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Today's Featured Biography

 
Sharon (Gail) Rowe Stamler

Graduated from West Texas State University BA 1966
MA from Golden Gate University 1979

Married my college sweetheart and moved all over the world with him. (He was a fighter pilot). Worked in a great many different jobs in many different states and countries.

Our two daughters graduated from high school in Naples, Italy. Our oldest daughter has a nine year old daughter, Maggie, who's working on becoming a teenager! She is a civil engineer.
Our youngest daughter has twin boy, Richard and Jacob, who are almost 20. She and her husband live on a boat on Lake Lewisville (north of Dallas).

My husband retired from the Air Force in 1992. We spent the next ten years traveling around in our motorhome being catastrophic insurance adjusters. We traveled all over the US and met a cast of wacky characters along the way. We retired for good in 2004 and travel quite a bit. It has been a really fun ride.
I have enjoyed the monthly reunion newsletter and the website, plus looking back through the yearbook. The reunion in October should be fun. I hope a lot of classmates are there and I am saddened by those who have died too soon.
I moved to Midland my senior year. I'm shocked when I hear about bullying in school these days. That was just not done back in the olden days. We all got along remarkably well...go figure? (Although the football players waited for me to step on the Bulldog the first day of school and loudly pointed it out!) But moving my senior year made me whine that I'd never move when I got married. Was I wrong!
When Dick and I married, I thought going into the Air Force was going to be a minor inconvenience ....something we did for four years and then got on with our life. Was I wrong! After spending 25 years as a military wife, I can't begin to tell you the sacrifices made by the families. But I decided early on that I could "do this happy or do this sad", so I chose happy. We moved countless times and I've had untold numbers of jobs, done (mostly) with a good sense of humor and with great anticipation of the adventure. Who knew I'd be able to travel the world, meet interesting people, and live in places where history was made?
In Germany I trekked around WWII sites and read war books in which I never thought I'd be interested. In Italy, it was the Roman Empire that struck my fancy. In Turkey, learning about the Moslem religion and finding the most intact Roman ruins in the world was surprising. Spain brought Christopher Columbus and the Moors and the incredibly beautiful country. In Alaska, we learned to eat moose meat and caribou hotdogs and that it's really really dark and cold in the winter. In Hawaii, we learned that Oahu is a very small island. In North Carolina, we learned that we do not speak their language. We speak Virginia and New Mexico and California.

In all, I tasted the wine and sampled the food, made friends, read books, played games, listened to music on CDs and traveled. We had no radio or TV (no email or cell phone either)! (You do not want to play Trivial Pursuit with me on the category of Arts and Entertainment!) Dick speaks German, one daughter speaks German, one daughter speaks Italian (she had an Italian boyfriend who we just reunited with in September on a trip to Naples). Dick says I speak "shopping" in several languages. I.e., I can buy anything in any color in any size and I can eat! Did you know that the word for wine in Turkish sounds just like "shutup"?

Ours girls attended college in Texas, so that's why we're here...you marry who you date, so both ended up in Texas. It's so nice to know who to call when the electricity goes off and feeling fairly confident the water will not be turned off for three days! But I must say that moving is now in our DNA, so we travel instead to "scratch that itch". We've learned it's much easier to pack a bag than to pack up all your household "stuff". We both feel incredibly lucky to have our health, old friends, our sense of humor and a happy life together.

Unfortunately, we have committed to a pilot training reunion (45 years) in New Hampshire on the same weekend in October. I know the reunion with be successful and it's mostly due to the efforts of Russell Smith and Betty Melzer Moore who I've enjoyed getting to know.

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