By PURNIMA MUDNAL
Back in the 1950s, two women set out to help teach kids who otherwise would’ve been labeled retarded and sent to a mental institution.
Today, the Buena Park-based Speech and Language Development Center works with about 350 kids, some who go on to high school, college and jobs.
Cofounders and longtime friends Aleen Agranowitz and Gladys Gleason were two of seven honorees at the Business Journal’s 11th annual Women in Business awards luncheon at the Hyatt Regency Irvine on May 26.
“What a wonderful way to honor 50 years,” the 89-year-old Agranowitz said.
Agranowitz and Gleason, who met while working at the Long Beach veterans hospital, laid plans for the Speech and Language Development Center over martinis at lunch five decades ago.
They started from Agranowitz’s home with three kids who had speech, learning and behavior problems.
Their speech therapy teaching soon outgrew Agranowitz’s kitchen table and took up every corner of her Long Beach home.
Children who had trouble speaking came by word of mouth to join the school. They were little understood at the time.
“They had good knowledge about what would help the kids,” said James Amato, president of the Speech and Language Development Center board and a financial planning supervisor with the city of Anaheim’s Public Utilities division. “They accumulated the business acumen as they went along.”
At first, parents helped out with donations. By the 1960s, Agranowitz and Gleason formed a nonprofit and started getting state funding.
The women said they didn’t get paid for 13 years. They never thought of quitting because “it was so much fun for us,” Agranowitz said.
The women eventually moved out of Agranowitz’s home and into a medical office in Orange County. At various times, the center was based in churches, at a college, even two old houses. It’s been in Buena Park for years now.
The center, which employs more than 200 people, swarms with students with autism, attention deficit disorder, hearing and vision impairments, Down Syndrome and Cerebral Palsy, to name a few.
Students are referred from some 45 school districts in Orange, Los Angeles, San Bernardino and Riverside counties.
There have been tough times. In 1970, the state cut off funding for a year, leaving the center on the brink of closing down. Parents rallied and helped get the center through, the women said.
Today, the center has an annual budget of $14 million.
Both women are optimists with colorful senses of humor. They’re motherly,in Agranowitz’s case, grandmotherly,and love to tell stories.
Take what they call their “brown paper bag story.” In it, their “Girl Friday” Millie was handling the center’s books. A state official came by to inspect their records as part of their nonprofit status.
“When this man asked her about her ledger, she said ‘I don’t have any books but I do have a paper bag on which I write all the expenses. If I have any money left I put it in the bag,'” Agranowitz recalled Millie saying.
Agranowitz said she would like to “publish articles about what we have learned over the years.”
“We will never make a fortune in our business but we are stable now,” she said.
Teaching most kids is “a communication issue, not an intelligence issue,” said Muff Elstran, a center spokeswoman.
She pointed to Mike, a 9-year-old with autism. When Mike came to the center, he couldn’t relate to anything other than “Star Wars.”
So teachers put on T-shirts, brought in pencils, pens, posters, videos,any Star Wars stuff they could get their hands on to build a bond with him.
Hearing from grateful parents is the reward, according to Agranowitz and Gleason.
The two say they still get together like they did in the old days over martinis, though Gleason admits they prefer wine now.
