What have you been doing since leaving Reliance High:
I did not make it until 1959. I left school on the eighth day of my sophomore year to go to Chamberlain, get a room and a job and on with my life.
After we married, we followed the Atomic Energy Commission and the oilfields through NM, CO, UT, WY, CA, NV, NE, MT, ND before returning to Oacoma, SD after the oil fields shut down. Ed started his housing construction business and I started dabbling with my Stallman genealogy.My aunt, Victoria Stallman probably didn't know it, but she was our first Stallman historian/genealogist and had one of those familial treasure troves everyone would like to inherit and fortunately for me, I inherited hers and the rest, as they say, is history.
I became very involved in civic matters with the City of Oacoma; clerked at the Oacoma post office, historical preservation (Hotel Taft, Gov. MQ Sharpe house, the historic double bridges between Oacoma and Chamberlain. Sadly, both buildings were burned to the ground by arsonists. I worked for the Chamberlain-Oacoma Register as a columnist/reporter until it was sold.
I wrote and published the "Stallman Family History, 1881-1981" and genealogy got in my blood. In 1986, fellow RHS graduate, Marlys Swanson-Cosgrove, and I, along with three Brule county ladies, organized the Lyman-Brule Genealogical Society. She and I co-chaired the publication of a three-county history book and I have been involved in several cookbooks and a local history book.
In 1996, I took on a project as county coordinator for the genealogy of Lyman County with SDGENWEB, affiliated with the USGENWEB. I am a professional genealogist and webmaster of six familial websites.
We are both retired. Mr. Speck fishes or putters outside all summer and eats sweets all winter. I can almost always be found (anytime between 12 noon and 3 a.m) at my computer. So, in answer to what I have been doing ... this pretty much sums it up.
