CHAPTER I
A year after graduation I married Mel and my journey began. The draft was still around and, sure enough, WE got drafted in 1958, spending almost 2 years at Fort Ord near Monterey - not a bad tour, as assignments go. We lived in Carmel… along with the carpenter ants, holes in the roof and buckets on the floor. But, we were happy. When my mother came for a visit she almost cried, but held her tongue and just figured we'd survive, which we did. We both loved Carmel.

Just before discharge in 1960 we took a month-long cross-country trip in our beloved MG to Washington, DC. We saw all the sights and actually climbed to the top of the Washington Monument - the elevator wasn't working(!). Sometime during the trip I realized I was pregnant and happily so.

Steve was born at the end of the year and 4 years later Michael arrived. We bought a lovely home in the San Fernando Valley, put in a swimming pool and even had the requisite station wagon and dog! That dog was supposed to be a Labrador retriever but as time went on she never got any bigger - but we loved her anyway, and damn, if she didn't swim like a retriever when we threw her in the pool. J Life went on….

Towards the end of the 1960s my marriage was failing (details will be omitted to protect the not-so-innocent), and Mel and I were divorced but we had an amicable parting. He even spent more time with the kids than when we were married. Go figure! I got a job as a starter at the new Vista Valencia Golf Course. Since my mom worked at Valencia Golf Course we saw a lot of each other, had lunch together and gabbed just like old school chums. (Mom died last year - I sure miss her.)

Then in January of 1969, my life changed. We had sold the house after the divorce and I had moved into an apartment in Van Nuys with the kids. One day Mel asked me if he could take Steve skiing that weekend. He said he had a pilot friend who had a plane and they would be flying up to Lake Tahoe. The weather reports were awful, and flying at night in bad weather wasn't my idea of ideal traveling conditions. I told him 'no' but that he could take Steve some other time, only during the day and when the weather was clear. He and his girlfriend went anyway, and that later time never came. The plane was lost that weekend and wasn't found until spring with everyone on board dead. I still shudder today when I think of that decision and how close I came to losing a child.

Telling the children was the hardest thing I ever had to do. They both had held out hope that somehow their father would be found alive, but I knew it was extremely unlikely. The truth had to be faced, and to their credit, the kids handled it with a maturity beyond their years. At the time they were 4 and 8.

CHAPTER II
After the divorce I had stayed in the Los Angeles area because I didn't want to take the children away from their dad. Now there was nothing keeping me there. So, I packed up the kids and moved to Albany, a small city between Berkeley and El Cerrito in Northern California just across the bay from San Francisco. I rented a cute little house in the Albany hills and took a job in the Bacteriology Department at UC Berkeley. The kids and I began to enjoy the environs of the bay area - the Exploratorium in San Francisco, Fairyland in Oakland, and Lawrence Hall of Science in the Berkeley hills. On one of our excursions we went to a tropical fish store in Oakland to restock our struggling fish tank. It was there I met Rene, a fish expert and soon-to-be new partner and husband. I quickly realized that Rene had a knack for sales along with an extensive knowledge of tropical fish. Soon we were on our way to opening our own tropical fish store in Walnut Creek.

We called it Rene's Tropical Fish. All of us worked in the store, including the kids. Steve was old enough to wait on customers, bag fish and ring up sales. Poor Mike wasn't big enough to reach the upper tanks so he was relegated to cleaning and mopping and being a 'go-fer'. Needless to say, he wasn't a happy camper. The store did well and receipts improved steadily over the next few years. I wanted to sell the store and open another one, repeating our successful formula, but Rene was reluctant to give up so vibrant a business. So, we kept the store and I decided to go to college part-time. I enrolled at the local community college, became involved in student government, and joined the speech team. Rene soon became very unhappy as my studies and school activities kept me away from the business and him more than he liked, so he sought solace with someone less involved than I. (Details will again be omitted to protect the not-so-innocent!)

Again, the divorce was amicable - I continued to attend college and got my AA degree. I was selected to give the student commencement address and I still have a transcript. I transferred to UC Berkeley, but after 2 quarters I realized I was shortchanging my kids and quit. We then had a family conference and all of us decided to move to the mountains.

CHAPTER III
I sold the house in Walnut Creek and the 3 of us moved to South Lake Tahoe (SLT) - truly the jewel of the Sierras! Steve had turned 16 the previous winter and I had bought him the cutest, brand new, Ford 4-WD, short-bed truck - powder blue. Was this kid ecstatic or what? I got a job as a legal secretary. The woman I was replacing owned a house near the lake and asked me if I wanted to buy it. It was love at first sight - all knotty pine inside with a huge ceiling-to-floor stone fireplace, only 3 blocks from the beach. Life was good.

However, Mike wasn't so good. He was now 12 with his teen years enveloping him like an avalanche. By the time he was 15 he had awful friends, school wasn't on his "to-do" list, and he had zero ambition. The authorities wanted to put him into the continuation high school. I remember asking him one day where he planned to live when he turned 18. The answer: "With you!" HELLO?!

I realized I had to get him away from his bummy friends and lousy environment. I looked for and found a boarding school - The Feather River Preparatory School - located about an hour north of Lake Tahoe. All of the students were kids who, for one reason or another, couldn't make it in a traditional school setting. They agreed to take him and he agreed to go. It wasn't cheap but I managed to get the money. He didn't like it very much but it really, really turned him around. After a year he told me he didn't want to go back. I was skeptical but he said he had a plan.

