May 20th, 2012

Beverly Ann Sisk 's Story

Birth Year: 1946




Table of Contents





Chapter 1: I'm Fascinated with History


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I was born to James Paul [Pic] and Ethel Sisk [Pic]  on November 1st 1946 in a small town called Oak Hill, West Virginia. I was almost born on Halloween. Just as well because the day after is ìAll Saints Dayî. I guess you would say I am a post war baby [Pic]. Now they call us baby boomers.

[Pic]  My dad went by the name of Paul.  He was born in April about 1910. I donít have a lot of history on his side of the family [Pic] lower right in shorts, and my mother passed away before I could talk much more with her. Paul, my dad was from Virginia. He was always into numbers and he worked in the Post Office in Florida as a bookkeeper.

I have my sisters children, my nephew who is James Paul Randal. He goes by the name of James where my dad used Paul. He is my sisterís boy. He is in the navy and is married with two children and my sisterís daughter is named Jessica Randal she is now married with kids.

My motherís side of the family is Chapman. I have a photo of my great grandmother [Pic] and father Thomas and Mary Ann Chapman. Uncle Eddy [Pic] is my momís baby brother. His name is Edward

This town I started my life in was a real small town. It was what was once known as a company town. We had the second largest house in town because my father was the company bookkeeper or accountant. The supervisor had the first or largest house.

I loved the house we had when I was young.  It was in the end Grandmaís house. The house was a brick house and it was supposed to be for my parents. My dad built if for my mother and us kids. But then they put my momís mother in there. I never knew my fatherís mother. The house was in Fayetteville, West Virginia. It is about 30-35 miles southeast of Charleston. The house had a very large basement and my dad built me a large playhouse down there for me to play in. There was a platform that he built for me to practice my dancing on. I took tap dancing lessons when I was a child. Do I do that now? Shoot No!

We also had a big green apple tree out in the front yard. So the first thing you want, needed, to do is learn to climb the tree. Then once up there we would eat the little green apples until you could not see straight. They were a little bitter or sour. But that is what made it so good! We had the large corner lot and there were the kids down the street Jimmy Evans and David somebody that I could play with.

I donít know how people made a living there. I donít recall any industry other than coal. I was just 9 when we left so I was just too young. I really never thought about it. I guess it was all just coal miners.

Chapter 2: My younger years


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I went to an Elementary School where there was ? one grade and ? another. Now I was always doing what the other ? was doing. I was never doing what I was supposed to be doing. Eventually I decided to go on and become a schoolteacher. I talk more on that later.

I donít think I had any particular friends back when I was young. It was right in the middle of my elementary school years when I was 9 that my family up and moved to Pompano Beach, Florida. The reason for the move was my grandfather was killed in a coalmine accident. It was an explosion that took him and Mother did not want her girls growing up to marry into that type of existence. My motherís idea was we would not get married to a coalminer and go through that experience ourselves. So we moved south.

Chapter 3: Some Likes and Dislikes


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We lived in Pompano Beach until I graduated high school at Pompano Beach Senior High. Now I would like to say I had my moments but instead, all I can say is, I was a good kid. Living by the beach I never took advantage of all the sun for tans because I freckle. I liked to go to the beach but I didnít spend a whole lot of time there.

Back then I was pretty much a bookworm. I spent a lot of my time at the public library and at the school library.  There was 14 dozen Cherry Aims books about a young girl who was a nurse. They were written for young girls to read and I read the whole series. I would read Black Beauty and all the animal stories and those types of books.

I also took piano lessons back in the day. I donít play at this time in my life and havenít for years and years. I finally sold the piano I had when I moved out to Colorado. Now my sister played in the band. She was more musically inclined than me. She played the Clarinet and a lot of piano.

I am a Methodist by religion. My mother was strict in that regard. I would play the piano for the Sunday school class. Stuff I hated! We had a small Church we called the Chapel and all the piano lessons and playing we did we did in the Chapel. I was 17 and I remember we had to sit through everybody else because I would be playing last. So I got to leave the last impression with the people. Oh Yah! I would play Chopinís Waltz in A Flat minor and that kind of stuff.

