Our first meeting was a blind date. My roommate Lynn Stetzer  had a friend in Vrn's dorm. Loren liked Lynn. She didn’t like him so much, but they decided that we should get together and the four of us went out. Vern had noticed my name because it turned out that we were in the same psychology class. We’d sat at a big, round, table and we had to have nametags, and he had seen this weird name and remembered it. This was 1959. I had just turned 19 and he was 20, just before his 21st birthday. We became engaged a year later and two years after that we got married, after Vern was in the Army reserves and then his unit was called up because of the Berlin Wall crisis.

Raising Kids
I have always told them that they were always perfect angels. They say “Mom, we couldn’t have been.” Susan, our youngest one, in preschool decided that she wasn’t going to say anything. Not a word. So she wouldn’t talk at school. But at home, she would yak on and on. This was fine, because I liked to listen to her talk. But in preschool, they tried to bribe her, and she wouldn’t say anything. Not a word. So finally, I told her that if she didn’t say anything, they would think that she wasn’t ready to go to kindergarten. She just started talking after that.

They were great kids. Now we are really good friends. They like to be with us, and we like to be with them. MaryAnn goes to the gym and exercises. Susan likes to run and has a terrible time with shin splints, so when she can’t run, she goes to the gym. She has a treadmill at home, but she when her shis splints bother her she goes to the gym.. She has two little boys--we have two grandsons.

Claudio, her husband, had been sent to Honolulu for at least eight months, but he is still finishing up his old company’s program in Denver. So he has been going to either Denver or Honolulu during the week and coming home during the weekend.

A year ago he was going to New Jersey and Connecticut each week. We found out it is working better right now because he comes home on the red-eye Thursday night, so he can sleep on the plane. He comes home early in the morning and can sleep a little bit, then goes into the office on Friday, and comes home at a decent time. Then he has some family time Friday night and all weekend.