Welcome Ira Stamm to Rotary
Ira is a psychologist in private practice in Topeka where he does psychotherapy with adults and adolescents and marital and family therapy.
He was born and raised in Greenwich Village in lower Manhattan of New York City. His mother, Sylvia Langfield, emigrated from Russia to Manhattan in the early 1900s. At the age of twelve she worked in the garment industry sweat shops of the Lower East Side.
As a young adult she helped to organize the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union. His father, Julius Stamm, had degrees in pharmacy and journalism. In the 1940s he opened one of the first independent bookstores in lower Manhattan. The bookstore, Stamm's for Book - Booksellers in the Old Tradition was located at the corner of Broadway and Fulton Street - a few blocks north of Wall Street and one block east of where the World Trade Twin Towers were built in the 1950s. Ira spent his youth helping out in this family book business. He learned from his parents the four important lessons of business: provide a quality product or service; price it fairly; treat your customers with kindness and respect; and take care of your employees as though they were members of your family. The business mantra he learned from Stamm's for Books was "Do well by doing good."
Ira received his BA degree in psychology from Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts and my MA and PhD degrees from Boston College. He first trained and worked at the Child Guidance Clinic of the Boston University Medical Center where He met his wife, Joanna, who was a psychiatric social worker at the Clinic. Joanna is from Providence, Rhode Island. His first daughter, Rachel, was born in Boston. In 1972 they came to Topeka for Ira to participate in the two year Post-Doctoral Training Program in Clinical Psychology at the Menninger Clinic. After that he joined the staff of Menninger where he remained for twenty-three years. At Menninger he went through additional training in
the Marriage and Family Therapy Program and the Topeka Institute for Psychoanalysis.
At Menninger he treated patients in the adult and children's hospitals and outpatient departments. From 1983-1991 he served as clinical director of an adolescent unit in the Children's Hospital. He also taught courses in the Karl Menninger School of Behavioral Health Sciences and Topeka Institute for Psychoanalysis and supervised the work of students and staff at Menninger. At Menninger he received the David Rapaport Award for Excellence in Teaching. In 1995 Ira left Menninger to enter private practice in Overland Park, Kansas. In 2004 he moved his practice to Topeka. During the past decade he served on the Board of Directors of the American Academy of Clinical Psychology and as Editor and co-Editor of the Bulletin of the American Academy of Clinical Psychology. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Breakthrough House, the Kansas Medical Education Foundation, and the Topeka Round-Up Club.
In April 2010 his wife, Joanna, retired as a social worker after twenty-six years of practice at Family Service and Guidance Center of Topeka. She continues with her part-time private practice. Our adult daughters, Rachel and Laura, live in Seattle, WA with their families.
Ira enjoys horseback riding (trail riding), traveling, reading, and writing. Over the past decade he has become a strong advocate for mental health parity and health care reform. He has created a newsletter, The Kansas Health Care Reformer, which is distributed electronically, and at no cost, to colleagues and consumers.
Welcome Ira!