My passion as a teenager growing up in England was racing sailing dinghies. My family was a member of Thamesis Sailing Club, located on the Thames river at Teddington, a suburb of London. My sister and I owned a 10’-6” international Cadet Class sailing dinghy. We lived to race this little boat called “Atem” and we were a very competitive team. It was at Thamesis that I met John. As well as a camera, he also had an old MG. He was certainly an avid photographer but he had many other talents as well. He was wonderful to talk to, a good dancer and a very excellent dinghy racing sailor. He was a fine engineer, a designer and builder of competition model aircraft and a builder of working model steam locomotives. He and his friend Sid built an Enterprise sailing dinghy that they raced together for a while, until he met me. I don’t know how he found the time. Without a doubt he was a bit of an adventurer in those days and he still is today.
Marrying John and moving to France at age 20 was quite an adventure and it was all recorded on film with the latest Canon camera, a Cannonet QL17, that we purchased while on honeymoon in the Channel Islands. A year later, the adventure continued when we boarded the SS United States to cross the Atlantic to a new life in the USA. This was of course a great photo opportunity and the Canon’s shutter kept clicking as we sailed across the Atlantic. We arrived in the Port of New York on September 6, 1966. We spent 2 days exploring and taking photos of the sights then boarded the train at Grand Central station for the journey to Atlanta Georgia, where John had a job waiting for him at Lockheed on the C5A.
My training and experience as an executive secretary in England plus my English accent opened up job opportunities for me in Atlanta and other cities that we moved to. After taking a few years off to raise two sons, I restarted my career in sales and marketing as an administrator and sales events coordinator for a major manufacturer of fine papers. Among my responsibilities was the conceptualizing, budgeting and planning of sales meetings. One of the most satisfying tasks was taking photos of the people and activities and creating presentations designed to give a motivational bounce at the meeting close. John proved to be an invaluable resource for photographic ideas and for technical help.
Today I use my creative talents in the design of materials, presentations and display boards for our company and I help in the posing of family groups and individuals. I manage the accounting and office.
