Donna Beard:  

Life I lived in Cincinnati and attended Frost Elementary, North Jr. High, and Mt. Healthy High. The summer after freshman year, my dad was transferred to Memphis, Tennessee - he was a truck driver for Consolidated Freightways at the time. Mom and Dad bought a house in Bartlett and their house was the first sale for their real estate agent, Rachel Durham. For years after I left Memphis, I could call the broker Rachel had worked for in 1974 and identify myself by saying I was the daughter of Rachel's truck driver. Went to Bartlett High then skipped my junior year to be a senior in fall 1975. Rachel Durham took her daughter Lisa Houseal and me to an open house at Christian Brothers College in fall 1975 and there I discovered that the director of admissions was the older brother of a girl I had known in Cincinnati. Graduated from Bartlett High in May 76, started at CBC in August, and within a couple of weeks had run into Phil Beard (East High class of '76). His best friend (Monte Emerson, CBHS '76) had dated one of my best friends from Bartlett (Pam Shepard, '75), and they had actually introduced us once. Phil and I were both dating other people but we became good friends right from the start. We started dating in April '77 and married in May '79. We immediately moved to Madison Heights, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit and were there a few months before moving to Indianapolis, IN. Way too hot and humid in the summer, way too cold in the winter. A summer 1983 vacation to visit my parents in South Carolina plus a side trip to St. Simons Island, GA, prompted me to beg, plead, implore, insist, demand (take your pick) that we move back to the South. And January 1984, we...Expand for more