Charlotte Holland:  

Life Hey yall ! I'm a widow now with two grown (and gone) children (25 and 23). For over 23 years, my main home has been in Baldwin County, Alabama (about 75 minutes north of Gulf Shores), but I recently purchased a small home in Monroe and go back often to visit with my sisters and daughter. After high school, I graduated from (what was then called) NLU in business (office administration), married, moved to Mobile, AL, and we had two children. Just after the second one was born, we moved to neighboring Baldwin County and purchased an old craftsman-style bungalow from the original owners and spruced it up a good bit. The house was built in 1921 and after 23 years, I am still here in this wonderful old home with beaded board walls and ceilings. I can hang a picture anywhere I want to! I had a wonderful 24-year marriage with a loving husband, and it was a devastating loss to me when he died in July 2003 of colon cancer at age 47. The disease was discovered when Dan was only 41, but after the initial surgery, he lived a mostly normal existence for the next 5 years and then the cancer reappeared and began to take its toll on him. Our children grew from ages 11/13 to 17/19 during the time of Dan's cancer and we both thanked God that He gave us this time together as a family, so that our son and daughter could almost complete their teenage years with their dad still around to offer them guidance and love. They knew that they were "ahead of the game" when it came to their father, even th...Expand for more