The Coronado chapter of Soroptimist International will again honor three extraordinary women who have given of themselves to create a better life for others and who embody the Soroptimist motto of “Serving Locally, Reaching Globally.” Honorees at this year’s 65th annual luncheon at the Coronado Island Marriott Resort on May 17 are Betty Mohlenbrock, Elizabeth Wampler and Doug St. Denis. Each of these women has built a bridge from their individual lives to reach into the lives of others in a way that far exceeded what they had thought possible nor envisioned for themselves in their earlier years.

Betty Mohlenbrock
Betty Mohlenbrock still remembers the day her husband, Dr. Bill Mohlenbrock, returned from a 10-month deployment as a flight surgeon during the Vietnam War and their two-year-old daughter did not recognize him. That memory, coupled with today’s technology, inspired Betty to found a non-profit organization, United Through Reading, in 1989 that has helped build stronger bonds between children and a parent separated from one another due to military service or incarceration. In its first 18 years, the program has videotaped hundreds of thousands of distant parents — or grandparents — reading aloud to their child, then sends a videotape or DVD of the reading and the book to the child (or children as the case may be in each family) so that they can enjoy hearing and seeing their absentee parent read aloud to them while following along in their own book. The program serves as the connecting bridge between family members, helping adults to feel closer to their families and, for those doing time in jail or prison, also feeling better about themselves.

Betty, who holds a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts and a master’s degree in reading and literacy from the University of Illinois, taught elementary school for three years beginning in 1962 and then spent almost 20 years as a private reading tutor. She witnessed how the advent of television, video games and the Internet replaced reading and the bonding it facilitates within families. Convinced that reading aloud not only forms a special bond unlike any other between adult and child, but also is a strong predictor of a child’s success in reading and school, Betty was able to successfully harness the new technologies in her program to bring reading back to the forefront.

Betty has been widely recognized on a state and national level for her work with United Through Reading. She was selected as the 2008 Woman of the Year Award for the 74th Assembly District in the California Legislature as well as being named the University of Illinois Alumni Humanitarian Award winner for 2008. Among Betty’s numerous awards are the prestigious Peter Drucker Award for Nonprofit Innovation, the Pageturner Par Excellence award from the James Patterson Pageturner Awards, the Newman’s Own Award for Outstanding Contributions to Military Quality of Life, the Daughters of the American Revolution Medal of Honor, a national award given to a person who has made unusual and lasting contributions to our American heritage, and the George Washington Honor Medal from Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge, an organization that promotes the education of youth about the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. Other awards include being identified as one of San Diego’s “Women Who Mean Business.” In 2006, Betty met with President George W. Bush and senior staff for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Peter Pace. She was honored that First Lady Laura Bush agreed to serve as Honorary Chair of the Military Program. Target Stores is a proud corporate sponsor of United Through Reading, and through its financial support, has allowed the program to expand throughout all branches of the military.

Elizabeth Wampler
Elizabeth Wampler was born in Camp LeJeune, North Carolina in 1964 where she recalls an early childhood rich with love and warmth, highlighted by summer stays at her grandparent’s farm in Lancaster, Kentucky. There, she and her siblings rode horses, swam in a lake and caught fireflies on warm summer nights. The daughter of a Marine and a stay-at-home mom, most of Elizabeth’s school years were spent in Vista, California where the family moved when her dad was stationed at Camp Pendleton. Elizabeth spent six years working as a Program Director for the USO in San Diego, where she worked with newly enlisted young military men and women. Her life fell into a time of difficulty when her beloved father became ill in 1986 and Elizabeth was enlisted to help her mother as primary caregivers for her father for seven long, difficult years; he passed away at age 53 in 199 3 and a devastated and exhausted Elizabeth moved to Coronado. Within three months, she met Steve Wampler, the man she was to eventually marry at a ceremony attended by nearly 300 people at Coronado’s Centennial Park on July 3, 1995. Elizabeth refers to Steve as her reward after the suffering she went through during her father’s illness. The Wamplers are the proud parents of Charlotte, 9 and Joseph, 7, who are often sighted cruising the streets of Coronado on the front and back of Steve’s motorized wheelchair.

