Photos of Places I've Lived-Final Chapter(1973-2009)

Patricia, Anissa, and I, headed south to Centerville, Ohio, yesterday afternoon. The destination was Hal's girlfriend, Lisa's condo in that quaint berg just south of Dayton off I-75. We visited for a few hours with Hal, Lisa, and Tim }Lisa's dad}, and the dogs....they fixed supper on the grill outside, and we got a chance to do a little talking...Tim and I hit it off, he seems like he's on the save wave length in his outlook as we are. We had a good time and some good conversation. Thank you Lisa, for the hospitality.

Lisa is finishing Law School at the University of Dayton this coming school year, and will take her bar exam next May I believe...she and Hal seem to hit it off pretty well and time will tell what happens there...hopefully both can get the gainful opportunities they want in the work place after all is said and done. Hal, just off his Masters at Wright State, did not secure a High School teaching job as he had hoped...but does have a good job working with Autistic youth, and is starting on a correspondence program at Penn State, which he can take on line as he continues to work. Needless to say, he still would like to teach High School and coach down the road. Things are tight everywhere in the ObamaNation, but having skills and the education that Hal and Lisa have, will certainly help them no matter the economic outlook.

The sky is leaden gray this morning, and rain is all around, but as usual, this small swath of west central Ohio has been left out, and our ground remains hard as a rock...maybe before the morning ends, we will get some of the left overs.

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Photos from the places I have lived, The final Chapter 1973-2009____

After my Air Force days were done in May of 1972 I returned home to Celina, Ohio, for a spell...living here for the most part since that time, I have ventured off{mainly during my radio broadcasting days} to various other places in the Midwest and Plains.

In 1977 shortly after Patricia and I were married, we picked up the Airedales and our belongings and headed to her home state of Wisconsin...not Oconomowoc, her hometown, but north to Wausau, located in the far northwoods. I went to broadcast school at Trans American there, Patricia worked for an investment company, then at Wausau South Hospital, where Anissa was born in February 1979. Not letting the grass grow under my feet, we spent the next 18 months living on the radio.

First stop was Kokomo, Indiana, at WIOU radio in the central Indiana town, located just 90 miles due west of Celina...after a short stay there, it was on to the wild west of Dodge City, Kansas, where I plied my radio skills as News Director of KGNO, the 50,000 watt blowtorch of southwestern Kansas. About this time I realized that moving around the country every 6 or 9 months was no way to live...so in the summer of 1980, I applied for and got a radio job back home at the local station WCSM. I would stay there for nearly 3 years as Program and Sports Director/Morning Drive DJ, before finally a job opened at the Mercer County Health Department...I was in Celina for the duration, at least living here. After 8 years at the local health department, I took the position of Environmental Health Director in my birth county of Van Wert, where I stayed until retiring in 2002....during my years in the Health Department{s} I also stayed busy part time in radio and doing Cable TV news and sports broadcasts in Van Wert.
I spent the next 5 years driving RVs around the country for delivery, except for baseball season, when I umpired High School baseball...when the bottom fell out of the RV business thanks to the Bush-Obama "stimu-less bail outs", I picked up my basketball license and now enjoy my time doing football, baseball, and basketball, at the high school level...frankly I enjoy being "retired", although at times I put in more hours actually working than I ever did in Radio/Cable TV and Environmental Health.

Photo Descriptions-{top left}A night view of the Celina Lighthouse on Grand Lake and West Bank Road..below that is a daytime look as viewed from the west looking east. {top right} Our house, where we have lived since 1995, after my summer painting project, the house was built as a church parsonage in the winter of 1923. Dodge City is for sure one of the "Crossroads" of America, as you can see by the major highways{but no Interstate} that runs though the town. Next is the front view our the house on Brandon Street in Celina that I purchased in 1974....located just a block to the north of our current home. Who says you can't come home again? Downtown Kokomo, where we lived in during the last half of 1979. And a look out our front window of the farm house we lived in during our years in Northern Wisconsin...the Blizzard of March 1979 was a good one. Historic Front Street in Dodge City, Kansas. Patrica, Anissa, and I "Got out of Dodge" in the summer of 1980. And finally a dilapidated barn in Marathon County, Wisconsin...we lived on terrain such as this during our stay in Marathon County from 1977 though mid 1979...living half way between Wausau and Merrill right on the Marathon-Lincoln Line Road on a rental Horse Farm. And I would be remiss if I didn't add a photo of the old Andrews Farm house on Coldwater Creek. This is where we lived when the boys were born and they and Anissa loved the place as kids when we lived there for a decade from 1980 through the summer of 1990.

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