Blind memoir teacher helps Chicago seniors preserve their stories
Teachers aren't supposed to have favorites and Beth Finke knows this - she's been teaching for more than a dozen years, after all.
But Wanda, Finke will tell you unapologetically, is the exception.
"She has taught me so much," Finke said. "She's my favorite and the whole class knows it, and that's OK."
Wanda is 98 years old. She was among the first class of freshmen at all-black DuSable High School when it opened in Bronzeville in 1935, 19 years before Brown v. Board of Education declared segregated schools unconstitutional. Wanda knew Nat King Cole when he was just Nat Cole. She knew Dinah Washington as Ruth Jones and Redd Foxx as John Sanford. Classmates at DuSable, all of them.
"Wanda brings a slice of Chicago history with
