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Today's Featured Biography

Christine Graves Grant

After high school, I graduated from the College of Idaho in 1969. In 1968 I got married, and finished a one year internship in Medical Technology at Virginia Mason Hospital in Seattle. We moved to Portland, Ore where I got my first job in Microbiology. My husband was attending Optometry school.

After working for 4 years, my husband joined the Air Force
and we moved to Rantoul Illinois. Interesting experience. It was a nice place to be from. However, we spent almost every weekend traveling within the midwest; We just picked a direction and land somewhere. We found out we were travel bugs!

We went back to Portland where my husband bought a practice and I returned to my old job at Oregon Health Sciences University where I had worked before we left. I also enrolled in graduate school. In order to do this I had to work every weekend as a Med Tech Microbiologist to earn enough money to pay for the schooling. I finished the Masters in 1979. This degree says Masters in Medical Technology with a Specialty in Microbiology.

The next few years of my life were full of drama, and change. After 10 years of trying to get pregnant, we decided to adopt a child or two since we weren't able to get pregnant. When it was all done, we got a beautiful red haired girl, newborn, in January 1980. Three months later we got our son, a Korean born 6 year old male.They are all healthy and raising their families.

A couple of years after this most delightful part of me life, I decided that I had to make some spiritual changes in my life. I accepted the Lord and became a Christian. It opened my eyes and realized our marriage was not going to make it. We divorced in 1986.

For 8 years I was a single parent, trying to get the kids past the teenage years. Oh e-vay! I had been working the whole time in Microbiology, and left OHSU for a brief time to try a management position. Decided that wasn't for me and came back to OHSU. Then the career surprise of a lifetimes. OHSU decided to combine Microbiology labs, so essentially all of the Miicrobiologists, most having worked 25-30 years, were laid off. I had to make some decisions,

I accepted a job in clinical research, which means you are looking for ways to identify drug resistance or in our case, looking at identify antibiotics that would work on fungus. Sounds wonderful, huh. It was interesting, but then my boss left. I was getting tired of being a ship without a rudder, so I accepted a position as being a study coordinator. In my case, I started in infectious disease which is my specialty, and switched to Bone Marrow Transplant which had more opportunity for learning. I got exactly what I wanted. In case you don't know what a study coordinator is, its a person that runs and supervises a particular clinical trial. How that usually happens is that you are assigned a trial and you must manage everything on that trial, making sure that the data that is collected is collected is sound, and make sure the patient on the trial is not suffering undo harm. It was just like being back in college. Later on they offered a certification for this career based on work experience, and I obtained mine.

I managed to stay a study coordinator for 16 years. I was a microbiologist for 27 years, I retired so I could come back to Idaho and help take care of my dad who was quite ill with brain cancer.. My 86 yo step mom was his caregiver and she did a wonderful job. As dime went on he lost his ability to speak so as to be understand, and mercifully God took him after a very nasty end 3 years after he was diagnosed. My mom, who is now a widow, now manages her household. She will be 90 in December.

So that's my story except the best part. In 1990 I met and married my current husband. We met at a party I had given but didn't know the guests because my friend did all the inviting. It was a mixture of people, some married, some single. We were doing a praise and worship party. I said hi to everyone but didn't remember particularly anyone that was there. My husband called and thanked me for the party, we got to talking, and I said, "You don't by any chance know how to take out a toilet?" I was remodeling my bathroom and needed the toilet. The next words out of his mouth was "Yes." For the next 6 months we remodeled both of our houses, and then we got married.

When I was younger I used to cry my eyes out to have children. I was blessed with two, and now I had three more. I am happy to say we have had our moments, but we have pretty good relationships with our kids, an occasional hiccup now and then. I love them all, they are all unique to me because I didn't birth them so I find them very interesting and I am proud of them all. I also wanted another girl, because I was going to name her Terri after my high school best friend Terri My kids even came with the right names. I got my Terri! Careful what you pray for! You might get it.

Our second-oldest grandson got married this summer. We gained a new lovely daughter named Emily. Life is good.

We resettled in Emmett after retirement. Why you ask? Because we had a few rental houses in Emmett and Caldwell and we knew the communities. Caldwell was out of the question. Emmett is frozen in time. Very little crime or drama. That makes the cops bored and I have been stopped in 3 years more times than I ever was in Portland. In fact I was never stopped in Portland in 43 years. They have bigger fish to fry. I am trying my hardest to not speed and not go too slow.:) I don't know about this growing old stuff..

Hope you all are healthy and happy

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