Comments:
During this weird and scary time, I've enjoyed reading the Classmate Profiles of the BHS Class of 1970 in anticipation of our 50th Reunion this summer. When I got to mine, I realized it was quite out of date. Now feels like a good time to bring it up to date.
After high school and college, I married our classmate, Sally Frank, in !976, while I was still in Law School at the U of I. Sally was a pharmacist (she worked for Osco Drug) and after law school we moved back to Bloomington where I started a 34 year career in the Law Department of State Farm. We spent the majority of those years in Bloomington, but did spend 2 years in Sacramento. CA.
When we returned to Bloomington from California (in 1993) with our two children, Katie and Brian, we bought classmate Ellie Livingston's old house on Monroe St., from her mother. Even though I sold it in 2018, my kids still consider it "our family home."
At our 2010 Class Reunion, I had retired from SF and Sally was fighting cancer. As many of you know, it claimed her life in April 2011 and her obituary is posted on her class profile. Sally and I were living primarily in Venice, Florida when she passed away and that's where I spend most of the year now. I was a pretty miserable widower after Sally's death and leaned heavily on my kids and grandchildren ( I now have 4) for support. They were a blessing!
Then in January 2016, I began dating Stefanie Dooley, another BHS grad (a few years after us--OK 13). Like Sally, Stefanie had lived most of her life in Bloomington (unbeknownst to me, Sally had been Stefanie's "nanny" in the summer of 1967) and so we knew each other a little before we began dating. We had fun, the fun turned into something more and then we fell in love. So, on November 23, 2018, we were married at a small family ceremony at our church in Venice.
Stefanie has two children of her own, Tate (age 24) and Ellie (age 17). Tate is an IWU grad working for a publishing company and engaged to be married later this year. Ellie attends a small boarding high school in Utah. Stefanie also owns a cottage in Ludington, Michigan where we spend the summers (Florida is too hot and humid).
My own kids are grown and married now. I've been fortunate to have Katie (age 40) and her husband Dalan Thornton (another BHS grad) living close by in Sarasota, Florida. So I've been able to mess up their kids (Alexa, age 10, and Knox, age 5) already. Brian married a girl from Puerto Rico that he met at medical school. They've lived in Minneapolis, St. Louis, and now Philadelphia--BUT are moving to Florida in September. So I'll have 2 more grandkids (Maia, age 3, and Mireya, age 1) to spoil starting this fall.
I hope we all stay healthy in the coming months and are able to gather in August for the reunion. Regardless, thank you for sharing snippets of your life vicariously on our Class website.