Margot Malone:  

I hope I am remembered simply as I was. It would be hard for anyone to remember me in any other way. But most, if not all, will not know that Margot was my first name. My family called me Nancy all my life. So, this is NANCY Malone. My favorite teacher was 11th grade English-Mr. Levine. English and the Arts were my favorite classes. I couldn't really relate to many people, my life had been so out of the ordinary. I was an only child raised in the deserts of the South West, which I hated. I was extremely well read for what else was there to do. I loved TV, movies, music. I sang like a lark and nobody ever heard out there in the cactus and sand dunes. I was a sweet girl, shy, retiring. I loved The Beatles, Peter Cook/Dudley Moore, Anthony Newley, Michael Caine, Sci-Fi movies, Robert A. Heinlein books, British films, Oliver Reed, and Star Trek. I adored my friends:Janice Brumfield, Marsha Grainger, and Julia Brown. I always wore knee high black boots when it was forbidden at school & bright purple or orange stockings with tons of MOD Carnaby suits in red paisleys, and flowery oranges. There were few like that in California, and none in Whittier. I had gotten mine in New Mexico. Then a little shop named Remar's came to Whittier. One of my most treasured memories is when I went into Remar's and saw they had many British inspired outfits. I tried on at least 100 outfits that day. It was never easy to find things that fit, but I found a truckload. They held 25 outfits as I raced home to my mom who was trying to raise me on a meager pension. She came with me to the store, and to my surprise, bought the wentire lot for me! We had practically nothing, I didn't even have a room, or a bed to sleep in, I slept on the couch in the livingroom of a two room apartment infested with roaches, but my mother did that for me. I will never forget as long as I live. In those new clothes, my long dark hair with the most beautiful red streaks in it, and in my oversize BEE sunglasses, I felt awesome. Sometimes I wore clove/love bead necklaces that I made. I was nice, peaceful, calm, kind, and considerate. I didn't smile much because my teeth were very Quasimoto, my mom had been in a concentration camp for three years, didn't leave much nutrition to pass on to a child coming. My teeth weren't fixed until late in life, but they are terrific now, it has really changed my life. I do not think many people will remember me unless they remember the clothes that ultimately got me in trouble at WHS, or noticed the husky girl with Marsha and Janice all the time. I guess you could say I started the clothing revolution at WHS, nobody else dressed like I did, and I bucked the rules with my mothers support.My mom was always fighting with the principal/counselors about it. Then of course there was the crucifix/love bead incident. I was with Chan Walker waiting for the Principal to lay down the law. Chan's crucifix/my love beads were banned and that was the start of all the changes at WHS. Parents went wild. I remember the Principal asking Chan what he thought gave him the right to wear long hair and sandals to school. Chan replied by gripping his crucifix and saying "This does". I was so impressed. It made perfect sense to me. So will people remember me? A few. Who? Good question. Daryl Werth, Marsha, Patty Homotoff. Janice is tragically not with us any longer. Patty I found in Auburn at a yard sale. Crimany, I saw this woman across the parking lot, said to myself "Dang, that looks like Pat". So I went screaming down the road waving my arms in the air like a mad thing. It was her! It was the early 80's and we hadn't seen one another since High School, and here she was at a yard sale 30 minutes from where I lived in Grass Valley. Mr. Ames Bookstore moved to Grass Valley also, after the earthquake in Whittier. So I re-established my long HS tradition of skulking through those aisles with all the well remembered pictures of famous authors on the walls. Maybe some people will remember when several of the teachers asked me to speak about Hit Parade music in their classes in 67. So, what do people not know? I started out as an Army/AirCorp brat. Dad was a 23 year man. He married my mom, a survivor of Theresianstadt concentration camp in WW2. She was there from 12-15 and missed out on all the fun of being a teen, and knowing the safety I was blessed with. I am really lucky to be here. Mom is a remarkable woman. Dad was taken from us mysteriously in '64, in a San Diego military hospital. Doctors said he "expired" but would never let us see his body. Dad always warned us something like that would happen. Left alone and defenseless mom sought my uncle Frank. He gave up his own ability to have a family to take care of mom and me. I honor him for that sacrifice, and to the promise he made to my father when I was an infant that should anything ever happen he would care for us. One in a million