Warren H. Wheelock

Warren Henri Wheelock, age 82, died Sunday, July 10, 2011 in Kansas City, Missouri. Warren Wheelock was Professor of Education and Director of the Reading Clinic in the Language and Literacy Group of the University of Missouri-Kansas City for 40 years (1967-2007), where he taught graduate and credentialing courses in the diagnosis and correction of reading disorders. Warren was born December 8, 1929 in Brooklyn, New York to Sterling Wheelock, an accountant with the Kennecott Copper Company, and Madeleine Fournier Wheelock, who had had a brief career with the Ziegfeld Follies before her marriage.

During the Korean War, he served as a frontline medic from November 1951 through October 1952 in the 25th Medical Battalion of the 25th Tropic Lightning Infantry Division. He was among the early U.S. Army medical personnel to bear arms in combat for their own defense or for that of the sick or wounded in their charge under the Geneva Convention and Protocols of 1949.Following his Army service, Warren taught 6th grade in PS 201 in New York City public school system for five years. Fifty years later, Warren still was receiving correspondence from students about their memories of him as their favorite teacher and his impact on their lives. He decided on advanced education after also working with the League for Exceptional Children, an organization that provided oversight for children with severe psychotic disorders who were a threat to themselves or others.

He completed his B.A. and M.A. in Education at Queens College, New York, and received his dual doctorates in Reading and Clinical Psychology at Arizona State University, where he conducted his dissertation research in the 1960s under the mentorship of Nicholas J. Silvaroli. After serving as a school psychologist in Arizona, Warren decided to focus his expertise into the psychology of students with reading and learning dysfunctions. Warren Wheelock and Nicholas Silvaroli formed a life-long collaboration in the field of Reading Education, together addressing teacher education, migrant education and the diagnosis of reading disabilities. Their classic reading inventory, The Classroom Reading Inventory (McGraw-Hill), has been in continuous publication for more than 40 years and is among the most widely used such assessments for teaching reading diagnostics in higher education. Along with his texts co-authored with Nicholas Silvaroli, Warren also pioneered reading series with William Sheldon of Syracuse University and other leaders in the field of education to promote high-interest and accessible materials for students with learning barriers. These included the Breakthrough Reading Series and the bi-lingual readers, Hispanic Heroes of the USA (Ilustres Hispanos de los EE.UU.). Warren founded the UMKC Reading Clinic in 1967 and served continuously as its Director and Professor of Education until his retirement in 2007. During this time, he personally conducted 3,000 individual reading case studies in private practice, and he supervised over 2,800 separate clinic case studies for the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He was educator, mentor and advisor to more than 6,000 teachers who attended his graduate classes, continuing education courses and national workshops. For over 20 years he also consulted for Arizona’s Migrant Education Program, a long-term project of the Department of Education to help reduce the educational disruption and other problems that result from repeated moves of migrant families. Warren worked with state policy leaders as well as individual teachers to improve reading diagnosis, classroom instruction and school record management for migrant children.

With his background in both Reading Education and Psychology, Wheelock also served through 2009 as a court-appointed forensic examiner and expert witness in the field of education. He conducted clinical evaluations and testified in 70 felony cases, 40 of which were capital crimes, and he testified in other cases establishing the importance of literacy in consumer product use. Robert B. Rogers, President of the Ewing M. Kauffman Foundation, endowed the Warren H. Wheelock Reading Education Scholarship in 1995 at the University of Missouri – Kansas City in honor of Wheelock’s clinical work and service to students with dyslexia and additional learning disorders. As a professor and clinician, Warren chose to continue to advance opportunities for learning by donating his body to the University of Kansas for teaching and research purposes. A devoted sports fan, Warren rarely missed a KU football game and held season tickets for 35 years. He valued the opportunity to serve another institution of higher education in addition to that of the University of Missouri-Kansas City, which granted him status of Professor Emeritus in 2007. Warren Wheelock is survived by Connie Campbell, his wife and collaborator in the field of literacy; his daughter, Lara Lynn Wheelock, Frankfurt, Germany; son and daughter-in-law, Sean and Kelly Wheelock, Shawnee, Kansas; Sean and Kelly’s daughters, Ellee and Hadlee Wheelock; brother, Alan Wheelock, Cambridge, New York; niece, Jennifer Wheelock Centola, Rochester, New York; nephew, Jared Wheelock, Sherman Oaks, California, mother-in-law, Marie Campbell and brother-in-law, Robert Bruce Campbell, Enid, Oklahoma. He is preceded in death by his parents, Sterling and Madeleine Wheelock, and by his sister-in-law and fellow master teacher, Renate Wheelock. The family would like to thank Warren’s devoted caregivers, Susi Cohen and Donna Chatmon, and the compassionate staff of the Kingswood Health Center and Grace Hospice for their support and dedication to his comfort and happiness at the end of his life. In lieu of flowers, the family suggests memorial contributions to the Warren H. Wheelock Reading Education Scholarship, c/o the School of Education, University of Missouri-Kansas City, 5100 Rockhill Road, Kansas City, Missouri, 64110.