We are an interesting class

I've enjoyed reading the stories of where everyone has been. Sounds like we have spanned the globe. Hadn't planned to tell my life story but maybe I will. After high school, I boarded the Rock Island train and headed for Eastern Mennonite College. Alice Wenger, Charlotte, and I roomed together the first year then Charlotte and I headed for nursing school in Newport News VA. After graduation I worked in Texas for a year then went back and finished my degree at EMC. The next stint was 2 years of voluntary service in Aibonito, Puerto Rico where I practiced as a nurse. I returned to Iowa for a brief time and worked at Uof I Psychopathic hospitals with children and it didn't take me long to realize that wasn't what I wanted to do the rest of my life. I was invited to come to Walsenburg CO to work there which I did along with playing golf, tennis, and bowling! I wanted to go to Europe for the summer of 69 and I needed a reference so I called on my former professor Labon Peachey who was then president of Hesston College. He agreed to give me a reference if I agreed to interview for a teaching job at HC. I agreed and then took the Hesston job after touring Europe and studying at the University of Barcelona in Majorca and in Barcelona for 6 weeks. It ended with a tour of France, Spain, Germany, Netherlands and Switzerland. While at Hesston, I met my husband, Kent, who was hitchking in zero degree weather one January Saturday. I felt sorry for him so that is why I picked him up. My brothers have felt sorry for him ever since. Seriously, we were just friends for about five years and traveled some in Mexico before we decided to try marriage. Neither of us had been married and by this time we were in our 30s. Anyway during that five years, I went back to Iowa for a masters in nursing then worked on one of the first federally funded nursing research grants before I married and went back to Kansas. I have been at Wichita State since 1975 in various capacities--faculty, department chair, associate dean, and now senior associate provost. I travel quite a bit but not as much as we used to. We have taken trips to Russia, Europe, Australia, China, Japan, and Central and South America. It's been a great life for me. Now I must put the dogs to bed. Kent is in Mexico with his mother right now. They had a car accident while there and she is in the hospital with five broken ribs. I plan to go down next week during spring break for a week.