Dr. June Teitsworth - Biography
June Teitsworth's parents married in Los Angeles in 1912 and moved to Pomona in 1914, where her father opened an automobile service garage. Her mother was originally from Detroit, Michigan and moved to Los Angeles with her family in 1907 to work in the Ford Motor Company plant installing wood into automobiles. Her father came from Minneapolis, Minnesota to Los Angeles with his family in 1905 to open a transfer company for horse and buggies. Both families ended up living on the same block, just across the street from each other. Her father later owned a Studebaker agency, however, he died young of a heart attack at 50 years of age in 1937. Her only brother was four years younger than June and died during World War II as an aviator.
June was 20 years old when her father died, she was graduating from Chaffey Junior College. She transferred to UCLA where she received a B.A and a fifth year M.A. in Education and teaching credential majoring in Physical Education, a field she chose because a favorite aunt of her specialized in the same occupation.
She held her first job in Needles, California, where she remained for three years. Through a referral from UCLA she left Needles in 1943 and came to Chaffey High School and Chaffey Junior College where she assumed the chairmanship of the girls and women's Physical Education Department.
June's grandmother and mother lived together in Ontario during World War II, renting out her mom's house in Pomona. June had always been interested in counseling, but high schools did not have counselors at that time, just Dean's of Boys or Girls. She got bored teaching Physical Education, went to evening school at Claremont Graduate School to obtain her administrative credentials. At that time, the highest administrative high school position a woman could hold was Dean of Girls.
In 1956 she moved up to become a college counselor at Chaffey Junior College. With the move of the Chaffey Junior College campus and the suburbanization, the demographics of the student population changed in the 1960s. More southern Black students, Chicanos, and older women students began attending the college. During the 1960s, June helped to found the Actuation Center for students of color and the Women's Center. She retired in the 1980s.
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