As often happens, life gets in the way of best intentions. So, in the spirit of 2020; better late than never; here is my quick look back at the past 50+ years.

After briefly attending UMD, Craig Welch, 1960 DCHS grad, and I were married and raised three wonderful children. I later attended The College of St. Scholastica. Craig's career as a corporate communications executive began in Duluth and then took us on many adventures in locations all across the country. We learned a lot and made great friends everywhere. Eventually, we settled in California, which has been home base for the past 30+ years.

Sadly, our beautiful daughter Mary passed away in 1994; my husband Craig in 2011. Our two sons and their families live nearby and I see them often. I now reside with my partner, Ken Gunderson. We enjoy visiting with family, camping, Stanford Football, & getting together with our circle of friends.

Over the years, as the spouse of a transferring executive, I patched together a career in various fields, beginning as Copy Chief in the advertising department of The Glass Block department store in Duluth. After that I moved on to roles in customer service, then held various writing positions, finally settling into sales and marketing. My last corporate position was at Sun Microsystems, in Menlo Park, CA, at the campus now serving as headquarters for Facebook. At Sun, I wrote executive speeches and developed slide presentations. My responsibilities also included integrating Services Division executives into meetings with enterprise customers from around the world, at Sun's Executive Briefing Center.

The Sun experience was an exciting time of learning more about evolving technology and the benefits it provided to customers. After leaving Sun in 2009, I continued to develop executive presentations for Silicon Valley companies on a part-time basis.

Living in so many different places provided interesting moments, such as entering my first (and only) quick-draw contest in Scottsdale AZ. I still don't know how it happened, but I managed to draw and fire in 3/100ths of a second 2013; to take first place! Another time, through making a purchase at a Sunnyvale CA store, I unknowingly entered a lottery, and surprisingly, won the grand prize - a new Ford Thunderbird. Still, it is the fascinating characters I met all across the country that make for the greatest storytelling.

These days, I enjoy travel, genealogy research, and writing memoirs about the wonderful, poignant, amusing, and sometimes mysterious experiences of growing up in Northern Minnesota. Life is good!

Work: IT Marketing Manager
Spouse: Craig (Deceased)
Children: 3 (1 Deceased)
Grandchildren: 2 Grandsons
Information update: 04/20/2022