How I came to attend NCHS: Unlike many of you, I am not a Naperville native. I moved to Naperville (from Joliet) 8 wks into freshman year because my dad, an electrical engineer, commuted to Chicago to his job as northern Illinois power supervisor at Con Edison and wanted to ride the Burlington. Mom took him to the station at 6:30 a.m. every day.; he walked to his office, then he took the 5:15 train home, and walked home from the station, even on snowy days. We had dinner shortly after he came in the door. The Burlington no doubt helped Naperville’s exponential growth. My parents were pretty quiet, but were very active in Naper Settlement and with the Methodist church. They eventually moved to Carol Stream to a retirement home, but continued to drive back to Naperville to attend the church where they had so many friends.
Memories of a Place: Naperville sure doesn’t look anything like the small, partly rural community we all grew up with. We didn’t know how lucky we were. Now I can look back and appreciate our small graduating class. I have good memories of teachers, of high school dances in the gym, track meets, and football games, dancing to records at the “Y” after the games, and of my work as a candy striper and later nurses’ aide at the hospital. In summer there was swimming and “tanning” at the “pool.” I remember the stately older houses around the college, and sledding on the field house hill.
College. I went to Carleton College in Minnesota along with Bruce Keeler, Terry Anthony, and Kay Wier. I loved the beautiful campus, friends I met there, my major, English, and even the cold and snow. The competition was far greater than at NCHS, particularly since there were 80 English majors the year I graduated! I didn’t work hard at NCHS. Grad school was easy after Carleton.
Marriage, kids and work. I married a college sweetheart right after graduation (which was what it seemed nearly everyone did back then), moved to Iowa City for grad school, then to Tucson, AZ., where my then husband got a job at the med school. .I loved Tucson, though I live in Phoenix right now. We divorced after 18 years when our two daughters were in their teens. I continued to work in education and remarried. Throughout the years, I’ve worked in lots of different jobs in education – h.s. English teacher, h.s. counselor, also elementary and m.s. counselor, assistant principal, and for a few years, state department specialist in Phoenix in gifted education. I also worked for 3 years in Page, AZ, at the site of the controversial dam on Lake Powell. I was Assistant Principal of the high school; 60% of our students were Navajo because they came in from the reservation. I loved the unusual beauty of that part of the country. After a few years I retired from public school work when I had enough “points,” and moved to Phoenix and married Jim Webb. I now am acquisitions editor for Great Potential Press, a small company my husband and I run. We publish resource books for parents and teachers who work with advanced learners (some call them gifted kids), who are frequently not challenged in school, with the emphasis these days on the slower learners and No Child Left Behind. We have a web site www.giftedbooks.com if you want to see what we do.
I have co-authored two books and have helped with editing about 15 others. Our top selling book is A Parent’s Guide to Gifted Children, published in 2007-- one I wrote with my husband. The other book I co-authored with Jim is Grandparents Guide to Gifted Children. We sometimes give talks to parent and school groups and at education conferences, and exhibit the books at conferences. Our kids say we’ve flunked retirement, but we promise them we will retire one day soon.
What else do we do? Our other interests are travel, adventure and of course the kids and grandkids. We went down the Colorado River in wooden dories a couple years ago – a Carleton Alumni trip. One of my daughters lives in Anchorage and does science writing for TWS (The Wilderness Society), where she and her colleagues are working to protect Alaska’s Tongass National Forest and other wilderness areas. My other daughter teaches Montessori School in Silver City, New Mexico, which is an interesting small town if you ever get to the mountains in New Mexico. Jim has twin daughters who work in computer support jobs with AMEX and IBM here in Phoenix and we see them and those grandkids frequently. I still play piano now and then, and sing in a church choir.
(Previous Bio)
Hello everyone,
I plan to be at our 50th reunion. If it’s like the college reunions I’ve attended, we all resemble our teenage selves, just a different hair color, a few wrinkles, and most likely a larger waist. It will be fun to see what everyone has been doing the last 50 years.
It’s fun to see all the yearbook photos of guys with flat tops and the gals with bangs and flip hairdos._____________________________________________________________________________________
Since I live in beautiful Arizona, I thought I'd share a few photos from a river trip I did with my husband a couple years ago in the Grand Canyon. I had wanted to do this river trip for years.
It was well worth the wait. The park service limits each river expedition to 25 people. We had four wooden dories and two supply rafts for our 25 people. Since it was not a motorized trip it was very quiet, but also lasted 18 days to cover the 297 miles of river from Lee's Ferry near Glen Canyon dam to Lake Mead, the site of Hoover Dam. We camped out each night, rolling our sleeping bags out on the sand. Our outfitter organized the boatmen and our boats carried all the food and supplies for the entire trip. We had tents but only used them one night when it rained.
We had experienced boatmen to row each of the four wooden dories and navigate all the rapids. None of our boats flipped over, but one boatman had to repair a leak where his boat scraped up against a rock. The last 20 miles where we entered Lake Mead were difficult as there was no longer any current and a high wind kicked up some waves. We had to get help from some motorboats in the area. Of course we had beautiful scenery every day and day hikes into all sorts of interesting canyons, many with waterfalls. I recommend the trip if you like camping and being on the water.
