found: my baby picture

My first picture.  I was born September 9, 1938 in Sherman, Texas 

My mother's working life

Above is my mother's high school yearbook picture.  She graduated in 1931 at the age of 16.

Right away she went to work as a stenographer in the office of her father and his brother in Sherman, Texas.

Ann was a fast typist and even faster at shorthand (taking dictation the old-fashioned way.)  She sometimes wrote her notes to herself in shorthand.  Mother never had to ask for a job in her life.  

She was always in demand for her office skills.  She worked for Doctor Stout's clinic in Sherman where I was born. She was stenographer at the county welfare office in Comanche where my aunt was a caseworker during the 1950's.  She ran the office of Jake Varnell, attorney-at-law in Mineral Wells, Texas when my father went to work teaching school there.  And eventually she was secretary to the city manager in Mineral Wells.

How my father and mother first met in 1936

In 1936 Thurston had been traveling Texas with his brother for almost two years.  He sold electrical appliances for Texas Power & Light Company.

Somehow in Sherman, Texas he double-dated with a friend and met my mother, Anna Louise Ricketts.  She was petite and very smart.  At 16 she had finished high school and went to work in the insurance office that belonged to her father and his brother Sam.

I think it was love at first sight.