man. I was not allowed to graduate from Whittier High, because a counselor made a mistake thinking I had to take drivers ed. We found out after the graduation the rule did not apply to me, because I was already 18 years old. Worse -the principal called my name atthe ceremony and someone off stage yelled "She isn't graduating!" I will NEVER forget that. Whittier High personnel ruined what should have been a momentous occasion in my life, and utterly humiliated me. Devastating. I have had quite a few ruinations of important moments in my life. Let's see: expecting to graduate from College with enough credits for two degrees after 5 1/2 years, again the counselors messed up and told me, at the 11th hour, I had to be a teacher to do what I wanted to do, instead of disclosing that four years earlier. I needed 2 1/2 more years of schooling at Cal State Fullerton. I never went back. My wedding? Well, that was ruined by my husband, and his family. I was in tears on my wedding night. My mother disappeared for two weeks she was so upset. Then my honeymoon was spent in a borrowed villa, on a bee infested beach in El Mirage, Mexico in the middle of July, with black foul smelling bath water, no towels/sheets, no air conditioning, with sharks cruising the coastline for a carbon unit morsel trying to cool off in the sweltering heat. I also almost lost my husband to a mountain of rattlesnakes our first night there. NOT my idea of fun. I am not a beach person. Ergo, a beach is not the best place to take me. Water I love, but not beaches. Oh, I got a million of 'em, but you know you gotta make the best of it. In spite of the crud the great moments have been amazing and ultimately worth it all. Strange how you have to look back over your life sometimes from years later to see the big picture. Not dating in High School for me was a good thing. I didn't have a lot of problems that befell friends I knew, like unwanted pregnancies. Having my son prematurely and almost losing him made him so much more precious to me. Living for the experience of my son alone is the best thing that has ever happened to me. My mother surviving to bring me into the world so I could have a son was the biggest miracle of all, my son was the second. Marrying the man I was so in love with was another, even though we divorced. But, I had the Great American Dream for a long time. Meeting Nicolas Robertson was another wonder, losing him was the worst thing that ever happened to me. I am lucky I am still here after that. Lucky my mother raised a survivor,too. Yeah, life is an amazing adventure.The people I have known and cared about, the places I have been, the things I have been fortunate enough to have experienced, even the bad stuff, for without that the gauge would be insufficient to the need to measure the richness of the content in my life. I have been close to death far too many times to count anymore. I tried committing suicide at 23, and I wouldn't recommend it, I survived that because a voice woke me- "Nancy, get up now!" No one was there. And thanks to the song "Hold your head up" by Argent which kept me awake through that long night. While I was still in school I dove into a pool and slammed my forehead into the concrete. I remember the concusion and the crack as the concrete instantly changed the shape of my forehead from round to flat. I had a feeling of a strange weightlessness. I saw my hands rising, floating upward, not realizing I was going down until I felt my feet hit the bottom of the pool. I remember pushing off, one last effort to save myself, don't remember anything beyond that, except waking, out of the pool, dry as a bone, with a black and blue forehead which I quickly covered with my bangs before my friends came back from the store. Two weeks later, at school, I got massively sick and threw up all down the hall stairs. Hideously embarrassing! By the time I got home, laid down on my mothers bed I became paralyzed from the neck down. My mom told everyone I had the FLu when she finally found out what happened. I was out of school for two weeks before the feeling came back, first a toe, then a finger. I know exactly what it is to be paralyzed, feeling desperation and helplessness. Yet again, I am dang lucky! And my mom NEVER took me to the doctor! She packed me in ice, waited. I had a "Traumatic Brain Injury" and I have had some issues, mostly relating to memorization and some recall, like dates for instance. A car accident should have killed me, at 36, didn't. I had to fix myself, doctors were not able to help. It took years of hard work/research, and I am not ever going to be 100 %, but I was functioning well enough. That led me to Massage Therapy, the need to fix myself that became a career of helping others. Things happen, my life takes a turn. I look back over my life from here and see it in decades. The Whittier years, the Alan years, the Nicky years, etc. I r...Expand for more