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By L. Alexis Young - Inland Valley Daily Bulletin - March 3, 2006
Ontario Couple Honored by Freedoms Foundation
Jack and Jane Mercer are nearly household names in Ontario, and now they're both receiving
their just dues on a national level.
On February 18th, the Mercer's each received the Meritorious Certificate from Freedoms Foundation
at Valley Forge, which strives to promote the responsibilities and ideals of good citizenship.
Jack Mercer, who retired as the director of the Chaffey High School Tiger Band and Drill Team after
25 years of service, has a community bandstand named after him which sits in the Euclid Avenue median
downtown.
His wife Jane Mercer, an esteemed community volunteer, has made strides in changing the public
perception of mentally disabled children with her research on the way they were being treated in the
education system.
"Each year we send applications to diiferent members and ask them to recommend people they think
are deserving of the awards," explained Maxine Preston, national chair of volunteer for the
organization. "Mr. Hugh West knows them for their ongoing work for many, many years in Ontario
and they are just outstanding people."
Hugh West, a retired elementary school principal that received the award last year, nominated both
Jack and Jane Mercer. Preston said the two are exactly what the organization looks for.
"It's quite a varied criteria that we look at forhonoring people," Preston said. "We're
honoring Americans of all walks of economic life of our nation and have inspired each new generation
to dedicate themselves to the dream that is America. Jack and Jane fit into it so well.
Even though they have retired, they are still working in their community."
Jack Mercer said he was quite surprised to receive the award again after first receiving it in 1966
for a patriotic half-time show at the Pro-Bowl game in the Los Angeles Colisium. The show, "The
Cost of Freedom," played for an audience of 67,000 spectators and 60 million television viewers, and
called for unity during the war in Vietnam.
"I don't know why I'm getting the award, I just do what I do naturally," said Mercer, who has
directed the Onartio/Chaffey Community Show Band for 18 years. "We're both very honored to be
recognized."
Mercer, 81, directed his first patriotic show in Ontario in 1958 and has done so every year
since. The Memorial Day and Veteran's Day programs Mercer organizes annually draw hundreds of
people as do his monthly community band shows. In 1962, Mercer organized the Chaffey Tournament
of Bands Competition.
More than 40 of the musicians Mercer taught as high school students convinced him to once again be
their director in 1986 when he formed the community show band. The former students, now working
professionals, perform the patriotic shows with Mercer in the same auditorium they played in decades ago.
Jane Mercer, 82, is a retired Sociology professor at UC Riverside. She spent 30 years of her
life researching and writting about the way public schools in Riverside tested ethnic minorities to
determine if they were mentally disabled, a method she proved was biased.
"My research led to major reforms in special education of how IQ tests were being used," Jane
said. "A high nember of ethnic minorities were placed in special education classes because of
their test scores and it was depriving kids of their right to a public education because they were being
unfairly placed in segregated classes."
Jane's research revealed that Latino children who spoke little or no English were given IQ tests in
English and then labeled mentally disabled for poor performance on tests they couldn't even read.
The results led to a series of court cases and changes in the law. Jane then developed a system to
fairly assess intelligence which was adopted by schools in California and Texas.
"I spent five or six years developing the System Of Multicultural Pluralistic Assessment and I
traveled all over the U.S. giving workshops to psychogists trying to cinvince people to use it," Jane
said about her system, which led to her book, "Labeling the Mentally Retarded."
Jane pushed for testing to be sensitive to cultural background and the use of her methods has been
credited in part for a reduction in the biases against African American and Latino students, the
integration of mentally disabled children into the regular school program, and the de-institutionalization
of most mentally disabled people.
[L. Alexis Young writes City News. E-mail alexis.young@dailybulletin.com,
call (909) 483-9365 or write to 2041 E. Fourth St., Ontario, CA 91764.]
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