Sharon Denney:
CLASS OF 1962
Palmdale High SchoolClass of 1962
Palmdale, CA
Sharon's Story
Darn it!!!! Every time I just about finish the screen comes on wanting me to buy a yearbook and there is no way to get rid of it till it gets ready and if you try, you come back and your story is gone. Any of you have that problem?
Anyway in 1956 we moved to Palmdale because, like many of you, our father's worked in aircraft. I strted in 6th grade at the old Palmdale Elementary School with Mr. Falls. Then, when Yucca school was finisshed, we all moved there. Then to dear old Sage. I was always the tallest girl, even when we went to PHS, until we came back for our sophmore year and WOW!! all the guys had grown and I didn't feel so bad. I left in November of our senior year because I wanted to get married to my boyfriend who was in the Coast Guard and being sent in December to Seattle to be on the ice breaker The Northwind. I finished school there but I had to go to Edison Tech, an adult school because the high schools said I, being maarried, was a bad infulence to all of their young innocent girls. Yeah, right!! They probably knew more than me. When Harold got out of the Coast Guard, we went back to Highland Park where his family lived and he went back to work at Dept. of Water & Power there in L.A. We had our first son, Richard Wollam (went to PHS; class of 81). Then we had our daughter Laura Wollam (also, PHS class of 83 I think, she dropped out in 81 because we were moving up here to Reno). Harold and Ibought a brand new house up on Anata Place in Palmdale in 1970 and moved up there, nuch to my happiness, but not his. He drove to L.A. every day to work and this caused a great deal of problems for our marriage. In 1975 , we had our third child, Robert Wollam (sorry to say, he went to AV) Then, my dad, Ray Mott, died there in Palmdale in 1976. The following year, we had my baby-beast.( I hope he doesn't mind me saying that) David James Wollam. David seemed a too mature name for a baby, even if he did weigh 9 lbs 8 oz. Each child was bigger than the last and I said, "That's it!!!!" He is now 6' 5".Their father and I divorced in 1979 and Harold moved to the Valley. Then, in 1981 I married David Denney, also a PHS Alum. We sold my house and the house I grew up in on Q-4 and Frontier. We and Laurie and the two younger boys moved to Reno and Ricki went to live with my sister Cynthia Mott-Vogt in Pearblossom.
Dave went to work at Harrah's and I stayed home with the kids. Laurie didn't finish school till a few years ago and then she went to college and now has a very good job in Sparks. She's married with four kids alsol, a girl and three boys. Ricki was a teacher in Sacramento until he passed away in 2001. Bobby is in San Luis Obispo and Jamie, (his friends call him David now or Hyper--his old tag name) is moving soon up to Lancaster from San Fernando Valley where he works as a tattoo artist and believe me he is one great artist. That's not because I'm his Mom. Everyone that sees his work begs him to do them a tat or two. He also does oil paintings and they are selling. I'm so proud of him. Dave and I moved back to Palmdale in 1985 from Reno. When we got here, we bought a mom & pop restaurant and sunk everything into it to fix it up and people loved his cooking. ( we met when he was working at Carrows on Palmdale Blvd.). We had people that would come 2-3 times a week to have dinner. But we lost it because the couple that we bought it from, had had a loan out against the equipment and never told us and never paid the loan. We thought we were so smart because we paid an attorney to check the title and get it put in our name. But needless to say, he lied and we couldn't sue him because he had no insurance and everything he had was in his family's name, so we came back to Palmdale.
