Matt, Aimee, Shirlaine (Kee), and Bob Baldwin, Maui, April 2002
After I graduated from Berkeley High I attended U.C. Berkeley with the intention of going into elementary education. U.C. did not have an education undergraduate major, so I majored in decorative art and minored in social sciences with the intention of going for a one year graduate program for my credential. After I graduated I started my graduate year but never finished it. I married Bob Baldwin who was a student at U.C. in civil engineering. Not long after we got married, Bob was about to be drafted into military service, as was every other eligible male at that time. Married men were not exempt then. After appealing to his draft board, Bob received Conscientious Objector status and was subject to some sort of civilian service instead of military service. As a result we both decided to enlist as VISTA volunteers ("domestic Peace Corps"). We spend the next two and a half years working with and living amongst Native Americans on a reservation in northwest Washington state and in Alaska. We worked with the Lower Elwha band of the Klallam tribe and the King Island Eskimos in community development and educational activities. Our experiences with Native Americans changed our lives and we still maintain an interest in their cultures and have had lifelong friendships with some of them. It was also quite an experience for two Californians to be living in Alaska where it snowed, the average daily winter temperature was zero, winter lasted 9 months, and it went from nearly 24 hours of daylight to 24 hours of darkness. We also did not have running water.
After that we spent our entire savings traveling around in Europe for 18 months. Then we came back to Berkeley where Bob began his career as a land surveyor and I became a full time mother. We had a son, Matthew, and a daughter, Aimee, now ages 29 and 26. During those years I was active in my children's activities and dabbled in many things: textile arts (weaving, batik, quilting, sewing, etc), gardening, home improvement, and floral design. We also did a lot of camping and outdoor activities. When the kids were in their teens I began working part time at U.C. I still work there 50% time and have been there for nearly 14 years. I work in graduate student adminstration in Sproul Hall and really like the interaction with students from all over the world studying all manner of subjects.
Lately, I haven't been doing many creative projects like I used to, but still garden and work on home improvements. Living in a 75 year old fixer upper forces me to deal with it. Reading and working on family history are some of my more recent activities. I have spent over 10 years researching my father's family's history in Nevada. My kids and I recently participated in an archaeological dig of a Chinese woodcutter's cabin at Lake Tahoe. It was one of the jobs that my greatgrandfather did. Maybe archaeology will be one of my new interests. Our two children are U.C. San Diego graduates and are both single and living in Berkeley. Matt is a free-lance audio-visual technician and DJ and Aimee is a starving artist. I have done more traveling in the last few years. Bob and I are looking forward to retirement when we can travel freely without time constraints.
I look back fondly on my days at Burbank and feel lucky to have been able to participate in the Sizzling Sixes. The fact that we were a smart group that had all our classes together for the first year-and-a-half of junior high, and our special, unique combination of personalities made it fun and unforgetable. This was never again repeated for me during the rest of my school years.
July 2002