Janis Kay Hendrickson Landon

I left Texas a year after graduating and followed my parents to NM. I returned to Austin shortly after to live there one more year. After leaving Austin in 1978 I moved to NM, where I met my husband. His job took us to NM, CA, KS, and NE. I lived in Nebraska from1996 until October 2024 when we decided to move to Arizona, but we’ll return to NE and Texas to visit family now and then. For 17 years I had a very successful career as a contract analyst with a large insurance company. In October 2012 I gave notice that I was going to retire the following May at the young age of 56. Two weeks before retiring, I finally earned my BA, fulfilling the biggest wish on my bucket list.

I was an Air Force brat and moved to Austin from Germany the summer before my junior year at Reagan. Growing up, I never had a problem making friends and fitting in because we lived in base housing and everyone was in the same boat. Coming to a new school just before my junior year proved to be a bit more of a challenge. I hung out with Margaret James, Debi Seidenberger, Scott Druian, and Phil Miner (who I dated my junior year and most of my senior year), as well as a few others. I loved my 11th grade English teacher, Mrs. P., (Panagopolous) and I'm sure she wasn't fooled every time Margaret and I would get to her class late (after lunch) claiming to have run out of gas, gotten a flat tire, etc.

Luckily my closest friends attended LBJ with me for our senior year (Margaret James and Scott Druin) Margaret and I did a dumb thing on the day of senior pictures. We switched places in line and forevermore my name is listed by Margaret's picture and hers is listed by mine in the yearbook. Memories of that year are pretty fuzzy and I lost touch with everyone I used to know. It's only been a few years that I've reconnected with Margaret through Facebook.