It’s been great hearing about all the wonderful things my classmates have done – and are doing. After graduation, I attended MJC for a year then not being particularly inspired left and went to work.  I worked nine years for Palmer Bank and during that time my best position was as Computer Programmer. That was in 1967 and the language was Burroughs Advanced Assembler II – the only software that was provided was a sort program.  Back then, there were no monitors and the 64K memory was the Size of two large office desks stacked on top of another two.  You had to read the lights on the  CPU to figure out what was wrong, when part of your program didn’t work.  It was great fun and sort of like living in a giant puzzle. 

After the programming load dried up I went back to work in the bank and decided that banking wasn’t my thing.  I went back and finished MJC and at that time worked at several mini-jobs, most fun was making clown costumes for Ringling Bros.  Then I went to work for Sarasota County Clerk of Circuit court in the accounting office. 

In 1974 I vacationed in Greece and Italy, met my husband on a train between Bologna and Florence. Then returned to Sarasota, sold my new VW. got rid of most of my stuff,  sent myself several bags of books to Perugia and returned to Hassan, a Syrian medical student . I had no idea what the future would bring.  That was September of 1974, we moved to Rome in January of ’75 when Hassan got a job with his embassy.  I managed to get a job in June with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.  The next several years we lived in Rome and traveled extensively in Italy, we also went to Syria, Germany, Switzerland and Tunisia. Since  Hassan’s death in 1995 I’ve also gone to Austria and Costa Rica and Abu Dhabi..  In 2001 I retired from FAO where I spent much of my career as an accounting assistant.  I worked with investments and record-kept and did all transactions for up to $700 million for many of those years, the job was exacting and I enjoyed it. 

I returned to Florida in the fall of 2001 (my sisters, air conditioning and the better traffic here were main factors)  and bought a condo unit in Lakewood Ranch (Bradenton, east of I75) . I quilt as a hobby and am President of my Condo, and active in village government and my church.  It’ll be great to see y’all in October.