Subject: Bio for Diana (Dee at PHS) Pendleton Wade
Date: Sun, 11 Aug 2002 18:49:54 EDT
From: Dee Pendleton
To: ALL

Hello to all!

Laraine and Todd have truly been inspirational regarding the upcoming reunion...with their brilliant e mail facilitation. Hats off to them and to all of you who are working so hard on getting everybody together. I'm really sorry Gary and I can't make it back to Peoria for the occasion... we'll aim for the 50th, however!

Life is good in Loveland, Colorado. We retired here a year ago after 30 years on a sunny sandbar in the Gulf of Mexico called Galveston Island. Our house on the water was literally three feet above sea level...and now we're well over a mile high. From horrendous humidity to quite the opposite... we adjusted quickly and love our new Rocky Mountain high lifestyle. (Hmmmm ...hope that doesn't get taken the wrong way!) Our house here is well-situated to receive visitors on their way to Rocky Mountain National Park... so keep that in mind if you're on your way up there for hiking and fabulous scenery. (45 minutes from our place.)

GW and I celebrated our 35th wedding anniversary this month. I'll send a photo to Todd for the website. Some of you may remember my "involvement" with this "younger man" (East Peoria HS class of '64) that began during my senior year. It was a smart move that I've never regretted! We have a daughter (Jennifer - 32) who lives 45 minutes from here in Lafayette, CO with her husband Mike and their 3 year old daughter, Abby. She is Abby Rose...as Rose is their last name. They are expecting a second baby in February. (Naturally I'll send a picture of the Abster for the website as well.)

After 80 plus years in Peoria, we persuaded my folks and my aunt to relocate to Loveland this year...and much of our time and energy has been expended in handling all the moving details. I'm glad to report that the oldsters are adjusting well to their new environs ( a neat retirement community about 10 minutes from us)...and particularly enjoy our scenic excursions into the mountains. Quite a change from those beautiful flat Illinois cornfields. (We think they are particularly beautiful as we all continue to maintain our interests in acreage that's been part of my family for well over 100 years down in the Leroy area.)

That's the update...here's a bio.
Left Peoria at 18 for Chicago and nursing school. Another move I've never regretted. Being an RN has led me into some interesting jobs...none of them involving direct patient care...and all of them involving administrative duties with better hours and a fair amount of excitement with opportunities for learning and growth. I was never cut out for blood and guts...even in nursing school my specialty was psychiatry. Give me a good game of bridge or Ping-Pong with a psych patient any day...or psychodrama or group therapy sessions to lead..and save the "ER stuff" for somebody else.

I cannot confess that going into medicine was altruistic in any way for me. The lure was CHICAGO. How I love that city!!! We were there when they burned down a lot of the west side after Martin Luther King was killed...with National Guard posted in the lobby of our medical center apartment building. (I'll never forget having to move a bayonet in order to open my mailbox one day!) We could prop ourselves up in bed every night and watch the fires burning across the expressway. I was also there, working nights in a locked psych ward, when Richard Speck murdered all those student nurses on the south side.

One of my patients offered to protect me and give me a "safe" walk home the night Speck was still "on the loose." I think his motives had more to do with his own notions of escape than my safety, so I'm glad I declined. The Democratic National Convention that got out of hand under Mayor Daley's regime (the FIRST Mayor Daley) was another highlight of our years in Chicago.

When I look back on how nervous it made my parents to have me living in the neighborhood with one of the highest crime rates in a largely crime ridden city, I have to give them a lot of credit for not hassling me more about my years there.

Gary finished up his U of I studies in Chicago and we then spent two years in Colorado (Jen was born at Fitzsimmons Army Hospital) while GW served his two years in the Army Medical Specialist Corps as an OT ... working mainly with the injured vets returning from Viet Nam. Then we were off to Texas for his (what turned out to be) 30 years with the University of Texas Medical Branch, Department of Rehab Services in Galveston.

I was mostly a stay at home Mom till Jen was 6...although I got heavily into pottery at the local arts center and my jeans were so covered with clay, they'd stand up by themselves in the corner when I took them off at night. Finally decided that selling my pots and being a church secretary wouldn't help much with the new mortgage, so I started work at a 300 bed hospital in Galveston as their Risk Manager and Quality Assurance director. Got out of that game after 12 years and was accepted into a novel writing colloquium at Rice University which was to last 7 years. My 500 page unfinished novel is gathering dust right now, along with a similarly unfinished children's book and an extra spicy medical novel, as family pursuits take precedence. However, I will get them finished and get back to short stories too. I was happy to get one of those published a couple of years back.

Also slipped in 9 years working for the Medical Director at the home office of a large insurance company and became a Certified Professional Coder along that route, before we hung it up and moved to Colorado. Our best to all of you...and we hope to see you in ten years at the fiftieth! /dw