Roxane Offner Papers, 1947-2006
| Oberlin College Archives
Administrative/Biographical History
Roxane Berta Offner was an only child of Monroe M. Offner, a chemical engineer and high school chemistry teacher, and Dorothy L. Offner, sculptor, born November 22, 1930 in Brooklyn, New York. Her home was, as she described it, “an intellectual and bohemian environment, politically left-wing,” concerned with social justice.
Offner was the valedictorian in her grade school and high school, where she was drawn to friendships with artists from Woodstock, New York, and correspondence with poet Bernard Stallard of Tennessee. She was interested in becoming a dancer and studied with Martha Graham, but was under pressure to achieve academically. She entered Oberlin College in 1947 at the age of 16, graduating in 1951 as an elected member of Phi Beta Kappa with a major in Sociology. During her first year at Oberlin she lived at Elmwood, a dormitory for women, where she developed enduring friendships. Offner also lived at the Maison Française and acted in a French play, and in other plays produced by the Oberlin Dramatic Association. She was a member of the Forum Board, which invited Paul Robeson to speak at Oberlin, but the event did not take place.
In 1948, Offner was a delegate to the Founding Convention of the New Youth Organization for the National Convention of the New Party (also known as the Progressive Party), held in Philadelphia in July, immediately after the Republican National Convention. In that capacity she was an observer of the convention that nominated former Vice President Henry A. Wallace for president and Idaho Governor Glen H. Taylor for Vice President. She also participated in Oberlin College’s Mock Convention in 1948 as a delegate for Wyoming. In 1950, Offner was selected to spend spring semester in Washington, D.C., to learn about government. During that time she did research at the National Institute of Health to produce an orientation manual for new members of the Community Services Committee for the National Advisory Council of the Public Health Service. In her senior year, Offner was elected Secretary of the College’s chapter of the NAACP and initiated a weekend student exchange program in which ten Oberlin students spent a weekend at Wilberforce College, and ten of their students came to Oberlin.
In 1951 Offner was admitted to the New York School of Social Work, where she wrote her thesis on “The Use of Dance as an Adjunct in Therapy with the Mentally Ill,” and graduated with a Master of Science in Social Work.
Through an Oberlin student Offner met her future husband Jules Brody. They married in 1953 and had three sons, Jeff, David and Jonathan Brody. They lived in Paris in 1961-62 and in Rome in 1967-68. The couple divorced in 1978, and Offner reverted to using her maiden name.
In 1953 and 1954 Offner was a children’s caseworker at the Neurological Institute of the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York. From 1954 to 1963 Offner served as Executive Secretary and Editor for the departments of programs, synagogue administration and social action, which she initiated at the United Synagogue of America at the Jewish Theological Seminary, also in New York. In 1969-70 Offner was a community worker at the Legal Aid Society in New Rochelle and a clinic coordinator at Planned Parenthood in White Plains, New York. From 1970 to 1973 she was a community services counselor for the Arthritis Foundation in White Plains, and from 1973 to 1978 she served as community liaison on a national spinal cord injury project for the Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine at New York University Medical Center.
For fourteen years, from 1978 to 1992, Offner was Deputy Advocate at the New York State Office of Advocate for the Disabled in New York, where she developed policy in areas including AIDS, child care, health, injury and disability prevention, housing, long term care, accessibility, building codes, and the implementation of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.
Offner’s last position before retirement was with Lighthouse International as Consultant on the Americans with Disabilities Act from 1992 to 2000. In 1994 she produced the ADA Accessibility Guidelines: Provisions for People with Impaired Vision.
After retirement in 2002, Offner was appointed to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Advisory Board for Westchester County, a position she held for several years. In 2006 Offner was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the Columbia University School of Social Work.
Roxane Offner now resides with her husband, Harry Angelidakis, in Tuckahoe, New York.
Sources Consulted
Correspondence, 2005 to 2007, to Roland M. Baumann, College Archivist, and résumé (2005) from Roxane Offner (Offner case file).
Correspondence, October and November 2013, Roxane Offner and Anne Cuyler Salsich, Assistant Archivist (Offner case file).
Telephone conversation with Roxane Offner, 24 October 2013.
