Maurine Poppers, Co-Director of Counseling, will be retiring from Lick after 2016’s winter break. Poppers has been at Lick for the last 32 years and has been a key figure in creating the tenor of the community.
Poppers has 38 years of experience as a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. How did her path lead her to Lick?
As a teenager, Poppers wanted to go to the University of California, Berkeley. However, she didn’t have the B average required. Determined, she went to City College of San Francisco for a semester and then transferred into Cal.
“When I began UC Berkeley in 1954 there were only a few career options for girls. You could either be a nurse, a teacher, or the third career path was to find a husband,” Poppers said. “Going into college, I didn’t want to do any of those. I thought I just wanted to have fun!”
After one year at Berkeley, Poppers realized that she wanted more from college than what she had envisioned and more than what she had found. “I was in a sorority, but everything just felt so superficial.” Poppers realized she would learn more outside of school. “I wanted to have a goal and to see what it was like to work.” It was years, and several careers, before Poppers would go back to finish college and get a degree.
When Poppers left Berkeley at 19, she knew she wanted to work in the medical field; but the idea of being a therapist was not yet in her mind. To find a job that she was interested in, Poppers went from hospital to hospital, located its employment office, filled out an application, and hoped for the best. “Surprisingly my transition was pretty easy. I was only job hunting for two weeks, I think I was really lucky.” Poppers received a job offer from the UCSF dental school as a secretary in the Dean’s Office.
“The people there were absolutely wonderful. It just felt like an easy transition. I remember on the first day of work they gave me a key to the office and I forgot the key on the first day of work; I couldn’t get in and I thought ‘I’m gonna get fired before I even start.’ But that didn’t happen,” Poppers remembers.
Life in the office was good to Poppers. “The dental school was an absolute wonderful place for a 19 year old. I met some medical students and that’s how I met my husband, who was just finishing his last year of dental school.” Suddenly Poppers had chosen one of the three career paths that she had previously eschewed.
After dating for six months, the two got married and started a family. They had one daughter and one son. The couple movedtoGermany,fortwoyears, since her husband was in the Air Force. “Initially I thought I’d get a job and work in the Air Force base. But ten months after we got married, I had my daughter. My daughter was born in Germany, which was unexpected.”
Fourteen months later the family of three moved back to San Francisco. Poppers wanted to have two children, approximately two years apart, so she got pregnant again and the Poppers family had a son.
When Poppers’s son was in middle school, she volunteered at his school. She enjoyed working with children and that is when the principal noticed how she enjoyed what she was doing and encouraged her to get training as a counselor. Poppers transitioned to working with kids at the high school level, working at Capuchino High School in San Bruno. There she started and led to the counseling program. Poppers discovered her passion for counseling and has pursued it ever since.
After 22 years, Jerry Poppers and Maurine Poppers got divorced.
After the divorce and when her children were in high school, Poppers decided to go back to college to get her undergraduate and masters degrees. “My dad always wanted me to excel in school. All of his dreams of me getting an education went away when I took the leave of absence from Berkeley, worked at the dental school, and got married. I think if my father knew what I’ve accomplished (he died before she went back to school) he would be proud.”
While an undergraduate at Antioch College in Ohio, through a mutual friend Poppers met her future partner Morley Segal, a professor at American University in Washington D.C. For a few years the two had a bi-coastal relationship. After Poppers earned her MA at Antioch, she moved to Washington D.C. to be with him.
“In D.C. I got a job helping super motivated students. I counseled them, helped them with resume writing, and more. I also had a private practice.”
As Segal and Poppers were both San Francisco natives, they decided to move back to San Francisco. They moved back into Poppers’ childhood house, in which she still lives today, and found a job as a Co-Director of Counseling at Lick-Wilmerding High School. She stepped into the city and through Lick’s doors.
At Lick she now works alongside Erika Solis, Co-Director of Counseling, to provide a safe space for students where they can talk about how they’re feeling, current difficulties in their life, or just check in with one another. In addition to working at Lick, Poppers has her own private practice.
“I’m really going to miss everything at Lick. It’s been a home to me for so long and I‘ve grown close to my colleagues and the students.”
After Poppers retires, she will continue with her private practice, volunteer to help train counselors, and periodically help out at Mission High School’s counseling department.
Although Popperswillbeleaving the Lick community after winter break of 2016, she wants to leave the community with some advice. Poppers says, “I’ve had adversity. I’ve lost my daughter and I’ve had breast cancer twice. Life brings so many paths to take and we all have to, at some point, live through hard times. Living through them, learning from them and being positive and grateful has helped me through my tough times and will help you too. Life isn’t always a linear path, it’s all about making adjustments.”
This is a great article although in the very last paragraph it mentions that she lost her daughter, although the article never really talks about that anywhere else. It would have been interesting to hear more about that.