 About Me
My life has been nothing if not COLORFUL.
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I've been a nanny, legal secretary, actress, singer,
writer,
Vegas dealer, web designer/graphic artist,
craft designer & maker, savior of people worse off
than myself, and most of all,
TRUTH SEEKER and
student of human behavior.
In everything, I seek to understand "WHY?".
My adventures have been many & varied.
I've been to heaven & hell, dined & danced with
princes and paupers, angels & devils.
One day I will write my books
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Ancestry - information thanks to my dear sister Janet Lynn & brother Roderick Allen, who put together an incredibly detailed family genealogy, complete with historical documents and photos. You can visit the website here.
Paternal
My Father: Lester Oscar Schwald from German, Norwegien, Swiss ethnicity.
His grandfather, Johann Friedrich Schwald, was from Baden, Germany. They immigrated in 1896 to Ellis Island, then to Seattle soon thereafter. They owned Schwald & Company grocery store in the Greenlake area around 1910. See photo here.
His Mother: Johann Bergh, was from Kristiansund, Norway on the northwestern coast. She died young of spinal meningitis. They were radical Pentecostals, which added to dad's rage problems. Being an undiagnosed bipolar alcoholic didn't help.
Maternal
My Mother: Doris Christine Lorraine (Verdugo) Garner, aka. "Mickey". Her maternal grandparents came from Northern Mexico, immigrated to Los Angeles. Her mother, Esperanza "Blanche" Verdugo, ended up as cook in Roseburg, Oregon lumberjack camp where my mom was born in 1931. There's a ton of Ruiz & Verdugos around Long Beach, CA. Every Easter you'll see them decked out having a fiesta at Cherry Park.
Our dear niece, Laura who is a forensic anthropologist for the US Air Force, did a college paper on our mitochondrial DNA - discovered my 3x great grandmother is Mexian-Indian (Navajo) mix. Intrerestingly, she was brought up as an orphan in a Mission or something. Mitochondrial DNA is passed from mother to child and never changes down through descendants. So we are carrying our mother's mother's mother's (ad infinitum) DNA just the same as it was with her. Don't you think that is kind of remarkable?
Her Father: Not sure who he was. Granny named 2 or 3 guys as father. We finally got some kind of certification that the father was William Balles ("Balis") Buck from the Midwest, met granny in a lumberjack camp in Roseburg. His ancestors are from Virginia & Ohio. I share his birthday. Mom's screwed up childhood made her a multiple personality ... that's a whole 'nother story.
Don't get me wrong - there were fun times & moments of sentimentality in my mostly forgotten childhood. But somehow, 50+ years of healing work & I can only remember the traumatic things. Curious, that.
I find myself in perpetual existential quandry.
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