I grew up in the 60ís the height of the Vietnam War. I just never could go alone with the ìLove it or Leave itî philosophy. I had heard about Woodstock. But I had no desire to go there. I thought OOH Uck! Itís dirty and rainy and I donít want to be there. But I liked the music. I was real fond of folk music. I liked Bob Dillon and Peter, Paul and Mary. That type of music. In college I had a 5 string ukulele and I liked where have all the flowers gone. I used to play it and others. I was not into hard rock. The music of Jimmy Hendricks, I canít do that. I guess I was more of a popular music person such as Sonny and Cher. I liked them. As well I liked the Smothers Brothers back then. I can tell you 60 Minutes was/is probably my favorite TV show. I thought my heart would break when Walter Cronkite died.

I was walking down the covered walkway at the school one day and I ran into a teacher who told me the president has been shot. I thought he was kidding and I said ìWhatî? John F. Kennedy who would think that could happen?

The following weekend when Oswald was shot I was with my mom in a cafeteria somewhere. I donít remember the name. We saw that unfold on the TV. With all this going on I thought the world was coming to an end.

My favorite holiday I guess is not a holiday at all. But I am appreciative of my birthday. I always had interesting birthday cakes as a child. They had orange and black frosting or I guess the fall colors. My mom would invite some of the neighborhood kids over for a small party.

I have one sister. Her name is Candace [Pic]. We get along fine now but not way back when. I was 6 years older. So in those early days it was like, get that kid away from me. I was an only child for 6 years and you talk about spoiled? I was Daddyís girl.

Candy got married and settled out here in the west. Now it is just the two of us left. She lives in Broomfield, CO now and has two children, James Paul Randall and Jessica Lee Randall. I never married and as a result I have none. I was beginning to have some problems so she told me that I could not live by myself back east so I moved out here to be close by. It took her 5 years to get me out here.

She is the reason I am here in Colorado now. When my parents passed away I was living in Florida all by myself. I have a small condo there and my parents were living nearby. Or at least my mom was. My father passed away a week after they moved up to Lakeland to be closer to me.

Chapter 4: My First Car


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I got my first car back in 1968 when I was a senior in college. Oh it was cute. It was a little fiat that my dad got me and it was brand new. I had received word about an internship over in Bartow and I had to find a way to get to work if I got it which I did.

Now my school was expensive. I had a work scholarship and some kind of loan program that was big at that time, to help out. For every year that I taught they cancelled a chunk of it. But I donít know how my dad managed that and the car. But he got me a small fiat to get back and forth. It was a red car and had a hatchback. Now I was a daddyís girl and I because I had the first six years of my life to spend alone with my daddy I never lost the touch on how to get what I wanted.

Now there is this funny story about my car. There was a teachers strike back then while I was trying to do my internship. Now the school where I was supposed to go the teachers were on strike. Now one of my flatmates, her name was Carol Bullock, had an internship also and they were not on strike. She needed the car to get to work one day. I was back at the dorm sleeping and she took the car and as she was driving one of the school officials ran a stop sign and hit her broadside and did a whole bunch of damage to the fender and door on the driverís side. So I had to call my daddy and tell him the bad news and it all worked out ok. The insurance took care of everything.

The car had a tiny back seat that I could pile all my stuff in. It was one Thanksgiving I believe that I was heading home and did about 70 the whole way. I burned out the engine I think or something like that. I got as far as Palm Beach on the turnpike and it stopped and wouldnít go any further. I got it to limp or drive slowly to the place where dad bought it and he met me there. They were able to fix it.

But the funny thing is I would park it outside the dorm on these little brick streets and Carol my roommate was dating some guy from the fraternity.  He and a couple of his friends picked up the car and put it on 4 cinder blocks. Shortly thereafter I go outside to go somewhere and here is my cute little car sitting up on blocks off the ground. So I called some boys at another fraternity and told them I needed help. I donít remember now how I knew them. But I got 4 of those guys to come and pick it up off the blocks and put it on the street for me. And that was it. I never got back at the guys that put it up there.

Chapter 5: College and Career


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Let me get back to my memoirs. I have had more special friends in College than I did in High School. High School was not anything special to me. I mostly stayed to myself and didnít cause any trouble. I was a good kid.