Author: Anne Cuyler Salsich Forms of Material (links to similar genres) Administrative Information
SERIES DESCRIPTIONS
Series I. Biographical Files, 1950-1951, 1992, 2005-2006 (6 folders)
The biographical series consists mainly of materials relating to Roxane Offner’s professional career. The contents of the series include two honors awards presented to Roxane Offner for her work as a disability-rights advocate. These include a Hall of Fame Award from the Columbia University’s School of Social Work (2006), and a certificate of appreciation from the Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Community Integration of Individuals with Brain Injury at the State University of New York at Buffalo (1992). Also found here is a 1950 letter of recommendation for Mrs. Offner from Clarence G Smith, a New York City attorney, as well as a 2005 updated copy of Roxane Offner’s professional résumé.
Series II. Correspondence, 1947-2002 (31 folders)
Most of what is housed in the correspondence series are letters between Roxane Offner and her parents during the latter’s time as an Oberlin College student (1947-1951). In the letters sent to her parents, Roxane Offner writes of her involvement in academics, student organizations, and dating at Oberlin College. Other letters found in the series include those received by Roxane Offner from various professional organizations with which she associated between 1950 and 2002. These organizations include the Arthritis Foundation in the Lower Hudson Valley, the New York State Assembly Transportation Committee, and the National Council of States on Building Codes & Standards. Also included is a congratulatory note from Mrs. William E. Stevenson on the occasion of Offner’s graduation from Oberlin College in 1951.
Series III. Course Materials, 1947-1951 (8 folders, 5 envelopes)
This series consists of Roxane Offner’s coursework for Oberlin College classes in Sociology, Religion, Literature, and English Composition. In addition to essays, papers, and index card notes for these classes, the series also holds a composition written by Roxane Offner entitled, “May I Help You?” which was submitted and awarded a third place prize for the Jerome Davis Research Award in 1950. An exam book (cover) with a note from Professor Don Lloyd, English Composition, dated June 3, 1948 is filed in this series.
Series IV. Newspaper Clippings, 1947-1951 (3 folders)
The newspaper clippings in this series are largely those that Roxane Offner sent home to her parents as well those that her parents sent to her at Oberlin. Most of the news items that Roxane Offner sent home were clipped from the Oberlin Review and detail the administrative happenings of the College as well as many campus events – often those in which she was involved such as the various productions of the Oberlin Dramatic Association (ODA). The clippings sent to Roxanne Offner from her parents do not fit a set pattern but rather seem to concern a variety of topics presumably of interest to their daughter; politics, international relations, and drama serve as examples.
Series V. Printed Matter, 1948, 1951, 1959, 1977-1999, 2003 (8 folders)
The printed matter in this series primarily relates to Offner’s professional career. Included here are several event programs and publications concerning disability advocacy. Also housed here are several printed materials from the National Convention of the New Party (also known as the Progressive Party) which ran the former Vice President Henry A. Wallace for President and the Idaho Governor Glen H. Taylor for Vice President in 1948. Included are various mementoes, the convention program, and the speech delivered by Henry Wallace at a New Jersey youth rally that very same week. A separate file contains an Oberlin College Honors Day program, May 3, 1951 (senior honor list including Roxane Offner), and Offner’s initiation materials for the Zeta Ohio Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, 1951.
Series VI. Reports, 1948, 1975-1976, n.d. (4 folders)
Found here are several reports prepared and/or held by Roxane Offner that concern her career as a disability rights advocate. “People with Disabilities are Organizing,” a 1975 report written by Offner while she was a community liaison for the Model Regional System for Spinal Cord Injury at New York University Medical Center, is but one of these reports.
Series VII. Writings and Speeches, 1973, 1979, 1987, 1999 (4 folders)
This series contains various advocacy-related writings and speeches of Roxane Offner’s. Included is Offner’s July 1987 book review of Raymond Lifchez’s Rethinking Architecture: Design Students and Physically Disabled People in which she commends the author for raising provocative questions regarding the relationship between architecture students and the rights and needs of the disabled. Also found in the series is a typed copy of Roxane Offner’s testimony before the Westchester County (New York) government in 1999 in which she endorsed the creation of a Westchester Commission on Human Rights. Her support of the commission, according to her testimony, was born out of her participation in an organization entitled P-FLAG (Parents-Families, Friends of Lesbians and Gays), and was driven primarily by her advocacy of gay rights in addition to those of race, religion, ethnicity, age, gender, and disability.
Series VIII. Photographs, 1948, 1951
Consists of two black and white photographs of Roxane Offner, 1948 and 1951. The 1951 photograph documents her role as Toinette in Moliere’s “La Malade Imaginaire.” Filed with this photograph is a review (clipping fragment) of the play by Nikos Psacharopoulos.