Comments:
I have been very busy most of my adult life. Gus served 20 years in the Navy, and so I had the responsibilties of caring for our 3 children with many absences of their father while he served aboard 4 aircraft carriers. We lived most of the time from 1964 to 1972 in Jacksonville, Florid. During1964 we learned about and joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which we joined in September. It has been the most important part of our life, helping to cement lasting family ties. It has sustained us through many sad events, as the passing of Faith Angela just 6 months later. We bought a home in Jacksonville, and later sold it and bought one closer to the Navy facility Gus worked at. Most of the time that the girls were in school, I was a stay at home mother, but earned extra income doing sewing, quilting, babysitting, and other crafts and hobbies.
In 1971, Gus and I traveled to Salt Lake City, Utah, where we had the priviledge of having our marriage sealed for time and all eternity in the Temple there. While out there we decided to move out to Utah the following summer, so that we could be involved with more members of the same faith we had embraced. Gus still had 4 years till retirement, but would be aboard ship anyway much of that time. A couple we had been friends with also chose to move too, and her husband would be retiring from the fire department only a year after the move. So we bought a home in Orem, Utah, and my friend and I worked hard making Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls, crocheting pearl necklaces and rings, babysitting, and any thing else we could think of to earn enough money to move us to Utah after the finish of the school year ending in May of 1972.
We resided in Orem, Utah from June of 1972 to Aug. or Sept. of 1976. While living there, at the age of 30, I had a severe migraine headache, which resulted in a hemiplegic migraine, which actually was the equivalent of a stroke. After a year of good care, I fully recovered, and on March 1, 1976 had my little boy, Jeremy. I realized that we were letting our children grow up with very little contact with the extended family, and with the help of my step-father, Ralph Snow, was able to move back to Strawberry Point, Iowa where my parents owned a vacant home. Gus joined our family there as often as possible until his retirement from the navy in 1978.
I decided to open a sewing shop in Strawberry Point in 1980, which I operated for nearly 6 years, until Gus's mother needed to move in with us. She went to a local nursing home in 1986 which prompted me to desire to go into the nursing profession. I graduated with an Associate Degree as a Registered Nurse from the campus of Northeast Iowa Community College in Peosta, Iowa in May of 1989. I workied as a Registered Nurse for 18 years, mostly in nursing homes in Iowa and then in Alabama, until 2001 when I joined the staff of the East Alabama Medical Center in Opelika, Alabama. I worked in the Skilled Nursing unit until retirement on the end of May 2006. I am now taking care of my husband, Gus, and do extensive genealogical research and also assist with a service of the Church called Family Seach Indexing. I am the coordinator of this effort in the Columbus Georgia Stake of our church. We are working on developing indexes of all kinds of records of genealogical importance to any one interested in this great endeavor.
The other major interest in our lives, other than our family, which we try to put in the forefront, is ham radio. I hold an extra class license, WB4BW and Gus, W4GUS has a general class license. We work with the local hospital for emergency communication. I have taken many emergency communication classes, and am also an examinor for testing with the local club.
