Like most kids I had dreams of greatness that were out of step with my talents and commitment to practice. I loved to sing and act, so of course watching musicals on TV made me imagine myself on stage or in front of a camera. I got to be in five musicals in high school; my freshman year we put on Fiddler on the Roof (I played Chava.) in the fall, and Oliver! (I was an orphan boy and sang in the chorus.) in the spring, the only year Remington has ever staged two full productions in one academic year. I played a nurse and sang in the chorus in South Pacific my sophomore year; my Junior year in Camelot I played a lady-in-waiting to Guenevere. My senior year, I got to wear amazing hats and stunning costumes as the carousel owner in Carousel; in addition, I played the female lead in Don’t Drink the Water opposite my life-long friend and classmate of 13 years, John Resnik.
I enjoyed this activity so much that I wanted to major in Theater and Music in college, but my wise Daddy reined me in a bit with a question about the plausibility of my ambition and the practicality of studying something that could support me, say working as a secretary. Common sense won out, and the skills I gained with my Associate of Arts in Secretarial Studies degree from Bethel College served me well, as I worked for several years, mostly enjoyably, in offices at Prairie View in Newton and the Clerk’s Office for the City of Wichita. I’m really amused when I think back to the word processing capabilities in those early days. The first piece of equipment I learned about was a typewriter that would store a certain number of characters so you could go back and change them before you printed them on a paper. (Does that even seem like a benefit now?) Then my office got a massive word processor that we had to self-train on for days (maybe even weeks?) through a tutorial procedure; the unit resembled an entire desk, including a keyboard, some sort of screen, a disk drive which could store entire documents (Wow!) on 5¼” floppy disks, and a printer as well. PCs were just coming out when I quit working to be a full-time Mom, my favorite job ever!
Having four siblings and dozens of cousins led me to want a large family for myself. Three biological children and three stepchildren filled the bill.
