Mom at 20 years old for her university sorority photo b4 traveling to 39 countries (over 56 years)

 

Mom broke her junior year high school prom date's heart when she started dating someone else - according to his brother reporting back at the high school reunion decades later (awkward)...She was then installed as "Job's Daughters Queen" for her senior year of high school - "chosen by a formal member vote before being installed" - so she led the weekly masonic meetings of the high school young ladies. My mom's family didn't get television till the last couple years of high school! Wow. Mom read books all the time and she was the salutatorian (2nd highest GPA) of her high school class of 180 students. She was also on a debate team that went to a national championship at the red rock ampitheater in Colorado - her junior year. 

 The National Forensic League (NFL) National Tournament was hosted in Denver, Colorado, and held its final rounds and award ceremonies outdoors at the iconic Red Rocks Amphitheatre...and featured events tied directly to the surrounding region. While individual debate and speech preliminary rounds were traditionally held in local classrooms, the National Speech & Debate Association historical records highlight that President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent an official greeting...

The town yearly parade and festival featured a Tilt-A-Whirl, a carnival ride invented in Minnesota! 

Mom's first boyfriend was a young man who became a Navy seal ...he was also a bread delivery worker while in high school and then he became chief of security at the Minneapolis airport...so Mom would drop in to say hello every time Mom traveled. 

 Gene grew up in ....  He enjoyed fishing, friends and sports and was fondly known as “Shamrock” during his ....High School days....He was drafted into the Navy and graduated from the Underwater Swimmers School (UWSS) in Key West, Florida. He traveled the world on Navy ships.

 My mom had two other suitors who were officers in the military - one in the Air Force as an officer who got his undergraduate degree at Princeton (he later formed his own mechanical engineering firm after he worked for US Steel out of Pennsylvania).... Another was in Navy intelligence and he told Mom that the U.S. next war would be in Vietnam - that was in 1963....

My mom also dated an early rock band guitarist musician for a summer in the early 60s...and the hometown Hotel Owner also tried dating mom....and most infamously mom dated the captain of the University swim team...

 My parents flew to Cozumel Mexico for the Honeymoon, day after the wedding, April 1965

After my mom married my dad then my mom traveled to 39 countries (a couple of them, Italy and Cozumel Mexico, a half dozen times each)!! Wow. Mom's local town newspaper announced that her husband got a high-level job. hahaha. That was only for two years as Chief Deputy Officer for the Attorney General of the state.

Meanwhile my mom's dad continuing building his successful HVAC duct installation company (taken over by the sons) that is still going strong today - it first unionized and now is employee-owned yet kept its founder name.  

 Here is my mom going around the Cape Horn in a cruise ship after my dad's passing 15 years ago and 55 years after the first photo! Wow. She knit that hat and she continues knitting today....

 

1) China, 2) Japan (airport of Tokyo), 3) Lithuania, 4) Latvia, 5) Estonia, 6) Russia, 7) Germany, 8) Austria, 9) Spain, 10) Portugal, 11) France, 12) England, 13) Ireland, 14) Mexico (Cozumel over six times starting with her honeymoon in 1965), 15) Costa Rica, 16) Tunisia (Earthwatch dig of Roman floor mosaics), 17) Morocco, 18) U.S. (most of the lower 48, Alaska and Hawaii, at least twice), 19) Romania, 20) Denmark, 21) Chile, 22) Argentina, 23) Uruguay, 24) Brazil, 25) Iceland, 26) Sweden, 27) Norway, 28) Netherlands, 29) Italy, 30) Greece, 31) Guatemala, 32) Poland, 33) Canada, 34) Algeria, 35) Vatican City, 36) Singapore, 37) Wales, 38) Scotland, 39) Jamaica

Well that's 39 countries!! wow. My mom worked in newspaper advertising after her undergraduate degree in English (minor History). Then she went back to University for a master's (where she taught remedial English writing at the University for a year)...that changed to a teaching degree. She worked as a teacher for a couple years when she met my dad, dated, got married, until she had her first baby...Then, after we grew up a bit, Mom volunteered (editing and writing articles) for a neighborhood newspaper in the 1980s in Minneapolis and Mom volunteered at a Minneapolis Presbyterian church, even as chairman of the board for a couple years! (a couple blocks from my childhood house) also - and Mom did accounting for my dad. Mom also volunteered for the girls Brownies as pack leader - I actually went to a Brownies meeting and sometimes the Brownies girls would come over. 

 Naturally wavy or curly hair in people of Irish descent is a widespread polygenic trait often tied to Celtic ancestry, where roughly 45% of the population expresses some form of wave or curl. 

My mom's aunt told my mom that "I think we have Irish" heritage and sure enough my mom's grandmother was half Irish but she hid this her whole life! So my mom's wavy hair is from her Irish heritage because my mom says she got her wavy hair from her dad. So her dad was one-fourth Irish and my mom is one-eighth and I'm one-16th Irish. My mom even traveled to Castle Matrix where our Palantine-Irish relatives worked and our Susanne Sparling Palatine ancestor married Rodger Hanley (who was 100% Irish but Anglican in religion). They were part of the "Methodist society" in Court Matrix village of Palatines who did weaving of flax. Below is a Switzer-weaved flax Christening dress!

 

 cultivated and processed flax to drive the local linen industry. These German refugees used their industrious farming and weaving traditions

 

 

So the neighbor's wife (the neighbor who became Governor, Arne Carlson), stored her grand piano at our house. When she took it back then my dad bought my mom a Steinway Grand and Mom took piano lessons. Mom brought me to her piano lessons when I was three years old! The piano teacher didn't think I should be there but mom assured the teacher that I would be quiet. Sure enough I quietly listened to the piano lessons and then I took up piano at the age of five - continuing until my senior piano concert by memory for senior year of high school. I saw how happy my mom was when she played piano so this made me wonder what was the secret about music causing deep happiness. I got more and more into music as a teenager and I studied ear training, orchestration and composition with a former University music professor when I was a teenager....

Then my mom owned and operated the legal newspaper for the town my parents retired into...around 1992 is when she bought the newspaper that is still operating today (but it got bought by a regional owner of several town newspapers so there is less of a local focus in the reporting). After eight years Mom sold it to another town newspaper who then got bought by a third larger town newspaper (so they operate three newspapers regionally now).

Then my mom volunteered at the local library that was going to be shut down by the county - so the town took it over based on private fundraisers, all volunteer-run. My mom ran the "collections committee" for 15 years with several other volunteers as Mom did the cataloging of the new books. Now she has handed over the managing of that collection committee to another volunteer but mom still catalogs some of the books - and recommends other books for the town library.

Mom also helped organize the civic club managing of the town's historical museum at the former town jailhouse! This is the oldest town in the state - over 180 years old. The civic club also organized the Memorial Day treats (coffees/cookies) at the town cemetery. 

Mom was given a "lifetime achievement award" along with a couple other town civic club organizers - a few years ago - (I got to hold an umbrella over my mom while it rained as we sat waiting to receive the award) and the civic club shutdown after 100 years! Wow. Too many women are officially working to keep the civic club going. Membership petered out over the years.

The museum volunteers created a new committee just to manage the museum and they are doing a spectacular job.

  widely recognized as the birthplace of Minnesota's permanent Euro-American pioneer settlement and lumber industry, having been founded in 1838–1839,... the first commercial sawmill on the St. Croix River started operating on August 24, 1839. ...Historic Status: A large portion of the community is preserved on the National Register of Historic Places.