| My Family moved to Pleasant Valley, IA in 1950 and the next year I transferred to the University of Iowa. I became engaged my senior year to a member of the US Air Force. We were to be married in August, but he was killed in a head-on collision on his way back to the base after coming to see me. I had taken a job at the Rock Island Arsenal for the summer and they called and wanted to hire me as a metalurgist. About the time I started there, my husband (Gene Keller) of 48 years was just starting in the engineering department. We got together through a person he worked with and I guess it was the right thing because we are still together.
We lived in Davenport, IA, and Huntsville, AL, where our only child , Shaun (who is now 44 years old and living in Leximgton, MA with his wife and two girls) was born. We next moved to Orlando, FL and then to the NY city suburbs where I taught for 2 years. Then we went back to the Orlando area and I taught fifth grade for 3 years. From here on to the Washington DC area where my husband was an executive for the US Postal Service until he retired in 1988.
I had started teaching in 1963 in Winter Park, FL. I was the fifth and sixth grade science teacher. I loved it and could never give up teaching for very long as we moved around. I completed my Masters in 1970 and we moved to Virginia. I ended up teaching at Wolftrap Elementry in Vienna, VA for 18 years. I taught sixth grade, computer lab, the gifted and talented and even sex ed over years. It was a great school with all great dedicated teachers and, although I was offered other jobs, I never left.
After we retired in 1988, I stayed home for several months. All my friends were still working so I began doing some computer work at home for someone my husband knew. Later we both worked for a company some friends owned which taught courses to industry on how to do business with the government. My husband wrote manuals and I worked with the classes and managed a training facility at George Washington University in DC. I met lots of people from here and from other countries. For a time I arranged for courses at various hotels all over the country. I met a lot of nice folks doing that. However, the job became too demanding and I only wanted to work part time. The job could have been 60 hours a week.
In 1993 we really retired and built a house in Bonita Springs, FL. We moved there in 1994. My mother had already moved from Florida to Virginia in 1988. She was 85 and going strong, but my Dad had died of Parkinsons in 1979. We all moved back to Florida and she lived in a retirement community in Fort Myers. When she died in 1995, our son wanted us to move up to Massachusetts near them. They lived right in Boston at the time. We rented a house in Lexington and a few months later they they bought a house across the street from the one we rented. In 1996 Gene and I were in Bermuda and he started having shortness of breath. When we got off the plane in Boston he was having a great deal of trouble breathing. He ended up in the emergency room and almost died with asthma. The cold was bad for him so we moved back to Florida, this time to Naples. We love it here.
We have rented a house near our son every summer for the last 4 years. We have our granddaughters every day. Elizabeth is ten and very talented in art. Rebecca is eight and full of spunk. Rebecca was born at 6 months and weighed 1 pound, 11 ounces. She is fine now, but spent the first 4 months of her life in Brigham and Womens Hospital in Boston and a month in Spalding Rehab Hospital learning to nurse. We were blessed.
We travel quite a bit and have just cancelled a trip to Europe that we were to leave on September 18, 2001. After what happened in New York and the Pentagon we thought it unwise to leave the country. As to future travel.....we will see!
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