I went to college in Lakeland Florida. It is located on a ridge about 300 feet above sea level. That is about as high as you can get in the state. There a plenty of lakes in the area. The town was about a three and a half hour drive from our home in Pompano Beach. The name of the  school I attended is Florida Southern College.

This school was run and supported by the Methodist Church. The school required that you take 6 hours of religion. So I took two classes with this professor. He was very special to me and highly respected. He was just fabulous. I hung on his every word. So he must have said something that touched me. He had a job running or managing a Methodist camp in the summer. I had a roommate the worked in his office during the school year. He was very special and we all just loved him. He had a philosophy like in the movie ìOH Godî with George Burns. He would say that is a great movie and you need to go see it.

FSC was not a public college but a private one. It was founded back in the 1800ís. My parents liked this choice because this school had pretty strict rules for girls. In fact it kept me walking the straight and narrow, too much to the point I guess, because I never got married.

At first I majored in political science. I wasnít going to be a teacher I was going to be something else. I did graduate and I never did pursue additional time to go for my masters. It wasnít too long before I realized I couldnít find any work with my political science degree. They all wanted you to have classes in journalism. Up until my last year I only had an English minor. It was about the time I was a senior in college it dawned on me all I had to take was 2 English courses and I would have the needed requirements to become a teacher. That is all it would take to certify me. It was the school I did my internship in that hired me as a full time teacher. So I now had a career.

I got a job teaching in Bartow, Florida at the Senior High mostly the juniors and seniors themselves. I worked here for 17 years in all. I was comfortable here at this school as this is where I started working as a graduate from college. This town was just east of Tampa and about 50 miles south from my home in Lakeland where I went to college.

Now Bartow is a rural town. There was mostly just cattle and oranges around. Though the school is now called Bartow Senior High it was in my early days there that it was known for a different name. The founding father was a man named Joseph Summerland. So they called it Summerland Institute. Now I thought that was a nice classy name. But the kids just hated the name of it. They thought of the name as if it was some kind of prison.

Now there was a time when we would have the school name printed on our sweaters and I would wear my sweater with pride. I thought it was great. But in the end it became Bartow Senior High because the kids could just not abide the name Summerland Institute.

I worked as a teacher for 30 years and I think that was certainly enough. It is hard to know if you have had any dramatic affect on any of the students you have taught. There were a few that came back over the years to tell me thank you.

The town of Bartow was so small there werenít any apartments to speak of. They had some houses if you wanted something that large. But I was settled a ways up north of town. I had a couple of roommates up in Lakeland. Nancy my friend and another young woman and I lived in a small apartment and we all carpooled back and forth to work.

I remember back when I was young I had I guess you could call it a fling with one of my students. He was already out of school at the time. I was in my early 20ís; I think 22 or something, it never amounted to anything.

Now my friend Nancy also got caught up in love. She divorced her husband so she could go with a student. I believe she was probably 20 and I think at the time the boy was 18. Now in those days this was a small town in central Florida and was that a huge scandal! Let me tell ya! It seemed everybody in town knew this was going on. Donít know how that turned out.

I guess for extra curricular activities I did my share. I taught mostly juniors. So I had to be a junior class sponsor. So I would help them with their fundraising for the prom and other activities. I remember they sold a lot of candy and magazines and stuff.

I liked the band director. He was a nice guy. I never dated him. NO, NO! He was a married man. We hit it off and we were good friends. This connection placed me in the position of being a chaperone with the band. If you have never been in a position of being a chaperone on the school bus with the band on the way to a football game you havenít lived. Now that is an experience. He needed someone and I got the job. Nothing to terrible happened on the bus. You did have to listen to them sing. The kids were not making out or anything; that was not a problem. But they sang the religious songs and you would have to listen to that music. It was not a religious school. But there was a lot of those Southern Baptistís around down there and it was such a small town.

I mentioned that the college I went to was strict. Now I did date a couple of guys. One was a big hunky guy named Chuck. I donít remember his last name now. I would ride on the band bus and he would drive his car to the football games and he would meet me there. Together we would sit up in the stands. This worked for him I guess because I got him in for free.

Now on the way home the kids would generally sleep on the bus. I think the kids in the band are normally better behaved than other kids. They are a little more scholastic by nature.

