Glider Spotlight: Meet Ted Witt, Champion of "Living Life Fully."

In this monthly series, we put the spotlight on our Gliders community to celebrate individuals who inspire us. This month, we’re highlighting Ted Witt, who just might top our list of most adventurous Gliders!

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Tell us a little bit about your background and upbringing…

My name is Ted Witt. I was raised in Long Beach, California, with a Catholic upbringing, and I attended the University of Notre Dame.

Along the way, I was a member of the golf team and the Notre Dame Glee Club, where I travelled and performed extensively.  I then entered the USC School of Dentistry, where I graduated in 1965.  While there, I met my partner for life, Candace, at an ubiquitous USC apartment where we discovered we have the same birthday.  We have been together for 60 years and have 3 children, 5 grandchildren, and 3 other (not so young anymore) people who have become an intimate part of our close knit family.  I practiced reconstructive dentistry in Mission Viejo, California, earning my Fellowship in the Academy of General Dentistry and practicing for 40 years until my eyesight failed.

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Where do you live?  How did you end up there?

We live in Sun Valley, Idaho, and Laguna Woods, California.  I was introduced to Sun Valley via a ski train that left Los Angeles on the Union Pacific Railroad for the mountains. It was $199 for a week of skiing, transportation, lessons, rooms, and meals to and from… It was a deal I couldn’t turn down! I fell in love with Sun Valley, and later, when I met my wife, I made a strong effort to take her on the same ski train so she could experience it for herself… She fell in love.

As my practice matured, we acquired an airplane and started flying all over the United States with our family as members of the Flying Dentist group. We flew everywhere, but we’d end up going back to Sun Valley…and as we did, it began to feel like home. Finally, we decided to make Sun Valley our second home, and we purchased a condominium at auction in 1976 so we had a place to stay.  Eventually, Sun Valley became our permanent home when I retired and still is.

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What’s your favorite family tradition?

Taking our family (and sometimes extended family) to Ko Olina on Oahu, Hawaii, every other Thanksgiving since our first grandchild was born over 20 years ago.

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We hear you travel a lot.  What destinations surprised you the most and why?

I married a woman with a degree in International Relations, and my career as a Dentist would keep me in one place… What to do! The answer was travel… We love to travel. My wife owned travel agencies in Orange County, California, to enhance our travel abilities (and allow me to keep my career!).

We’ve been able to travel to well over 100 countries and visit many exotic places… Angel Falls in Venezuela, the Valley of Kashmir in northern India, where I played golf with the cows; Kenya and Tanzania, where we witnessed the Great Migration; Tigers in Nepal, where we floated the Gandaki River to get there; and multiple treks in the Himalayas in Nepal.

I have become a cruise ship dentist and have traveled to all parts of the world as a crew member for Holland America Lines, and I have delivered dental care to different parts of Mexico with the Flying Dentists. I also joined the Seattle dentist Tom Roberts and lived and practiced dentistry in a Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Pokhara, Nepal, for over a month. All of these were fabulous learning experiences and an opportunity for me to serve.

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If you could turn any activity into an Olympic sport, what would you win a gold medal in?

Living Life Fully… (it’s written on my business card).  Along our journey, we have found that we enjoy many things, including hiking, biking, scuba diving, flying, and all sorts of outdoor activities.

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What type of work do you do — both volunteer and otherwise?

I have been legally blind for the last seven years…and now, completely blind.  I have been working where I can in our local community with other people who are sight challenged, many of whom have spotted me on my extensive walks along the bike paths of Sun Valley. I also, during the Summer Music Festival, still greet people every night at the top of the steps of the Sun Valley Pavilion before the concerts, a job I’ve done for over 20+ years.

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What’s one big question in life, work, or society at large that’s been occupying your mind lately?

The big question in life for me is “Why am I here?”… not where am I going, or how did I get here, or what can I do about it? That is dictated by the Creator Itself…my answer to the question of why am I here is quite simple. I am an energy, pure energy, having a human experience. It’s that simple…

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Anything else you’d like to share with the Gliders community?

Now, I can’t think of a better purpose in life than to introduce Glide to as many people as I can, both sighted and those who actually need to use the device itself.

There are millions of people who have vision problems, and Glide will be very, very, very helpful and liberating. Once I get my Glide, I have a whole schedule of events already planned for my life, including a summer in the mountains of the Wood River Valley in Idaho. Then later on, a stay in Hawaii,  and a cruise throughout the South Pacific for almost 2 1/2 months. In all of these different environments, I will be challenging Glide to perform not only what we are expecting it to do right out of the box, but also other things that hopefully Amos and the Glidance development group will task me with, to explore possible new features that can be used universally around the world.

I am really looking forward to receiving my Glide, and I can’t wait to use it!

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