Roxane Dinkin, PhD
Welcome to my website! The website was created* to tell you about my current project working with the 1967 cIass of Isidore Newman School in New Orleans. I'll be sending out monthly newsletters about the project. Newsletter #1 tells you how the project got started back in 1967 when I interviewed four artists in our class. It features the work of Seattle artist Valerie Schurman.
I was at Newman School for just one year. I was admitted in my senior year along with four other new students. It wasn't the easiest transition, joining a group of 66 students, many of whom had been together since kindergarten and attending each others' birthday parties. But Newman took me in. I felt valued at Newman, and I made lifelong friends.
After graduating from Newman, I attended Sarah Lawrence College because I wanted to major in dance. This was a rather short-lived goal, and I left college for a year to work as an editorial assistant for Industrial Design magazine in midtown Manhattan. I then transferred to Barnard College, where they assigned me to the foreign student advisor, apparently because I was from New Orleans.
I earned a B.A. Cum Laude with a major in biology from Barnard, and I received a doctoral degree in clinical psychology from the University of Miami. I was in private practice as a licensed psychologist for 40 years, first in California and then in Florida, and I retired at the end of 2019.
Retirement gives me the opportunity to use my time and energy for the current project, the Isidore Newman class of 1967. I can explore and hope to understand the creative outpourings of the '67 class. I can also return to that 17-year-old who wanted to be a dance major, although I may never again have the exhilaration of soaring through the air on the flying rings in the Newman gymnastics program. Today I still experience great joy in movement but I stay a little closer to the ground as a certified yoga instructor (www.TriYoga.com) and an Ageless Grace Educator (agelessgrace.com).
A section of the website focuses on coping with cancer. It is based on the help I received from the Jewish Healing Center of San Francisco 27 years ago after being diagnosed with a rare cell-type of aggressive non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. I was asked to write a booklet called “Living with Cancer, One Day at a Time” for the LifeLights series published by Jewish Lights Publishing. My story of working with healing Rabbi, Nancy Flam, was featured in articles in the Washington Post, the LA Times, and Woman's Day.
*This website was created with the help of our very able computer consultant, Mr. Dan Able. He's been helping us with various projects and computer crises for ten years, and we are very grateful.