Darla Callahan Statler:  

Hi... Not sure how I found this site. I guess it was a pop up ad and I bit and clicked and here I am. I'm getting ready to put the ad in the paper for the planning of our 30 yr reunion in 2010 so hopefully this site will come in handy. Well, as for me and my life after high school. To sum it all up in one word ... "B L E S S E D" God has been so good to me and my family... After graduation in 1980 I moved to Creve Coeur and enrooled at UMSL and then had emergency surgery and missed so much I had to drop. Dropping was a good thing befause I hated it. UMSL would have been much better if I hadn't been commuting. It was hard to meet people since I was not living on campus. I don't think at that time they had dorms. Anyway, the next semester I started at Jeffco. All the while I was dating Richie Statler or should I say "Rich" which he prefers. We were married in June 1981 and have been happily married nearly 28 years ... omg...! The day after our wedding we moved to Orange, Texas. (Our good friends Skip & Lisa Edney Gerstner lived there and things were booming in Texas and dead in Missouri and Rich had been laid off.) Rich started an apprenticeship with the electric company and I worked in Beaumont, TX in computer/software sales and did word processing teaching to attorney firms. (Back then an IBM or Compaq PC 10 megabyte hard drive was $4500. How far we have come.) We were very happy in Texas and had many great friends and were very active in our church. We were the high school youth leaders for several years. We built a beautiful new home in Mauriceville, TX and thought we'd live in Texas forever but God saw things differently. After many years of fertility specialists I finally became pregnant and we moved back to Missouri when I was pregnant with our first child (Chad.) Rich was now employeed with Union Electric and I was a stay at home mom for a while. I later wanted to work so I got my real estate license and sold my first house to myself. We bought and remodeled an old farm house on 10 acres. (Loved the end result but will never do that again.) After realizing real estate took too much time away from family I went to nursing school at Mineral Area college in Park Hills (Flat River at that time.) I graduated with honors in 1992 and went to work at Jefferson Memorial Hospital in Festus, MO in the Inensive Care Unit. just a few months later dmy dad died with lung cancer. Dad was at Barnes off and on for treatment for months and at the end no one ordered hospice. I don't think I even knew what hospice was at the time. They put a feeding tube in him and sent him home. We thought he came home to get better. As it turned out ... it was to die. Dad died one week after leaving the hospital. It was an unexpected horribe ordeal. As a result, I started to volunteer for hospice and have now been a full time RN with JMH hospice for nearly 16 years. I spent a few years in management in our depeartment and hated that and came back out into the field where I am meant to be. I love my patients and their families. I always say "I'll stay where God...Expand for more