We did go on a road trip in school once with the band. It was up to Washington DC. We were invited to go up and march in one of the Cherry Blossom Festivals. I got to chaperone that trip because of all my credits working the football games. We did a lot of the touristy type stuff on this trip.

Chapter 6: My Travels in Life


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One of my first trips abroad was as a young girl. My father took my mother sister and I on a steamer ship [Pic] to the Bahamas. It was the first summer after we moved south. When school got out we would not be going back north to visit all the relatives. We came from a huge extended family. So instead my dad suggested we do something different. So we would go to an exotic location and took this cruise to the Bahamas.

I was about nine years old at the time and Candy was just 3. My mom was a bit worried that we might get seasick on the boat but we didnít. In fact I loved it! We arrived in the port of Nassau. We got to ride around in the horse drawn carriages. This was a wonderful trip for me. I loved it.

Back in the 1970ís as a teacher we had our spring break without the kids. So a bunch of us girls would get together and travel to Mexico City. Now because I love the animals I would always have to go and see the different zoos. I think the Mexico City Zoo is fabulous.  

There was this nutty science teacher that when school was out in the summer he would perform in the water-skiing shows at Cypress Gardens. In the winters he worked for the school.

Now on the side he operated these European Tours. And one year I did one of those tours with him. I guess the tour cost about $800. If you have ever seen the old movie ìIf it is Tuesday it must be Grandvilleî  It was a lot like that movie. It was three of us my friend Patty and another good friend who was also named Beverly who took this one trip. She was extremely petite. So she was little Bev and I was big Bev. Gosh, the trip was nine countries in two weeks or something like that. You didnít do much but ride the bus and look out the windows. We all had a good time you know because we were all still young and silly.

I guess I would do it again now if the chance came up again though I doubt it will. We had bought some gifts. Patty bought some candles in Italy and she had them placed in the rack above our heads in the bus. They melted! Now we were young and had we thought about it we would not have done it. But we didnít and they melted. This was my first trip to Europe.

I would also drive out to Colorado back when I was living in Florida to spend about three weeks over Christmas with my sister and her family. I enjoyed spending the time with her and the two kids James and Jessica. I would give them whatever their little hearts desired. They were so special to me and I spoiled them. The years I was not visiting I would ship them gifts.

I took the train once from Lakeland up to Jacksonville to visit with my nephew James. That was the only time I took a train for any distance. I never took a long bus ride either.

Chapter 7: Where We Came From


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My Mother was from Canada. Her mother was from England. She left and went to Canada. (Thatís how we got to be Methodist.) So my mother has all these relatives from England. So at Christmas time we would get all these Christmas cards from the relatives over there.

Grandma came into Nova Scotia. Now that is a wonderful area. I have taken the ferry to Nova Scotia in the past. Anyway a couple of the men came to West Virginia looking for work as coal miners. So that is what brought our family to West Virginia. Now Grandma had five children in England, five children in Canada and 3 children in West Virginia. Grandpa was a breeder or her I DONíT KNOW WHICH!

Mother was one of the five born in Canada. She did eventually become a US citizen. I have the papers still, somewhere. When Grandpa became a citizen all the children under 18 became citizens.

One year I wanted to take my mother back to England to visit the relatives. Try getting a passport! That was a pain. She had to prove citizenship so I had to go and find those papers. So she was much older when she finally got to travel out of the country.

This trip we took back to her motherís home included all the British Isles. This trip had much nicer accommodations. The $800 trip was all the way around cheap. Now this trip we were still under the direction of the bus driver where you had to be in certain places at certain times. Now she arranged with the bus company to be at a certain hotel on a certain day. The relatives came to that hotel by the train and we had a large rendezvous there.

I am still in touch with a cousin or two to this day. I have learned a number of phrases and expressions from that country from reading her letters.

For Example ìEverything here is at sixes and sevens.î

That means all is confused.

Another expression you could see on the busses when we were traveling around ìMind your Headsî which basically means - duck!

The trunk of a car is the ìBootî. There is a bunch more but they donít come to mind at the moment.

