Carolyn played clarinet in the marching band in high school and became the drum major in her senior year. She went off to a junior college to become a teacher, planning--just like our mother--to play the field when she met all those college boys. Nope. Practically the first one she met was Matt and she fell in love with him right away. Five years later they were married. Along the way, after her second year of college, Carolyn quit school and got a job as a secretary in a very small firm to begin saving for the wedding she wanted. Only seven months after they married they moved down to North Carolina to join us and they had their first child, Joanna. It seemed there would be no more children by the time Joanna was eight years old, so with Matt's encouragement Carolyn went back to school to get her degree. Immediately she became pregnant with her second daughter, "Katie", but she kept going to school. By the time she received her degree, she had a third daughter, "Becky" and one son, "Danny"!
Chaos reigns at their house, but it's grounded in love with a large sprinkling of humor. When I go over there by myself it reminds me so much of when all six of us were kids and people were running through the kitchen and so much was going on at once, scouts, schoolwork, friends, and Mom trying to get dinner on.
Carolyn is a "stay at home mom" with a neat sideline, she's a writer of fiction. She has had a number of her short stories published and her first novel is now doing a tour of the publishing houses. You can read some of her short stories and excerpts from her novel on her website. Her husband, Matt, is the President of Steele Rubber Products and an amateur downhill racer, having won a number of trophies for skiing. They live on the lake and continue to raise their three younger children. Their oldest daughter is living and working in central North Carolina and will soon be married in March of 2003. |