He would go for his GED and get a job, both of which, I'm pleased to say, he actually did. But the jobs - there were several - didn't last long and he was again at a crossroads. He was open to the idea of going to college so I offered to pay for an apartment in Santa Rosa if he would get a part-time job at a restaurant - at least he wouldn't starve. He jumped at the offer, enrolled at Santa Rosa Community College and got a job at Lazy J Jay's Bar-B-Q, a job that he actually liked and kept. Jay was a nice family man who owned the place; he took Mike under his wing and Mike finally began to blossom.

During all this turmoil, Steve had quietly graduated from SLT High School and was living in Colorado with my brother and attending the Colorado School of Mines from which he graduated with 2 degrees, civil engineering and geotechnical engineering. He got a masters degree some time later at UC Berkeley. He never gave me an ounce of trouble and always seemed to have good sense and his eye on the goal.

As for me, my years in Lake Tahoe were anything but calm. After a year at the law office I went to work for the SLT City Clerk as her deputy. Then I met John, my new love interest and soon-to-be business partner. John was a building contractor and also on the City Council. He loved to sail and had a fledgling boat business. We decided to become partners and soon we were in the sailboat business full time with a retail shop at the local marina during the summer. The rest of the year we did boat shows in Reno, Sacramento, the delta and San Francisco, hauling the boats to each show and back with the help of John's dad and Steve and Mike when they weren't in school. The pride of our "fleet" was a 40-foot cruiser. She was a beauty, but according to the racing crowd, a slug in the water! But we loved her luxury and roominess. We finally gave up the boat business after a couple of years, as the money we made wasn't worth the time and effort involved.

During this time John was finishing a small shopping center for himself. I opened an ice cream and sandwich shop in one of the units. It was called the Gazebo. I had a local artist recreate Georges Seurat's famous painting "A Sunday on La Grande Jatte" on one whole wall and John built a semi-gazebo inside. It was adorable! But once it was up and running, I became bored, especially during the winter. So, I spent the time studying for my real estate license, passed the test, sold the store and started selling real estate. I enjoyed the independence and the money.

CHAPTER IV
Eventually John sold his shopping center and we moved to Santa Rosa. But the bloom was off the rose of our relationship and we both realized we each had to move on. I joined a real estate company, got my real estate brokers license, bought a condo, and sold real estate. Mike had finished college, gotten his real estate license, and moved to San Francisco, joining a large commercial real estate firm. At the end of 1988, Mike was visiting me one day and was grousing over the fact that he didn't have a date for the company Christmas party - a very fancy affair - sit-down dinner - live band - the works! "I'll be your date," I said with a hopeful smile. "You're on," he beamed.

I got myself all gussied up and met him at the party in San Francisco. Everyone was dressed to the nines, including me. It was there that I met Paul, a broker in the same office. Instant attraction! Then he dropped the bomb - he was moving to Sacramento in 3 months!! Gulp! He begged me to go with him, and silly me, I went - and that's how I ended up in Sacramento. Paul and I were "an item" for about 10 years, selling commercial real estate, doing condominium conversions, in one business or another. But we eventually grew apart, and this time the end came with no guilty parties. We're still very good friends.

But in retrospect, coming to Sacramento turned out not to be silly at all. In fact, I actually began to like Sacramento and still do today. During this time Mike was still living in San Francisco and Steve & his wife, Julie, were living in the East Bay city of Hercules. One day Mike tells me he's tired of the wind and fog and wants to move to Sacramento. I was thrilled to have him back. I knew Steve & Julie weren't happy in Hercules, so I scoured the newspapers for a job for him, finding an ad for one in Auburn. He interviewed, got the job and soon both of my kids were living close by, along with my first grandchild, Brandon.

By 1997 Steve had been working as an engineer for this same company in Auburn for a number of years and wanted to buy into the business. The owner dragged his feet and it became apparent that he wasn’t interested. I was just finishing up a real estate project and was looking for another one. One day Steve was anguishing over his prospects for advancement, when I said to him, “Why don’t we just start our own company?” He blinked, considered for a minute and, as they say, the rest is history. From our modest beginnings – just the two of us (I even learned drafting!) in an unglamorous, tiny office – we now have 14 employees, our own building and still growing.

EPILOGUE
Today, both Steve and Mike are happily married to 2 delightful women; they each have 2 kids, houses with mortgages, and they both live close by. Here’s the whole lot of us at Disneyworld in 2004. I’m in the middle with Steve and his family on the left and Mike and family on the right.

Besides running the engineering company, I travel. Several years ago I decided it would be fun as well as educational to take each of my grandchildren on a trip of their choosing anywhere they want to go (within reason) when they turn 13 or 14. In 2001 my step-grandson Justin and I went to Australia for 3 weeks. What a time we had! In 2006 the next oldest, Brandon, will be 13 and I think we’re going to the Galapagos.

As for me, I remain single and happily so – some people just weren’t cut out to be married; I have a house with no mortgage, 2 wonderful sons, equally wonderful daughters-in-law and 4 terrific grandkids – and, the best part, all of them live close by. I work full-time in the business Steve and I started in 1997 – Sanders & Associates Geostructural Engineering, Inc. (www.sandersgeo.com) – and I have no plans to ever retire completely. I feel extremely fortunate to enjoy good health, a loving family, and a thriving business.