal School (Western Oregon University) in Monmouth, received her credentials, and taught in Salem. She married John M. Crawford ’35; they had two daughters. In 1952, she earned a BA in humanities from Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where John worked for the United Nations. Work for the U.N. also took the family to Cairo, Egypt, where Janet taught at the Cairo-American School. Following that experience, she returned to Oregon with her daughters. She married Jack A. Witter ’36 in 1959. And, after receiving an MAT, she taught at a number of elementary and middle schools in the Portland area. To Laura Ross ’98, who interviewed Janet for the Oral History Project in April 2004, she described the years post-Reed: “I was still, like I said, ‘cashing checks’ on that wonderful account I had at Reed, and I still am. It was a wonderful account that I built up there, of knowledge; if not of thorough knowledge, at least an understanding that there was something that you could look up. It was wonderful.” Survivors include two daughters, two grandchildren, and one great-grandchild. Jack died in 2006.

Appeared in Reed magazine: May 2007

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