The summer of 1979 saw me moving to Washington, D.C. to work for the Federal Bureau of Investigation as a Fingerprint Examiner in a specialty unit. After a brief stint while assigned to a specialty unit that contained thousands of unique prints (criminals with few fingers or no fingers, footprints, diplomats family members) I learned that one would not move up the Civil Service ladder without a college degree so 1982 saw me enrolled at Austin Peay State University with a declared major in Criminology. Life happened while at Austin Peay, I met the man who would become my husband and joined the Army while pursuing my degree. While Murf was in Korea I transferred all my credits toward a degree in nursing and we moved from Clarksville to Newport News, Virginia. Our best experience while in Virginia was when we became parents to Abigail in August of 1988. Life then took us to Fort Polk, Louisiana where Matthew and Elizabeth were born. Operation Desert Storm changed our lives again and Murf and I were deployed simultaneously, my orders took me to Fort Bragg, N.C. and Fort Benning, Georgia as a backfill nurse and the Transportation Corps sent Murf to Fort Hood, Texas for several months. After the war, our paths took another turn, this time toward the civilian life and we decided to move to Dickson with our three small children. Nursing has remained my profession and I am truly blessed to be in the line of work when you see people at their absolute best and their absolute worst and you know that at the end of your shift that you have made a difference in your patient's life. So even though the destination of my original dream has made a detour, the most important thing is that I have enjoyed the journey! The very inspirational and talented Erma Bombeck summed it all up with "When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say I used everything You gave me".

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