I like the life I led. I was an Iowa farm kid, growing up in the depression and our family suffered from the drought that plagued the midwest in the early 1930’s. I had amazing parents, a father who only went through the 8th grade but could quote Shakespeare and the Bible and a mom with musical abilities, who’d played for the silent movies. She could play almost any piano arrangement by ear and knew thousands of songs. I had to go away to high school and live with an aunt, worked my way through college with a little help from my folks. I was successful in terms of what women were to accomplish in my day when I met this guy, another poor kid, who was very good-looking, very smart and was educated by the US Navy and the Army. Because of him, I lived an upper middle-class life. I lived in Germany from 1950-52 and had five children who all became very successful. I am now 90 living alone in my own home and missing my husband. Along the way, I did a lot of volunteer work. The hardest was a child advocate for kids with learning disabilities. The most interesting case was a child who’d been expelled from school because he needed help and sent to an alternative school for juvenile delinquents. I got him reinstated in his school, got the alternative school closed for civil rights violations,  won the battle and lost the war. The boy dropped out of school and I saw his name in the paper for a DUI. But I figure I helped 14 kids directly and thousands indirectly. So as I said, I think I’ve lived an interesting life as the wife of a surgeon, mother of five successful children and having met wonderful and interesting people.