Chapter One: AN AMERICAN FAMILY

"The Point At Which Two Lines Meet..."

My father, Francisco Trevino Rios, served in the Army with distinction. He lost a kidney to battle injuries and eventually died because his remaining kidney had been damaged by schrapnel.

I didn't get to know him very well. I was born September 17, 1961. My parents separated and divorced when I was quite young. As an infant, I was left to be raised by my grandparents, Baltazar and Jilma Vela.

My husband's father, Lunsford Wilbourne Vinson, was a Captain in the Air Force. He also served in wartime with great distinction and was sited for participating in several rescues as a pilot. He died, while in the service, of brain cancer.

Richard, born November 8, 1958, was two years-old when his father died. His mother would marry again and divorce. The stabalizing force in his life would be his grandmother.

Neither of our fathers could have ever known that their service to their country would set in place a path that would lead their children towards each other.

We are products of our country's gratitude and promise to our fathers, the GI Bill. It would have been finacially impossible for either of our families to have sent us to a University without the GI Bill funding.

We met at Texas A&I University in Kingsville, Texas in the Fall of 1977.

The years leading to us being on that campus had been such a struggle. We both had difficult upbringings we wanted to leave behind. Adversity had helped us develop various strengths and ethics towards work and commitments.

Richard embraced his strengths and capitalized on them to get through his college days. He studied hard and became a leader in his fraternity, TKE, serving as President for thier chapter for two consecutive years.

He also spent a considerable amount of time developing his spiritual nature. I thought he was strange; a Bible-carrying-tea-totter who lead a crowd of drunk and rowdy frat brothers. At that time, I couldn't appreciate that he was a work in progress.

I, on the other hand, wanted my history to disappear. I wanted a complete rewrite. I desperately tried to establish what I had lacked as a child: control. I wanted to do and be anything that I would choose to.

It is one of those 20/20 things where I can see the "genius" and the "idiot" factors clearly now that I'm detached from them. Over the past twenty years I have sorted through my childhood and determined the value of what I collected.

I kept what I deemed as treasures, the teaching memories as well as the good ones, the people, places and the moments that defined me within the Mexican American culture. The stuff I labeled as trash has slowly and methodically been thrown out as it surfaces.

I'd always been a good student, but I was too shy and ackward to be noticed. That changed! I found my voice and the power of the pen that first year of college and I let everyone and anyone know I had an opinion and I worked hard at making my opinion intelligent and valid. At the time, my remake was wonderful in alot of ways , but it had also dealt me some consequences

@Jenni Vinson ....April 17, 1999