Debbie's Bio

Being the oldest grandchild leaves me with a lot of life to put in a short biography. But I will do my best to keep it simple.

I graduated from high school in 1975 and went to a very rural area with a small Presbyterian college. Tarkio College seemed to be somewhat of a unique school considering the location and the various type of students it attracted. Not sure what brought them from the east coast area. Did hear that recruiters told some far fetch stories to persuade prospectives students, such as it never gets cold enough to even need to wear a coat in the winter. Mind you, Tarkio, MO is an hour north of St. Joe, MO and is basically a farming community. Funny thing though, they actually believed the recruiter. And they all stayed the entire 4 years and graduated. The town was not much by itself, but when the college was in full swing it actually had activity going on. We use to say basically the streets of Tarkio rolled up when it was summer. But that is where I worked during the summer months to pay for school. I graduated in 1979 with a BA degree in Music Education.

The summer before my last year of college is when I started dating my husband Sidney. He was interviewing for a recruiting job for the college. Sidney is also a Tarkio College graduate, graduating a year earlier and had just returned from Oxford, England after studying literature there over the past year. At Christmas of the same year we announced our engagement and were married the following May of 1979, just two weeks after my graduation from college.

A week after we returned from our honeymoon in Colorado, Sidney was offered a teaching position as a high school English teacher in Ravenwood, MO, a small rural area near Maryville , MO. He made $9,000 a year as a teacher. I did some substituting for the elementary school and worked part-time for Payless Shoe. I also worked some for the university library and the public library in town. We rented a farm house from the high school art teacher. Sidney was also attending classes at Northwest Missouri State University to earn his Masters Degree in Literature.

In 1983 Sid received a an offer to teach English as a Second Language for King Saud University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. A few months before we left we found out that I was expecting a baby the 1st of March. I was a bit nervous about traveling overseas, especially since this was my first flight and then having a baby in a foreign country and a Third World country at that. But my Indian doctor was great and I received excellent medical care. Aaron Riyadh was born at 10:20 in the evening on March 1, 1984 weighing 8 1/2 lbs (3.2 kilos). Sidney was on cloud nine and walked across the city of Riyadh to our flat since the city busses stopped running at 10:00PM. He could hardly remember how he got home. He passed out cigars to shop keepers along the walk home. They had no idea what the cigars were for but took them anyway.

After three years in Saudi Arabia were returned back to the states and Sidney started his studies for his Doctorate degree in Curriculumn and Instruction at Southern Illinois State Univ. in Carbondale. I did some part time work at the university in the Presidents Office. Aaron was 2 when he started day care. I then found a position as an Assistant Manager for Waldenbooks. In January of 1991 Sid accepted a position as an Instructional Designer for Applied Science Assoc. in Schaumburg, IL. I was able to relocate with Waldenbooks in Arlington Heights, IL. and we commuted from Carpentersville, IL where Aaron attended kindergarten and 1st grade at the public school. In August of 1991, Sidney took a position with Oak Ridge Associated Universities and worked as a contractor for DOE in Tennessee. We purchased our first home in South Clinton, Tennessee. A year and a half later we found ourselves expecting again, but on a checkup visit the sonogram told me that there was twins. Sid was leaving town for a business trip the same day, but after finding out that he was the father of twins the trip was postponed. My due date was December 1, 1992 but because of minor complications a C-section was required on November 2, 1992. Nathaniel Adam was born at 1:00 PM weighing 7 lbs. 5 oz and Ryan Benjamin was born at 1:01 PM weighing 6 lbs. 11 oz. We had suddenly outgrown our small ranch style home which looked more like a day care center for infants with two of everything in just about everyroom. We found a story and a half home in Clinton with a huge back yard, enough space for a swingset for the kids and then some and our bedroom was downstairs away from the boys whose bedrooms were upstairs. Glorious space and room to grow, we could once again walk in our home without tripping over toys or a child.

A year and a half later and after 11 layoffs at ORAU Sid decided that we needed more security and found a job in Chicago with System Software Assoc. Global Technologies. Aaron had completed the 6th grade in Clinton and Nathan and Ryan were 3 years old. We packed up our home in Clinton and bought a home in South Elgin, IL. Although the schools were in bad shape, we manage to have Aaron graduate from high school and have the twins make it through the 3rd grade in the elementary school, but decided that since both Sid and I hold teaching certificates we could give the twins a better education than what we were seeing in the schools. We homeschooled Nathan and Ryan for 3 1/2 years and then made a lifestyle change for all of us. With the boys entering junior high and their curriculumn becoming more demanding which was more than I knew I could handle, it was time to get them back in a public school. Sid was getting weary of his hour commute each morning and evening by train to his office in downtown Chicago. His company permitted him to work from home and with that we decided to move back to Tennessee, in the same small community we moved from 10 years earlier.

Aaron has been living in Seattle since shortly after his high school graduation and is presently working for Pioneer Organic Foods. Nathan and Ryan love the middle school here and are both presently in the school drama club. Sid is busy with work, sometimes night and day. And I'm trying to fix up the house. We have a landscaper coming to redo the yard. But the best is seeing the hills of the Appalachian range from our front yard and watching all the wildlife playing.