This alumni story was sent to us by Randi Bryn Simenson, MS, OTR/L, C-NDT from the Children’s National Medical Center:
I come from a triple OT loving family! Please let me introduce 3 OT’s from 2 generations: Katie, Randi, and Marit Simenson. My mother, Katie Simenson started the tradition in 1954 when she graduated from the University of Wisconsin in Occupational Therapy. She was a Delta Gamma and fell in love with my dad who just come back from being a radio operator in WW2 on the GI bill. The OT’s at that time had to do rotations in several areas of mental and physical health, including on tuberculosis and polio units. She had to learn Icelandic on her first job since they moved to Reykjavik on an exciting tour with the State Department! They moved to the nation’s capital in 1956 and she received most of her OT experience working in mental health at Saint Elizabeth Hospital in Washington D. C. They brought up 5 children while on tours in Iceland, Norway, Finland, and Germany. We would come back for “home leave” and spend our summers in Wisconsin which always included a trip to Madison to visit Bascom Hill, the student Union and the ice creamery at Babcock Hall. Twenty years later, I (Randi Simenson) came back to Wisconsin to get my degree at UW Madison in OT, specializing in physical disabilities and pediatrics. I would come home and talk about anatomy and physiology with my sister, Marit Simenson who became interested in OT when she came to visit me at Children’s National in Washington D.C. She decided to pursue her OT degree at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 1989. She has specialized in adult neuro and pediatrics. We all have loved working as OT’s and feel that it has given us immense job satisfaction as well as incredible “life preparation”. None of us have regretted it for an instant! Thank goodness the other members of our family worked in other fields because I don’t think we could stand any more OT chatter in the household!