Elizabeth and Steve have a family rule that they will not be distracted from their one priority — giving their two children the quality time they deserve for the time in their lives that they are together. For the Wamplers, this translates to limiting television and video games and substituting lots of reading together and separately, candlelit dinners for four when the mood strikes them. Elizabeth says that she and Steve believe that spending time together sans distracting electronics is the best way to teach their children the key to a happy and fulfilling life: building relationships with others. Elizabeth and Steve always pick up the children at 2:55 p.m. at the conclusion of the school day.

Steve, who grew up with cerebral palsy due to a birth accident, and Elizabeth are responsible now for the creative fundraising that has resulted in the founding of Camp Wamp, an acronym for Wheelchair Adventure Mountain Programs. The main camp is a residential adventure program for youths with physical challenges located at Hawley Lake in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The location is where Steve attended camp as a physically challenged youth, but it had closed due to funding constraints. It was the vision of Steve and Elizabeth to re-open the camp, finding ways to fundraise to make the dream a reality. With the help of some amazing organizations and people supporting them, Steve and Elizabeth have tirelessly forged ahead with the plan of ever expanding the reach of the camp for the physically challenged youth of California and beyond.

Elizabeth repeats her mantra to be brave with your life and to dream big. An accomplished professional family and wedding photographer, Elizabeth took the children on a photographic journey to London and Paris last summer and plans to take them in the future to a language immersion program in Costa Rica where the family will live in a village and become part of the local society.

Doug St. Denis
You probably don’t know too many ladies named “Doug.” But then there aren’t too many women as memorable as Doug St. Denis. Named after her mother’s adored uncle, Douglas Legate Howard, Doug St. Denis’s given name was Douglas Howard Mustin. While she says she hated her name at age 10, she loves it now. Coronado and Navy history go hand-in-hand with Doug’s background. Wallis Warfield (The Duchess of Windsor) was the first cousin of Doug’s grandmother, Corinne Montague Mustin. The Mustins introduced Wallis to her first husband, Capt. Winfield Spencer. Doug says that marriage was a huge disaster, but the couple did live for a time in a cottage on Flora, which has since been moved onto the Hotel Coronado grounds and renamed The Duchess of Windsor cottage.

Doug St. Denis is a woman who only knows the words “I can do that.” Doug takes on and tackles one assignment after another with enthusiasm, focus and expertise which become contagious to all around her. With boundless energy, she currently serves on Coronado’s Historic Resource Commission, and, with her architect husband, Dale, the Coronado Planning Commission. She is vice president of the Coronado Historical Association, an active Coronado Soroptimist, and chair of Lamb’s Players Theater’s volunteer organization, SRO (Standing Room Only). Previously, Doug served six years on the Design Review Commission (two years as Chair), six years on the Public Art Subcommittee, the Bayfront Zoning Subcommittee and the Residential Standards Improvement Project Committee.

Amid all these volunteer tasks, Doug often travels to Los Angeles where she works as a commercial actor. Doug is an artist, who, among her many works, was commissioned to do the “Commissioning Painting” of the USS Mustin (DDG-89) an Arleigh- Burke class guided missile destroyer commissioned in 2003 at North Island Naval Air Station and named in honor of her family’s naval heritage beginning with her grandfather Henry C. Mustin, an 1896 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy who was one of the inventors of the catapult, and the first man to actually be catapulted off a navy ship. She is currently creating masterpieces in clay at pottery classes at the Coronado High School Adult Education program. Doug is a published poet and an occasional contributing writer for Coronado Lifestyle Magazine.

Doug spent much of her early years in Coronado as a Navy Junior with her brothers Hank and Tom Mustin. After meeting and marrying local architect Dale St. Denis in 1978, her life took a totally new and unexpected turn. She worked in Dale’s architecture firm, St. Denis Architects, in San Diego for ten years before enrolling at the Newschool of Architecture San Diego, where she earned her Bachelor of Architecture degree in 1994. While at Newschool, Doug in typical “can do” form, was ASB President, a Dean’s List student for five straight years, received the Outstanding Design Student Award and the Military Engineers Award. Today, Doug is a Design Partner at St. Denis & Associates Architects, the firm her husband founded in 1973.

Recently Doug and Dale restored and sold their historic redwood cottage on Adella Avenue and are currently remodeling their “modernist masterpiece” on Parkview Place which they have owned since 1984. Doug and Dale have six adult children, nine grandchildren, a big, badly behaved Golden Retriever, Koda, and a 10-year-old cat, Blanchard, a semi-retired hunter.