I had 12 years of Catholic School and 3 Catholic Nursing school. I went to St. Veronica grade school and high school in Amerage, Pennsylvania. St Francis hospital school nursing in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I only worked six months and then I got married and we went to Germany and I didn’t work again for thirteen years. I worked as a nurse. We had three kids in Germany, one in Albuquerque and one here.

I grew up as a toddler and young child in Fair Oaks, which was a small town. When I started first grade, my parents moved into downtown Amerage. My mother was a homemaker and my dad was a civil engineer working for the steel company.

There were six of us: four boys and my sister and I. I am the third. I was crying all of the time. I was very quiet and shy and it didn’t take much to make me cry. They sent me to first grade a year early, I never made it to kindergarten, which everyone said was a big mistake because of my shyness. Scholastically I did fine. I took piano and tap dancing as a child.

We walked everywhere; we never had a car. So all of our playing and friends we did in each others yards and homes.

In the summertime we walked to the swimming pool everyday which was miles away. That kept us busy.

We lived near the river and the train tracks so we would sit on the banks of the river and count the freight train cars. I was a good kid. My brothers were the rule breakers. I had an older brother and older sister and they would gang up on me. I tease them about it now.

We all get together every year to have a family reunion. The older we got, the closer we got. They all still live back east. I get along fine with my mom and dad. They were very involved with school and church activities when I was growing up.