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When her two older sisters left home, 15-year-old Brenda Washington began caring for her two younger brothers, babysitting nieces and nephews and cooking for the family. And the standards were high; things had to be done just right. “My dad was military. We were saluting kids. The nickel had to bounce off the bed.” Mostly, ...
Wayne Fung visited the doctor twice a week when he was 10. Intravenous injections kept his asthma under control. He warmed to the office nurse, whom he called “Ducky,” because she was the best at hitting the arm vein in his thin torso. Watching these events, his mother proclaimed, “I think one day YOU will ...
Valerie Watson started dance lessons at age four and a half. At nine, she created her own choreography, charging friends a nickel for Saturday morning tap classes. “My parents didn’t know that by giving me dance lessons they were preparing me to follow my destiny,” she said. Now 80, she’s still dancing. “As long as ...
The year was 1963 in Sacramento, Calif. Irving Rothstein was pushing, shredding and pushing more paper in a job he didn’t find very interesting. But, as he recalls, “sometimes out of boredom comes birth.” He followed an ad and nailed a tutoring position. That was the incubator from which he realized his life’s work — ...
At an early age, Wendy Bertrand developed a fascination with the use of space in and around buildings, particularly the out of the ordinary. It all started with sleeping arrangements in her childhood and summers spent in Mexico. When she was six, her divorced mother bought a vintage 1918 cottage in La Jolla, Calif. Initially, ...
Diane Reynolds relocated to the Bay Area when she was 26. San Francisco is “so accepting of things, I knew this was the home I was looking for.” Four years ago, she returned to Maryland, where she was born, to be available when her mother needed her. It was not an easy decision. Leaving meant ...