Steve (Anne's husband) in middle.
Jan Hieronymus Gore
Personal
Distance: It’s 1450 miles from Phoenix, AZ to Naperville, Illinois.
Working? Yes, I’m working about half time. I’m Vice President and Acquisitions Editor at Great Potential Press, a publishing company. The web site is www.giftedbooks.com. We now have about 50 titles. I started working there when I retired from public education in 1997. We put out about six to eight new books a year and I help edit them and get them ready for the printer. We contract out the layout and cover design.
Family: I have two lovely daughters and one five year old granddaughter. However, I also get to enjoy seven grandchildren from my husband’s children – he has three daughters.
Athletic accomplishments? Not so many. I did learn to ski (at age 35), and I did ride a bike from Tucson to Phoenix once (130 miles) in a fundraiser at age 40. We had 100 cyclists, and we did it in two days with a sag wagon playing country western music, and rest stops and snacks along the way, so it was fun and torture. I learned to scuba dive and have enjoyed some diving experiences in Hawaii and the Sea of Cortez in Mexico.
NCHS faculty? Angeline Gale, our counselor, (who thought I might be a social worker or music therapist) and our choir director Vern Coleman, who directed the h.s. choir and also the church choir I sang in. It’s interesting then that I worked for ten years as a school counselor, some years at the elementary level and some years at high school level.)
(I played piano, took voice lessons, sang in various groups in college, and I still sing, play piano, and occasionally do solo work in our church. So I guess she wasn’t too far off. School counseling is sort of like social work, and my music is therapy for me if not others.)
Relive one hour? Oh gosh, definitely senior prom with all the fancy dresses, guys in tuxes, food and parties later. We were all so handsome! Second choice: Dancing at the Y after the games. In the semi-darkness. Wondering if any boys would ask us to dance.
Cars: My boyfriend (Ken Choat), drove a pretty cool black Chevy (his parents’) with fins and a fresh waxed mirror finish. Then we all thought Peg Doherty’s car was fun as she parked it every day in the school lot. (Or maybe it was Peg that was fun).
Published? Yes. In addition to editing over half of the books in our catalog, I am also a co-author of two books, A Parent’s Guide to Gifted Children and A Grandparent’s Guide to Gifted Children. I do occasional talks about the books. My co authors and I talk to groups of parents and teachers about the social and emotional characteristics and needs of gifted children (who can be quite a challenge), and how to keep them from being at risk of underachievement or dropping out. Teachers these days have to focus on the slower learners because of NCLB, and sometimes the gifted are the ones left behind.
I always thought I’d like to write a book some day. I never thought it would be on this subject; but my teaching career took me in this direction gradually over the years.
First job: Probably babysitting. But starting sophomore year I worked at the Naperville Hospital as a candy striper and then a nurses’ aide. Kay Weir worked there too. At one time I dreamed of being a doctor, but then when I didn’t really enjoy physics or memorizing things for chemistry, I changed my goal to teaching. (Kay, however, did go on to become a doctor). I earned $1.25 an hour and wore a white uniform, white shoes, and white stockings. I worked weekends and then full time one summer. It was hard work making beds, emptying bedpans, etc. I’m sure those of us who were aides back then had much more responsibility than we would have been given by today’s standards; I was assigned to take temps and blood pressure readings just as if I were a full-fledged nurses’ aide or LPN. I was 15! Once I held the instruments while a doctor stitched up the face of an accident victim when we had a big trauma scene with several injured persons coming in at once. It was a small community hospital back then. I walked to and from work.
Memories:I remember Friday night dances after the football games at the “Y”. Lots of dances. I remember track meets at both the h.s. and college fieldhouse track. I remember taking life guarding training at the college fieldhouse and having to swim 60 laps, the shallow half underwater, and then walking up the hill to home afterward totally exhausted. But, that training sure improved my swimming, and I got a lifeguarding job at a Y camp in Aurora the summer of my freshman year in college.
Unhappy memory: Sitting in the auditorium for an assembly on the day most of our seniors ditched. It was an organized ditch day when nearly everyone went to the Indiana Sand dunes. My parents wouldn’t let me go. I was pretty unhappy about being one of the few sitting in the senior section that day. Humiliated.
Parents: My parents were very reserved, quiet, and conservative. I’m probably more outgoing than they, and liberal. I have many of the same values they modeled- I enjoy gardening like they did, and doing things in the out of doors, camping, hiking, biking. Like my parents, I’m active in church and my community, and I value education. My parents passed some years ago.
Travels: My most exotic trip so far was a 2 week trip to Tahiti with my husband and another couple. Wonderful! We’ve also enjoyed trips to Mexico, Alaska, Vancouver, Toronto, Europe at various times (Barcelona, Edinburgh, Lucerne, Venice) and visits to several states in the U.S. I’ve spent the past 3 summers in Minnesota-much cooler in summer than Arizona. (Note: Don’t come to Arizona during the months of May to October unless you plan to stay in the northern part of the state which has higher elevation).