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Please be patient while this page loads, it is very graphic intensive. The text below was written in 2002. Much has happened in my life since I did these pages originally, but since much of this text is still so, I will leave it, I just wanted you to be aware that it is not new, just still appropriate in many ways. Since I first put up these pages, I found out why I had become increasingly ill for the previous five years. In August 2002 I was diagnosed with lung cancer, which I had had for a long time, which meant a long and arduous treatment. I finished treatment the end of November, 2003, and we moved from Alaska to Oregon the next week. Then we spent 3 months nursing my mother, in poor health, who subsequently died; the rest of that year I was ill with unrelated health problems, made worse due to the cancer treatment. This year I am recovering [except for a current broken ankle], and I'm finally able to spend some time on my family genealogy. You will find some updating on most pages, but on these photo pages I still have a lot to do. On to the old text now... It has occurred to me lately that I owe a great deal to computers. I know some people have no place for them in their lives, but I cannot say that. I owe the success of at least one career, and probably two, to the computer. That is actually the least of the things that I owe the computer, however. I owe the renewed contact with my family, and with my husband's family, to the widespread use of computers; I owe it the feeling of closeness I'm able to retain with my children who live 2,500 miles away. Even beyond that, a lifelong dream has recently been fulfilled by contact with my father's side of my family. I have a brother and sister I never knew I had! I also have many other family members. This has been a wonderful blessing to me. And ultimately, I owe the computer for the friendship with, and later the love of, my husband. Now I know all these would have been possible without it, and that thanks really goes to the Lord for these things, but they came about by the use of computers. Computers have become invaluable for families that are separated by many miles, and they are also an invaluable tool to genealogists, as more and more information is put onto the internet to help trace our families. I find it amazing that I can sit at my desk in interior Alaska and check records of family members who lived hundreds of years ago from here. Genealogy has always been very interesting, and now that I have more time it will probably become an addiction. I hope the results I have found, and those other family members have ferreted out will interest you.
My family is descended from the McClure/Ferril and the Campbell/Compton families of Missouri in the last half of the 19th Century, as well as the Rogers/Burks/McCracken/Washington and the Hampton/Durant/Folsom families of Oklahoma, as well as others. I am just beginning to learn about my father's family, and it is more than interesting, it is absolutely fascinating! Make sure you check out all the pages; there are interesting ones with famous people from the history of our country, and there are a lot of interesting pages about the Choctaw Nation. His
name was Marcus Newton Rogers, and he was one-fourth Choctaw Indian. He
came from Oklahoma, where I was This next photo was
taken in 1956, when I was a senior in high school. I was 17, Suzi was
15. When I was seven we got a dog named
"Tippy." He was a spaniel mix with soft black wavy hair,
with a few white patches here and there. Tippy played hide and
seek with us. He let us dress him up endlessly in the make-believe
worlds we created. He let us sob into his soft coat when we were
heartbroken, and he was the special friend who was always there when he
was needed. He happily went through the rest of our childhood
years, going on outings with the family, traveling with us as we moved
from place Tippy was a wonderful dog, but he had a terrible penchant for chasing cars. He could not give it up, no matter how hard we tried. He lost the sight in one eye... he wore a cast on a leg two different times, but he still chased cars as long as he was able. And when he could no longer chase them he spent most of his hours lying in the yard, fondly watching them go by, just itching to be out there again. Then one day when he was so old and crippled he could hardly walk, he wandered off and was never seen again. A neighborhood favorite, many people searched high and low for him. We think he wanted to spare us, and just went away to die when it was time. Tippy was just the first of many animals.
I had begun making craft items of different types, and enjoyed wood burning. I had learned to sew when very young, and fabric, stuffed animals for home decoration were becoming very popular. After a year of traveling and living in the motorhome we bought a new mobilehome in Quartzsite, Arizona. We prospected summers, and spent winters there selling gold and crafts that I made. I expanded the variety of things I made to include dried flower wreaths and swags, and a variety of other things. I also did quite well "picking up things" (not stealing them, but buying at a good price) that came to the swap meets and that went along with the theme I had in my "store." I would clean them up, showcase them, and sell them at a good profit. I did very well, but after awhile it became difficult to keep up with the demand. Then arthritis in my thumbs added a big problem.
Photo at right: This is me, in my only athletic endeavor in my life. I played in a "mother's" football game when David was 8 yrs. old and playing Pop Warner Football. It was a lot of fun, and this photo was taken just about five or six years after the one with Danny, above it, but you can see the difference in hair styles, etc. I believe I was 33 years old when this was taken. Photo above on left is of me and David at his high school graduation. I have very few photos of the next 12 years. I was too busy working... My life from that point on is well documented elsewhere on this website, so I am going to continue with the rest of my family; my children and their families.
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born. We left there in 1942,
when I was four years old. The first photo you see is of my family just after our arrival in Tucson, Arizona, where the family hoped
to work at Davis Monthan Air Force Base... this was taken in 1942, just
before my brother Everett was born. If you look closely at my mother,
you can see that. My grandfather and my mother both went to work
at the air base, and my
mother was a "Rosie-the Riveter" as they used to call them in
those days, riveting airplanes together. My father (on the left in
this photo) continued to travel
around after work. I am the child who is second from the
left. On my left is my sister Suzi. Behind me is my "Mamoo"
(my grandmother). Next to her my grandfather holds my Uncle John (a year younger
than me), and has his other arm around my Aunt Sami. My parents were divorced
sometime shortly after the birth of my brother, and by war's end my
mother was remarried, and we had moved to southern California, where I
remained for most of the next 45 years or so.
to place. He was there when I got married, and he was there to greet my firstborn child with welcome kisses.
He was everything a good pet should be. 
I graduated from high school mid-term (January 1956) of my senior year (photo
left); I was a very quiet, serious, naive young woman. I was
17. I was married April 14th of that year. It was the
fashionable thing to do in that time, and in that place. And I was in
love. I had three sons; Billy, Danny, and David. I did not
work. I was a Cub Scout den mother for 10 years (1964-1974) and after
several years I held training classes for den mothers in the Boy Scout
District; I was PTA President twice and held almost every other office,
I was active in the March of Dimes, I was room mother countless times, I
organized school carnivals, I volunteered in the classrooms at my sons'
school. After David, my youngest, went to school I worked half-days at
one of the other schools in town. First in a classroom, and then in
the school office (1974-1984), leaving that position on the tenth
anniversary of beginning work there. We were leaving southern
California. The steel mill (Kaiser Steel) where my husband had
worked for 27 years had closed, my sons had all graduated from high
school, two had attended at least some college, and they were settled
into lives of their own. The youngest, David, was leaving with us.
He had graduated from high
school
(photo below) a year previous to that, and had asthma that the smog played havoc
with. We were going live in our motorhome, prospect for gold in
the summers, and spend winters traveling or visiting in Arizona.
We had it all figured out.
After
three years, and approaching our fourth winter in Quartzsite, Kaiser
went bankrupt.
We lost a lot of the pension. I took an offer to become a partner
in a recreational gold mining supply in northern California, with my
husband's approval... in fact, he was very much for it. And what a
gorgeous place this was. It was in a small old gold mining town called
Happy Camp, on the Klamath River. I was to be partners with Dave
McCracken, a recreational gold prospecting entrepreneur who was very
well known, and quite an amazing person! How could anything be wrong with something that sounded that exciting?
school photo from this 
