A Little About Me

I suppose I should really tell everyone a little bit about my life. I promise to hit the hight lights and not make this into such a lengthy post:

I was born on April 23, 1927 in Pocatello, Idaho. I lived there until I was 16 never really feeling like we were poor, which we were. There was just my mom and me since my dad had died when I was 10. I was a late child, my mom being 45 when I was born and my dad was 54. When I was 16 my mom and I went to live with my oldest sister in Northern California, and I have been a California Girl since then. I got married a week after my 18th birthday!! Way too early, and all I wanted was to have a large family. That didn't happen until 6 years later and after that time, we had five, four girls, Nancy, Sue, Jayne, Nikki and finally one son, Rich. I'll tell you more about them at a later time.

When I had been married for 25 years, Dick #l left me for another woman and a year later I married Dick #2, whom I have told you all about. When growing up, I honestly cannot remember not playing the violin and yet I can remember clearly my first violin lesson when I was five years old. By the time I was in 5th grade, I was walking all the way across town to the High School so that I could play with their Symphony. I played at the Utah State Fair when I was about twelve. I played a very complicated Concerto and it seems that from that time on I was considered a child prodigy. I really loved playing and my mom never had to force me to practice. In fact a lot of the time, she would have to make me stop. When we moved to California, I found that I couldn't find a teacher, or even a mentor, who was better than I, so I sorta stopped playing for about a year. My husband knew that I wasn't happy so he suggested that I audition for the Burbank Symphony, which I did and I got in right away and ever since then Symphony has been my first love.

I did finally found my mentor in Eunice Wennermark, a wonderful studio musician who had an all girl violin choir consisting of six violinists who played in six part harmony. All the music they played was arranged by one of the talented violinist who was also an arranger. Her name was June Howard. A friend of mine, who belonged to my church and my ward was in that choir and when one of the girls in the group decided to become a nun, it created a vacancy that needed to be filled. My friend, Dorothy Bradshaw, talked me into auditioning for her place. I won the audition and then I had to practice the whole day for about two weeks as "The Wennermark Violin Choir" was a professional group and we were scheduled to go on tour in two weeks time Everything had to be learned by memory and since I was playing the second part, it was not as easy to learn. The music was very difficult too, especially the Bach Preludium, which I had never played before. That particular piece we played in unison and it never failed to bring down the house. I had to join the union, Local 49 and am now,and have been for years, a lifetime member. We also had our own Television Show for 13 weeks. I had a busy and fulfilling life as a pro violinist, getting calls to play in such groups as The Pasadena Sympony (I used to get a lot of these calls, filling in for people that couldn't play a particular condert,with lots of Symphonies around Southern California) and the Santa Monica Opera orchestra. Of course all that changed when we moved to the desert. There really wasn't much opportunity here to play professionaly, but to be honest, I never really wanted to. Playing in church was enough for me until I started to get arthritis so badly that I had to quit altogether.

That is all I am going to write about myslelf at this time, but I am sure you will learn more about me and what I am all about as the time goes by. Right now, I am being called to eat lunch. Dick just got back from Costco and he brought us both a Polish Sausage sandwich with sour krout, pickle relish, onions and mustard, just the way I like them. This, by the way, is the best bargain in the world, in case you don't already know.