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Today's Featured Biography

 
Patricia Maude

6/11 UPDATE: Lots of changes in our family since last August: Mom and I bought a house together in Huntington Harbor and moved-in this Spring, a lovely place that has now hosted several family gatherings and will see many parties in the future. Mom's house on DeAdalena Street is on the market and I'll be renting out my house in Long Beach. I have a brand new grand-nephew, which makes two, who is adorable. Our family has become much closer and I enjoy the newfound closeness. Thank you all for such love and support.


Hi everyone!

After reading so many of your profiles one thing is for sure – we have all enjoyed very different roads since June of 1969! I never would have imagined that you all wouldn’t be a part of my daily life, but most of us have gone on to the responsibilities of adulthood, which we just couldn’t wait to reach, and making our own decisions: 1) marriage, 2) children, and/or 3) a bigger/better job to earn bigger/better money to buy bigger/better stuff. Guess I wasn’t a very good decision maker because couldn’t decide on the first 2 of 3 so I’ve focused on #3 and have been officially branded a (gasp!) workaholic!!!

After RHS I earned an AA degree from Pasadena City College, a BA in Art from CSULB and a teaching credential which I didn’t use. I continued taking fun classes at night – Japanese, fencing, as in En Garde! and other fun stuff I didn’t have time for during college. Now, after so many years of working and making things happen, I look forward to retirement, like all my older friends are enjoying. The only problem is I don’t know what I’d do to fill my days and I absolutely HATE Jerry Springer so guess I’ll keep showing up at the office where they let me play with the computer all day. If I ever do retire I hope to have a little studio to design and make the jewelry I love so much. So far, the money for jewelry’s all going out, not coming in!

I have had the good fortune to do some traveling including Japan: remember July 21, 1969? I was on the Ginza in Tokyo watching a TV in a department store window and Neil Armstrong was taking his first step on the moon. A number of Japanese people shook my hand to congratulate me. Sheesh – like I had anything to do with it! But, it was thrilling, and the trip sparked a life-long love of travel, collecting Asian décor and jewelry. After seeing all of the lower 48 states, most of them from the back of our family station wagon when I was a kid, trips to Canada to visit our foreign relatives, and many trips to Mexico I toured England, Ireland and Scotland with Janice Burke not long before she passed away in 1985, and over the past few years have enjoyed a romantic frolic in Tahiti, several road trips through Italy, Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic with other stops in St. Maartin, Croatia, Greece and Turkey (ask me about the 24 refugees our ship’s crew plucked out of the water between Greece & Turkey after their boat sank!). This New Year’s Eve I’ll be freezing my tushy off in Paris, drinking champagne at the Eiffel Tower at the stroke of midnight. I’m so sorry I won’t be able to see you at the Reunion - I’ll be traveling.

Mom still lives on DeAdalena Street, she just turned 89, still runs her own business and travels with her girlfriends. Dad passed away in 1992 which was the shock of my life – I thought my hero would live forever.

Life has its ups and downs and I’m certainly not where I expected to be at this point in my life but there’s always magic around the corner. I’ll always remember the younger, fresher versions of ourselves when we were much more innocent and looking for our magic moments. Life is good!

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