Along the Road to Home

In April of 1979 I was only 4 weeks away from receiving my teaching degree back home in Kansas.  I had taken the "six year plan", having put school on hold during my senior year when I got married.  It was good to finally be able to know that sooner or later, all that hard work would pay off and I would be able to secure a teaching position. One Saturday morning in April as I walked out of the post office back in my hometown of Haven, I ran into Mr. Harold Voth.  Harold was the superintendent of the Haven district and a man I greatly admired.  We stopped for a moment and visited.  He asked about how much more school was left for me and when I told him that my graduation was quickly approaching, Mr. Voth looked at me and smiled.   "I've got a couple of positions open.  Would you come to work for us here at Haven?", he asked me. That was it.  A five-minute conversation on the sidewalk in front of the post office flagpole in Haven was my...

Some of the best advice my father gave me came when I was starting high school and had brought up the subject of cosmetics.  I don't even know how the father-daughter conversation began  that evening, but I suppose I must have been talking about spending some of my hard earned money at the counter of the local drugstore in town.  My dad looked at me and with a smile on his face said the sweetest of things to his little girl. "Peggy Ann, you don't need to be wearing makeup.  You are a pretty enough girl without it." And you know what?  For some reason I believed him that night and never once have I  worn any makeup.   I can't imagine how many thousands of dollars I have saved over the years or how many hours of time I've been able to give to doing other things instead of standing in front of the mirror in the mornings.  The truth is that if I did try to wear makeup now, I'd probably feel a little silly.  So I think I'll just stick to my ...