Ginger 78 - Kirkpatrick Martin

I attended TJC after graduation. I married the first time in August 1981 and moved to Rosharon, TX-South of Houston. I had both kids while down there. Moved back to Whitehouse in 1986-divorced and lost my mother to cancer in 1990. I did bookkeeping and worked my way up to Manager for Sherwin-Williams Paint Company. A mutual friend introduced me to my husband, Joe in 1992. We were married in 1994 and moved to Hallsville, TX. My son, Jason played on the Varsity Football team as kicker and punter, he also played on Varsity Soccer. My daughter, Sabrina was in band until her Junior year when she joined the drill team. She also started modeling that summer. Our house became the house to come to on Friday nights after the home games. We provided food, hot tub and a place to unwind. I had 8 kids who I called my "adoptive" kids and who called me mom. They would show up at 1 or 2 in the morning needing someone to talk to. To my surprise my husband put up with this. I know this is probably a surprise to those of you who remember me as being shy and quiet, but I worked for Sherwin-Williams Paint Co for 23 years. You couldn't stay shy around all those contractors and male employees. I had to learn to defend myself with comebacks. I had to deal with alot of discrimination because I worked in a male dominated job. As a manager, I had a customer who told my assistant manager I was just a "housewife". To bad for him--he needed my approval for credit for an out of town job. Needless to say, he didn't get it.

My son, Jason was in the Army-the 101st Airborne for 6 years and then came home and did his Army reserve. His military duty provided several gray hairs. He was part of the advance attack group when the war in Iraq started. He tried to keep me from worrying about him by keeping things from me. He was in Iraq for a year and Afghanistan for 6 months. He became a Sgt after Iraq.

My daughter, Sabrina started working for the Diagnostic clinic and has been moved up to the position of doing Nuclear Stress Test for the Cardiologists at the Diagnostic clinic. Her and Brian were married in 2005. She has 2 sons: Carson is 5 years old; and Jack is 22 months old.

I have several hobbies that I'm self taught in: Photography; painting(I've had to switch from oil to acrylic because the smell makes me sick now) floral arranging and woodworking (yes I have my own scrollsaw-thank you very much). My husband, Joe and I share the love of photography and woodworking. I started doing genealogy 2 years ago and got hooked. I've put together a family genealogy/cookbook for the Dark family.

My senior year, I was called to the office to see Mr. Hagan. I couldn't figure out why. He told me he just wanted to put a name to the face and make sure everything was going ok. He was doing that to all those who were never in trouble and he didn't know through other school activities.