M O R E  O F  S I N C E  B R E N T...

 
  Volumn 3, Issue 1 Page 7

prop commercial flights that come in twice a day. The town is small and has an interesting history and at one point in time was quite a bustling metropolis when the United Fruit Company was located there. Now it is buzzing with international tourists who are discovering the delights of Bocas every day. The Bocas hotels are family owned, small and and few in number. There are not enough of them to serve the number of folks that are coming in to the area to discover this unique little place. There are also many ex-pats living there from all over the world, which also makes the place very interesting.

While this turn of event is as far from the Brent prophesy as can be, I was suppose to be a teacher at Brent, I must say this fork in the road is not un-welcomed, and I am very eagerly looking forward to starting again, fresh and unencumbered, free to do what I have been wanting to, at my own pace, for so many years.

Sally Thomas Ramirez

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My first independent activity after leaving the shores of the Philippines in May 1993 was to meet a group of Brentonians in Hong Kong and behave inexcusably badly for a long weekend. Then it was home to New York to meet up with old family and friends who were totally uninterested in our escapades halfway around the world. (This same phenomenon is shared by folks of all ages who have been “away,” and eventually I learned to limit my conversations to stateside interests.) I remember attending the World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows, N.Y. in 1964 with a crowd of Brentonians and, again, we all behaved inexcusably badly….but progress has been made. The advent of e-mail and the periodic reunions have allowed me to re-establish contact with many wonderful people. We don’t behave badly anymore and we have many things, aside from the Brent experience, to talk about : What a privilege!

I wandered back and forth across the country from college to college until, in 1968, George Washington University in Washington, DC finally gave me a bachelor’s degree in international affairs. The city was pretty exciting during those years so I stayed and eventually earned a master’s degree in public administration from the same school in 1980.

When it was time to get serious about supporting myself, I got a job at the Office of Economic Opportunity in 1968. Our goal was to save the country and completely eliminate poverty by 1980. It was nice to be young and naïve. I settled into the National Office of the Head Start Program where I, most importantly, met Geoffrey Lewis. Geoff and I were married in 1970 and have been together ever since.  We adopted Rebecca Anne in 1974 and Jennifer Paige was born in 1978.  Rebecca is now married and living in Atlanta and Jenn lives in DC, manages a sports club and volunteers with the Bethesda-Chevy Chase Rescue Squad.

While I spent most of my career with Head Start, I also did a stint at the National Center of Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention, ran a series of grant programs for runaway and homeless youth and, finally, moved over to the US Children’s Bureau, assuming responsibility for programs related to child abuse and neglect prevention, foster care, adoption and other non-controversial topics. I retired in February of 2002 as the Deputy Associate Commissioner of the Children’s Bureau. I still go to bed every night all tired out, but it is NOT from stress and anxiety anymore!  Retirement is lovely. I am involved in volunteer work at the National Arboretum, enjoying the change from white collar management to digging, pruning, weeding and planting in the Asian Garden. I am also involved in a Capitol Hill History effort to secure and archive the recollections of older

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