One of my cousins has a husband who was/is in the garbage business. They lived in York which was way up there in the north. So my cousinís husband would be sent to Florida on business occasionally and she would come with her husband and they would come and stay with us. He would be sent to Orlando for work and we would pick them up at the airport in Orlando.

They are still alive and their children one of whom is named Geoff. They would come to visit before these kids were born.

Chapter 8: My Turning Point


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It occurred to me back when I was 27 back around 1977 or something. I had suddenly got a pain in the back of my head just above my neck. It was like a tumor. It was on the left side and it got so big that it was mashing on the spinal cord. It mostly hurt when I would stand up or sit down. It was affecting the movement of the fluid in my spine. I didnít get really bad headaches.

I was not the sickly child but I was complaining about this reoccurring pain. Candy was the one that was the sickly child. Now because of the pain occasionally I would throw up for no reason. I wouldnít even be nauseous. It would just come up. So I told my parents that I was sick and they would hardly believe it because I had never been that way.

I finished out my year of teaching and I had come home for summer vacation and it was bothering me so much at that time I would keep an ice pack on it. But I could still drive my little fiat. My mom told me later  that she was feeling guilty because back then she told me she didnít know that I was that sick.

Now I was never sick so I didnít have a normal doctor. Finally they decided that I wasnít bluffing and there was a problem and there was something there. The X-ray did not show anything that was a big deal.

Now a brain scan at that time compared to now was just a joke. It was a low flat black line on the paper and when it got to the left side of my head the line went up and down and up and down. Lakeland had good medical facilities but my parents didnít know that. So they wanted me to be at home so I could go to some hospital down there. I didnít want to do that. I didnít think I was that sick and I wanted to be up in Lakeland.

What ultimately happened and the doctor was so sweet. He came in and held my hand and said, ìI know there is something wrong, but we donít know what. There is something in your head. We donít know if it is a tumor or if it is cancer, but we are going to find out.î

So now I had to go through all these tests. MRI it was hot at that time.

I said, ìjust hurry up and fix it because it was interrupting my summer vacationî.

It turned out to be a tumor about the size of a tennis ball. It was not cancer. But the doctor wanted to be certain that he didnít leave anything. It was a 6 hour surgery and my poor parents are paying for it. They came up to Lakeland to sit with me through the operation and all. Little Bev had been living with me before this and she had moved out. It was a one bedroom suite and my parents insisted that I recover in the bedroom and they stayed on the pullout couch. I didnít have chemo therapy but I had radiation therapy. They did both sides of my head and as it turned out it was fine.

So I missed a whole year of school back in my late 20ís. My sister was going to get married to her first husband and I was going to be in that wedding if I had to crawl down the aisle. While I was out in Colorado for the wedding they were at work and I was going to go out and enjoy the weather and ride a bike.

I guess you can say that the reason I live now in an assisted living home and use a walker is because on that side of my head there is a little piece of your brain that is for your balance. I didnít realize that when they removed the tumor they took a chip of it. I didnít know until I tried to ride that bicycle. I thought that I was fine and so long as I was going straight I was. But as soon as I tried to take a corner I just fell over on the ground and wound up in the grass. I didnít get hurt.

So that was my first clue that there was a problem here. But I could not maintain any balance on the bike unless I was just going straight. I donít ride anymore.

I guess with time it has now gotten worse. So I use a walker for security reasons because if I donít I will fall. I also now on occasion have tremors and I have to take medication. One doctor told me I have the beginnings of Parkinsonís disease. But I donít believe I have it. All my doctors were in Florida. I donít have any up here in Colorado.

Down there in Lakeland I had a beautiful two bedroom two bath condo, in an adult development, called Kimberly. I guess you can call it a patio home. There is a screened in patio in the back and it has a beautiful pool, tennis courts and shuffleboard courts. It was located on a golf course. Now that I am up here I donít miss Florida as much as I expected.

Chapter 9: My Pets


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I had a family dog named San Souci [Pic] it was a miniature poodle. He out lived my dad and lived about 17 years. There were my two cats that I had when I was older. Jezebel was the name of my first cat I didnít like it and changed it to Jill. I also had a cat named Patches who passed away just before I had to move. Patches was a calico cat. He was about 9 years old, Not very old for a cat.