As you might have read my early history above, after Cleveland School, I entered the eighth grade at three-storied Oakland High School.  We all called it the "Pink Prison."  I remember hanging a large picture of Roy Rogers on the door of my locker.  The Junior High was on the third floor and there were no elevators.  When we graduated to high school we felt so 'big.'  We didn't have to climb three floors of stairs anymore.  The main school was torn down several years ago and a more modern one built on the football field and gym site.  Funny,  I have a dream once in a while of the grand entrance stairs  of the building.   I concentrated on art there, took the business course and when I graduated, went on to Merritt Business School for one year before finally landing a job at John Hancock Life Insurance on Broadway near Oakland Technical High School.  I was a teller taking the payments on anuities.  But I was always bad in math and could never seem to balance, so kindly, they placed me in a typing clerk's position.  Can you believe it, my starting salary was $105 a month!  I had learned to type at Oakland High and after business school could do over 60 words per minute.  I had (and still have) a deficiency, though.  I have always been a poor speller (so glad for spell checks on the computer, now).  So, if you find any errors, on this site, please understand that this site doesn't have a spell check.  Anyway, I was able to make a career in the office world (in spite of the spelling) finally retiring after being a legal secretary and then a school secretary. 

 

Some of the companies I worked for were:  Oakland California Towel Company; Oakland Sheet Metal Company; Freiden Calculators, Inc. (I remember them working on a computer that took up a whole room!); World Airways, in their Operations Dept.; The Clorox Company; Kelly Girls Temporary Agency; Aleta Beaupied, Lawyer; and Shiloh Christian Schools.  I loved working as a Kelly Girl.  I went all over San Francisco (they paid more than the Oakland branch, whom I did work for, also).  It was a good time, for I added much to my business experience.  (Plus I found frozen yogurt places everywhere I went.)

 

I was going with a West Point student, while working at my first job and the towel company.  Later, he and several other cadets were returning to finish their senior year when their plane crashed in Arizona killing all aboard.  I was so down-hearted that I felt a good change from the work world would be to leave my job at the towel company and to attend The College of Arts and Crafts on Broadway, in Oakland.  It was 1952 and I studied there for two years.  My desire was to study graphic arts, but foolishly, for me, I became enamored with interior decorating.  I realized that I wouldn't make much money in that business so I quite school and went back into the business world.

 

In the '50's I was involved in the Oakland Light Opera which put on musicals at the Jaquine Miller Ampetheater in the Oakland hills.  It's a wonder that I overcame my shyness enough to be in the shows.  I was in the chorus.  My brother, Byron, had been in the group since they had been called the Victory Players putting on Gilbert and Sullivan musicals.  Some of the shows I was in with the Oakland Light Opera were:  Brigadoon, Carosel, Show Boat, to name a few.  Our family was a musical family and I loved to go to the rehersals of my brother's shows.  My father payed for voice lessons for me for a year from a very good voice teacher in Oakland.   I took drama in high school and that helped me understand being in a production.

 

I married one of the small lead players and moved to San Francisco.  After the marriage failed, I moved back to Oakland to have our son, Timothy Victor Miller (who later changed his name to Victor Burleigh).  So, then, I was a single mom for about 15 years until I married my present husband of 28 years.

 

Since Vern and I were married, I have taken classes in: Chinese cooking, needlepoint, embroidery, and counted cross stitch.  I taught myself cake decorating, also.  I was able to teach needlepoint  and cake decorating to junior higher's at my church's private school (where my husband much later became principal and I his secretary).  I attended Shiloh Bible College obtaining a BA of Theology in 1974, and later there, at age 60, a thM in Biblical Studies and History.

 

While as school secretary, in the later '80's, my husband and I were introduced to the world of computers.  Oh, wonder of wonders.  I have loved to work on them ever since.  "In my time," we had to make copies of our typing with carbon paper.  Sometimes over 5 copies.  We had to erase mistakes on each page, I got good at the corrections, I had plenty of practice!.  Then in came the Zerox, machine.  No more carbon paper, whew.  Now, the computer and spell, check when available.  How did we do without it?!  In the 'early 80's, I believe it was, I had a typing business in our home for three years and would type thesis papers (at least 100 pages long), at 10 cents a page, with carbons.  Oh, how I could have used the computer then!  When it came time for my own thesis, I did it on my own computer, thank Heaven.

 

In January of 1991, I was able to begin six years of classical realist art study with the master artist, David Hardy of Oakland.  I remember that before that, I used to almost cry over the artwork I used to see in my art magazines, just wishing for a teacher to help me paint like the old masters.  Well, after being taught in the Atelier style of instruction, I can paint well in oils.  On my art site you can see some of my work.