I was born in Owensboro, KY.  My mother was 37 when I was born and I was the youngest of 7 children.  The sister closest to my age is 12 yrs older than me. I really was not the baby, as one of my older sisters left her husband and moved back in with us, with her 6 month old baby girl. Her name was Charlotte and we were 6 yrs apart. We lived in the same home until I married. She seemed like a cross between a sister and a daughter. Mother raised her but I always considered her my own special little angel. I even took her on dates with me!  To this day, she is one of my very most favorite persons in the world.

My dad died when I was barely 6 years old. I turned 6 on the 7th of January, and he died on the 30th. He had not been ill, that we knew of, but had a bad ulcer attack and peritonitis set in and he was dead within 3 days. This was in 1940 before miracle drugs.  Mother tried to raise us all so that we would meet him in heaven. She promised him we would be there on his death bed.  My mother was my best friend....she was truly a wonderful LADY.

I graduated from high school with honors and intended to go to college. I wanted to be a teacher...BUT I met my first husband and he convinced me to marry him and go to school later. 

Well, it was a different world back then.  I graduated from High School when I was barely 17, met my husband that winter, and we were married when I was 18 and a half. The Korean War was going on at the time and like a lot of girls at the time I thought, "Oh...I want to have a baby in case he goes over and is killed".  Not that I have for one second regretted the decision.  My daughters have been the joy of my life.

We moved to Chicago when Penny was 18 months old.  Don, her father was not drafted after all. He broke his leg playing ball.  When they called him he was in a cast and then the war was over. 

Don was a traveling salesman and  I did not want to leave the children alone to go back to school.   As times and circumstances changed, I did go to work but not to school.  I would work in the wintertime as a switchboard operator in Chicago and quit as soon as spring arrived so I could be with Penny full time. 

I have RH negative blood so I lost quite a few babies.  Just when I felt I would never be able to have another child, the Lord sent me Donna.  She is 7 years and 3 days younger than Penny.

We moved to Lawrence, Indiana, a suburb of Indianapolis, when Donna was 18 months old.  I taught piano from my home and was also a child caretaker.  I taught Sunday school classes for teenagers, vacation bible school,  and did not go to work outside the home until Donna was in first grade.  My first husband died as a result of a heart attack in his 40's.  He was always very active and played on a softball league, golfed, fished, you name it.  At the same time of his death, my mother who lived in Owensboro, had cancer and she passed away.  Penny was already grown and had her own apartment. Donna was a teenager. Needless to say, it was a very dark time in my life.

I play the piano and was  my church pianist in Indiana for 17 years. I  gave private lessons for over 10 years.

I taught bank tellers how to do their job for about 13 years. I would teach the new employee by letting her watch me, then turn over the cage to her while I watched her until she was ready to be sent to her home branch. I did this for 37 branches. Anyone the bank hired, that was going to work in a branch in any capacity, including managers, had to report to me on their first day on the job. 

Part of the point of the jobs and church duties is that even though I did not go to college to become a teacher, I have been a teacher of some sort in whatever job I've held.

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