He tried working as a cook and I went to work as manager at Butler Scales on Sierra Highway for five years. Then Dave got on with one of the private power companys that subed work out from DWP and Edison, as their heavy duty line mechanic. He never enjoyed anything as much as he did that job, which he had until 1989 when he and a lineman friend opened their own shop. I really loved my job and got to know so many wonderful people who lived and had businesses in the AV. But I got an injury on my legs and had to go out on disability in 1991. Dave closed his shop and bought trucks and became a dirt hauler in the AV. I couldn't work and became depressed and I still suffer from that though I'm no meds and doing good. We moved to Oregon in 1996 and he went to work for International Line Builders as their mechanic. But as winter set in, his doctor at USC said he could not live in the damp cold of an Oregon winter, In 1985 he had been injured on the job and broke his right elbow. Even so, he continued to work for two months because his supervisor made him feel like a sissy if he didn't. After he had worked for two months, his elbow was nothing but crumbs and chunks in his arm. He went in for surgery and they put in a teflon elbow. It wasn't the right size, so they went back in and put in a larger one. A month later he went to a physical therapist who looked at hi...Expand for more
s arm and how it couldn't straighten out and he proudly said, "Oh, that's just scar tissue. I can fix that." He held Dave's shoulder and pushed down on his forarm and they heard a pop and he said "See, I broke up the scar tissue." WRONG!!!! A couple of weeks later he went back in for a stainless steel elbow and even though he wasn't cleared for work, he went back to heavy duty line mechanic. Between 1986 and when he passed away in November 1999, he had had 27 surgeries. Even in his last surgery they were still picking out peices of teflon from the original elbow. Because of the pain and the fact that life wasn't worth living if he could n't work, he was on heavy duty meds and became addicted. I finally yelled at his doctor that he needed to take Dave off of the Vicodin and you know what he said? "Oh I thought the refil requests were coming in more often than they should but I wanted to wait until Dave came to me and asked for help." I said "Are you crazy?!! He doesn't know that he's addicted!" So they took him off of Vicodin and put him on Methadone and also Oxys and I thought,"Here we go again." There were so many meds they had him on and he just didn't know what to do. I know ;the meds is what really killed him but I couldn't afford an attorney so I just let it go. At the end, he was living in Las Vegas, at my ex-husband's house and working as mechanic. He got sick and called me. I drove Bobby's Mustang up to get him and it took us 8 hours to get back to San Fernando Valley because he was so sick and couldn't breathe and we had to stop every so often. When we got home I called Olive View and they told me to bring him in in the morning at 9:00am. But during the night, he passed away from Streptococcus Pneumonia. I woke up when I couldn't hear his wheezing and it was too late. I tried to give him mouth to mouth but when I turned on the light he was white and very cold. He was the love of my life for 19 years. That week I ended up in the hospital in Northridge with his pneumonia and when they finally let me go home, that was when the doctor told me the kind of pneumonia we had and that it was 50% fatal. I said, " That's true. It took half my family."
Because there was no money any more besides my disability, I couldn't stay in San Fernando and there was no where available to me in California. My daughter nearly forced me bodily to move here and live with her and her family. I knew it would be a big mistake, but I had no choice. The saying is so true, that two women can not live in the same house. I suffered through two years and moved out. I even thought of living in a tent in the woods, but it was so cold, two cold for the small dome tent that I had. I ended up in an abused women's shelter for a couple of weeks before I was offered a room to rent.
Then in 2005 I went to work at the Sand's Regency Hotel/Casino as the nights PBX operator and I LOVED THAT JOB!!!! In early 2007 I met my boyfriend through a mutual friend and we have been together for five years. I stopped working after exactly 3 years and I miss it all. We have a one bedroom apartment here in town and this area is just above downtown Reno and at night it's so beautiful because you can look down on all the casino lights in Reno and over aways to the east you can see John Ascuagua's Nugget and what use to be MGM and is now Grand Sierra. Then on the fourth of July and New Year's Eve we can stand just outside our front door and watch all the fireworks from the roof tops of the hotel/casinos and also at the University of Nevada and the Nugget in Sparks. We enjoy the Truckee River which goes right through the middle of town and often go down and he fishes and I swim. We drive to Lake Tahoe fpr the day and do a little gamboling and then driave down through Truckee, California and up Highway 80 back to Reno. Sometimes we get on Highway 80 and go a few miles east of Sparks and go out to see "OUR" wild horses. They are soooooo beautiful to watch. The way the herd breaks up in groups of 5-7 with at least on stallian with each group and they forage in different places so the food isn't all gone at once. There is a small man made lake there in this comercial park where they stay around. We watch the colts playing and sticking close to their moms. While they eat, the stallian stands a little away and watches us. If we try to walk close to them, he puts his ears back and must make a sound we can't hear because the group takes off and if one straggles, he nips at their butt. I could live out there just to be near them. Not too far from there, going towards Fernley, there is a big fenced in area where they put wild horses that people can adopt. But when you see them, they seem so different from the herd that is free. They look like they know they'll never be free again and if someone doesn't adopt them,they might be sold to the slaughter house. Wish we had a place with acreage and I'd adopt all of them.
Well, you'll be glad to hear that I'm done. Darn, I still have 9,910 characters remaining, but don't worry, I'm not going to use them.
Talk at you later, Sharon Mott-Wollam-Denney
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