Ronald Geske:  

Since we graduated in 1974,life went nothing like I hadn't planned. Notice I said hadn't? It went as a blurr for various reasons. For the summer of 74 I spent in St. Petersburg Fl. with a buddy of mine named Kenny Jacobsen. It was a great time sun, fun on the beach,parties,getting a job for supporting myself. [Well you know responsibility had to rear it's ugly head.] The fun in Florida lasted until the end of August, when my buddy decided he wanted to join the Army on the buddy system. I didn't like the idea of going to Vietnam getting shot at so we parted ways. I moved back to good old Mudville with my tail between my legs. I moved back home to Mom and Dad and got a job at Hawthorn Mall as a grounds maintenance man. From that time on it has been 35 years of work. Ever stop to think of how many hours of your life were spent at work? I went back to dating my high school sweetheart Donna Trost, and ended up marring her on July 19th 1975. [Mike Plymale if you are reading this there are way too many crazy times to include.] He was my room mate from September 74 till I got married. My new bride and I got our first house in Round Lake Beach in fall of 1976. A 1 bedroom house for $19,000, which at the time was a lot of money, not so much now!!!!!! On June 4th 1978 God blessed us with our first child named Michelle Dawn which high school NEVER prepared us for. Do you remember how helpless you felt when your child got sick? After 4 years we had our second child Eric Edmund on February 1st 1982. We moved to Ingleside Il. in August of 1983.While we lived there I changed careers and went to work as a laborer/truck driver at Osman Construction with my brother Bob. Donna worked at Baxter on the weekends noon to midnight. We raised our family together until Donna decided we got married too young, and wanted a divorce. That came as quite a hard blow to me because I planned on being married for life.[Another thing high school didn't prepare us for] All that happened in July of 1988. I kept living in my house and had arranged visitation with my children . Life must go on, so I started dating and found a beautiful woman who had the same dreams and ideals I had. Her name was Robbin. She was going through a difficult divorce because of there 2 year old daughter Suzan. I had fallen head over heels in LOVE with Robbin. A short period of time after her divorce {the next day] I asked her to marry me and she said yes!!! I was the luckiest man in the world. At that time [November of 1988] she lived in Palos Hills 46 miles away. So we decided for her and her daughter to move into my house while we waited for our wedding in May of 1989. She never had the story book wedding most girls dream of in her first marriage,so we planned for one together. At that time she was a legal secretary at a law firm in downtown Chicago making good money, so why not she deserved anything she wanted, I was in LOVE. Also while we were waiting to get married we convinced Donna to let my children move back home with us because we could provide a stable home environment for them. Fancy weddings are not cheap!!!!! It is not good to start out your marriage in debt but, we did. Three years after we ...Expand for more