Jane Kearney:  

ances, and operated a mobile radio station, a phone answering service switch board, a bill collector for department stores, credit unions, collection agencies and banks. Then the fun jobs kicked, as a credit card fraud investigator, fraud manager, fraud analyst, business resilience project manager and lastly quality assurance. Spare Time: I fell down a rabbit hole, when I joined Ancestry.com and took a DNA test in 2014. This ended up really shedding some light on a big mystery in my life for me. I had always been told my unusual looks (unlike my siblings) was due to my mother having been adopted. It always seem logical because I had dark hair like both of my parents, but DNA showed moms ancestry as only being Finnish and Scottish. I was able to identify both of her biological parents and their ancestor’s arrival in America from Finland and Scotland respectively. Unfortunately my mother had passed away July 15, 2011 and the mystery of the rest of my DNA remains somewhat of a mystery. The DNA showed that I had inherited from my biological father 16% Mali, 8%, Nigerian, 7% Senegal, 7% Ivory Coast & Ghana, 6% Cameroon, Congo & Western Bantu Peoples, 3% England Northern Europe, 1% each Northern Africa and Southeast Asia. I think technically that makes me the first African American to graduate from Medford school system, because Civil Rights had not yet passed when I started in the school system. My DNA cousins have been very instrumental in helping me learn about my African American heritage, since I had zero knowledge. I have been able to piece together a lot based on a few hints. I suspect that my biological father may have been a jazz musician playing in Minneapolis, Minnesota in late August early September of 1952. I am related to other jazz musician, musician, Olympians, actors, authors, educators, top law enforcement officials and a host of others who have been very welcoming to me and am very fortunate to live where several of my cousins live too. I cannot begin to tell you about how many blessings I now realize that I had growing up in Medford. The first was that I never knew that I was of African American heritage and would have been subject to the one drop rule (one drop of African American blood), which would have made me subject segregation. Both of my parents on my birth certificate were Caucasian and hindsight went to great length to protect me. Growing up in Medford had its ups and downs, but my friends were very protective of me too and the brown of my skin did not matter to them. Yeah, there were a few incidents here and there, but again my friends were right there. My cousins tell me that I am socially White, no matter what I look like. This puzzle is still being unraveled. Misc. We have been living in Arizona for the last 28 years and love it, except the summers can be challenging to say the least. I do miss Oregon and we try to make it back as often as we can, but that can be difficult at times. We have found that we really love to go on cruises and then my husband has family in Colorado and we have friends, so that is yet another vacation destination. As we age we have both had our medical events popup. Bob was diagnosed in 2014 with Parkinson’s and in 2015 I was diagnosed with DCIS, a curable form of breast cancer treated with surgery and radiation, then Bob in 2017 had a heart valve replacement and scared the hell out of me. What’s next? We are planning a cruise for our 25th wedding anniversary to some destination yet to be determined. House fun as always on our plate. We are clearing things out, lessoning the burden on our siblings and nieces and nephews. It is amazing what two people can manage to accumulate in their life. During this process there are always a few surprises.