I was born and lived my first sixteen years in the small west Texas town of Rotan .  We moved to Brownwood when my dad took a job there, so I attended Brownwood High my junior and senior years. The move was very traumatic, as I had never before lived in a "big city".  I knew it was big when I parked our family car downtown and then couldn’t find it!  However it didn’t take long to adapt and to adopt Brownwood .  That very first day at Brownwood High none other than the incomparable Guy Smith took me under wing, and I began to feel a part of the student body.

After graduation I attended Howard Payne University before my marriage in 1958.  My husband and I moved to Lubbock so he could attend Texas Tech, but we ended up living there for about eight years. My children, a son and a daughter, were born in Lubbock .

Then following my dad's first heart attack, we returned to Brownwood where my husband worked with my dad in his business. In 1974 we moved to El Paso when my husband became a border patrol agent.  Unfortunately, we divorced there in 1976. I moved back to Brownwood in 1978 to finish my degree at Howard Payne and graduated with a B.S. in speech pathology/audiology in 1980. I worked as a speech therapist in Brownwood for one year then attended graduate school at the University of Hawaii for one semester. (Some things aren't always as "romantic" as they sound, although I would trade nothing for the experience.)

I returned to Texas and moved to Dallas to work at the University of Texas at Dallas , Callier Center for Communication Disorders. It was in Dallas that I remarried in 1982. Intermittently through the years, I returned to the job I knew best - a legal secretary/administrative assistant for about 15 years. However, somewhere along the way I exhausted my enthusiasm and patience with attorneys (no offense intended for any of you who are in the legal profession) and returned to graduate school to earn two master's degrees - M A. in family counseling and M.A. in religious education.  Subsequently I did postgraduate studies at Sam Houston State University for school counselor certification, and following that, I became a Licensed Professional Counselor.

We made our home in and around the metroplex until my retirement as a school counselor from the Irving ISD in 2001. We then lived for approximately three years in Brownwood to care for my mother where I, also, did independent contracting as a school counselor for two years.  

In 2004 my husband, George, and I moved to Denton where we live in a beautiful twin home at a retirement village.  No more house or yard maintenance!   Both my children and two grandchildren live FAR, FAR away in Washington state and Illinois .  However my days are plenty full. I retired from work but not from life. 

Since retiring, I have taught myself to knit, love to work crossword puzzles and read mystery books, and have an amateur interest in, and read voraciously about, archaeology. Additionally, I have taken up Chinese brush painting. Because of my husband's love and life-long interest in classical music, I, also, have acquired an appreciation and enjoyment of it. Additionally, I have developed an interest in opera - listening and studying the genre, NOT singing. I'm sure you're relieved to hear that! I am by no means an expert in any of these areas, but that doesn't keep me from deriving pleasure from each.

I am an RSVP volunteer (retired senior volunteer program), and through that organization I have worked in the city planning department, did some computer work in the development office at TWU and currently am working on certificate as a volunteer ombudsman with the Area Agency on Aging. I am, also, a part of the Empty Bowls project.  One evening a week we make pottery bowls that are then sold at an annual luncheon/silent auction in October. The money is donated to the "soup kitchen". However, my most enjoyable association by far is with the Texas Master Naturalists.  

This a volunteer organization working with the Texas Parks & Wildlife and A & M Extension Office concerned with the conservation and preservation of our natural resources - plants, animals, birds, fish, air and water quality, forest and range management, and trying to protect animals' natural habitats. This is becoming increasingly urgent in Denton County which is experiencing phenomenal growth. We do 65 hours of initial formal training, and each year we must give 40 hours of volunteer service and do eight hours of additional advanced training to become and stay certified. This is a statewide organization, and the Denton County chapter is some 80 strong from all walks of life - judges and attorneys, professors and teachers, a documentary film producer, a school psychologist, a nurse, an advertising executive, homemakers. etc. (then there's me!) I truly have had an interesting and varied background, but this is just about the most rewarding endeavor in which I have ever been involved.  

I guess I'm coming to the end of this lengthy recitation of my life SO FAR. However, hopefully, not to the end of my interests in life and hopes for the future both for humankind and the environment! My life since graduating from Brownwood High School has been filled with happiness and grief, love and loss, excitement and the mundane, courage and fear, enthusiasm and apathy, success and failure but seldom ever boredom!

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