Mark Warner:
CLASS OF 1974
Gladstone High SchoolClass of 1974
Covina, CA
Mark's Story
After graduation from GHS, I went to Citrus College, where I swam and played water polo, with my teammate and friend, Mike Brenner. Upon graduation from Citrus, I transferred to UC Santa Barbara. I got my degree in Cultural Anthropology/Archaeology. I continued my education at graduate school in Arizona. But it was slow going there, because I couldn’t take too many classes at a time because of the out of state tuition costs. I needed to work to earn money, as loans weren’t possible. I could go for a semester or two then return to California to earn more money. One of those times, I got an emergency credential and was allowed to be a substitute teacher. I worked for two districts, one of which was Azusa. I taught everything from kindergarten to high school, including one day with girl’s intermediate PE. I was very dubious about that one, since I couldn’t go into a 7th and 8th grade girls locker room. Heaven knows they would need supervision. They had a matron in there, watch over them, so I was able to take the class. I also had a home economy class one day. Working in Azusa, I only did elementary schools.
Before I could finish my master’s degree, federal policies killed all the jobs for archaeologists. In the mean time, I had become a Christian. I then went to seminary, at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena. I graduated with a Master’s of Divinity. I was, and still am, ordainable. To get a job in my church, one must have a resume a yard long, starting with when you were in Jr. High working with the younger kids and going from there. It is also important that you have family in the working in the church, or at least lot of friends in high places. I didn’t have that. I also realized I don’t have all of what it would take to be the pastor of a small church. You are not only the pastor, you’re basically the CEO of a small business. I didn’t have what it would take to do that.
I had few offers to candidate for churches. The best offers I could get would be at church who paid about minimum wage. For someone with a master’s degree that isn’t much. To have a family and much of a home or life you needed a wife with a good paying job to support the family. I didn’t have that.
I needed a job good paying job. I went to nursing school, at LA County Med Center. It can be seen as the big building on the hill just off the 10 freeway in Boyle Heights just beyond East LA. While in school I worked. I got a job at UCLA, hospital on the oncology unit.
While in school I started dating one of my classmates. I also planned to leave LA once I graduated. She knew that and was cool with it. When I graduated I moved to Cheyenne, Wyoming. I took, and passed the state boards there. I worked at a hospital in Cheyenne, on the oncology unit.
I was charge nurse on a small unit. One night we had two patients. I worked with an LPN (LVN they are called in CA). She had her patient and I had mine. Mine was a young woman only a year older than me who had battled breast cancer for 10 years. By now the battle wasn’t going well for her. She did like to stay up late at night. So I spent several hours talking with her. We talked of God, life and afterlife. The next night she stayed up late again and we talked more. Then next she was discharged and went home. A couple of weeks later I came to work and saw her chart in the rack. I said, “Oh, K. is back.” They told me “No, she died this afternoon.” I went to her memorial service. (The only one for a patient I ever went to.) The minister was also our unit chaplain. He was saying he saw here about a month before she died and again a couple of days before. He said her attitude and level of comfort with knowing she was going to die had changed a great deal for the better. Her husband found me there, and was saying that I was the reason that his wife was at peace when she died.
I had another incident, when we didn’t have any patients on my unit. I was floated to the med/surg unit. I was the only one who knew how to deal with a chest tube. I got the patient with that. His wife was allowed to stay over night in the room. She observed me. I took such good care of her husband that she gave me a Christmas Wreath that she had crochet, (it was near Christmas time- I still have it). There were others who’s lives I did have an impact on, due to my nursing skills and my theological training.
My girlfriend didn’t have the skills I had. While she graduated and passed boards, she was in over her head in some jobs. She kept getting fired. She had a sister in Wisconsin who was a nurse. She told her that there were lots of jobs there. We agreed that if she got a job there I would get one too. We could end the long distance relationship as I would be right there. She did, so I did. I moved there and started my job. Then she broke up with me, because it was easy for her to have a boyfriend a thousand miles away but she couldn’t deal with one who just lived down the street.
While I worked there I had taken care of one woman who thought enough of my care to write to the president of the hospital extolling me my care for her. I have a copy of the letter he wrote back to her, thanking her for her praise of the employees. Whenever I saw her out in public, which was occasionally, when I would come in the shop she worked,, she would announce to everyone there, I was the nurse who saved her life.
While in Milwaukee, I picked up a book of Russian history. I know a fair amount of European history but none of Russia. It was very interesting. Sometime after that I saw an ad for a tour company that did tours to Russia and Ukraine.
I wanted to get out of Wisconsin, I only went there to be with Amy. I had found a job in Montana and moved there. So I had to wait a while to earn some vacation time. When I had it, I signed up for a tour to St. Petersburg and Moscow. The unique thing about their tours they would hold little parties, with per-approved local people. So we got to meet local Russians otherwise the only Russians we knew were the tour guides. I had a great time. Once time we had a tour guide who like to emphasize that we were on a three hour tour. A THREE HOUR TOUR. She never understood why every time she said that a bus load of middle aged Americans would break out in laughter.
While I was working in Montana, I was on a cardiac step down unit I had a patient who had by-pass surgery. I got report on her. Her day shift nurse told me she was a PIA. (I think you can figure that one out.) I decided to ignore that and take her as a found her. She was actually very nice. I got her pain meds when she needed them and she was fully cooperative and a nice person. A few weeks later she came back to see her surgeon for her check up. She made a point of coming to the hospital to find me. She gave me a box of VERY GOOD chocolates. She told me it was only for me, and admonished me NOT to share them with my co-workers. I guess she didn’t like their care for her.
A year later I went on another tour, this time to Moscow and Kyiv, Ukraine. At a party on Saturday afternoon I saw a young beautiful blond in a red crushed velvet dress, I wanted to meet. I did. I was in luck she was a high school English teacher. She had taken the bus in to Kyiv that morning and planned on leaving the next morning back to her city some 180km away. I took her to dinner. We would have only had one night together. We found a place to go dancing. It was a ship docked on the river. It was part restaurant, disco, sports bar and casino. It cost me $10 to $15 in local currency for us to enter. We each got a chip for the casino. We dance as long as we wanted than went exploring. In the sports bar they were doing karaoke. All were singing in Russian, but one girl, who was going to sing in English. She was going to sing “Yesterday” being a Beatles fan I knew the song well. As she sang I was softly singing in, Svita, my date’s, ear. That because our song. We went to the casino. She bet on the roulette wheel and won. I gave her my chip, ...Expand for more
she bet again and won. She got a total of about $5. I let her keep the money. We stayed until they kicked us out at closing time at 5:30 AM. Before she went home I had her address and phone number.
I could never afford a wife, or buy a house on what I made in Montana, and they were closing schools there, so no jobs for her. I got a job in Oregon. The cost of living was about the same but the pay was about 40% better.
I wrote to Svita and called her often. We talked longer and longer, and more frequently over time. I found a way to get letters to her faster than the USPS could do. After several months I asked she would want to come join me in America. She said yes. I sent her paperwork. She sent it back I filed all the documentation needed she was approved. One last thing was she had to do an interview all Ukrainians must do their interview at the US Embassy in Warsaw, Poland. I bought her a ticket from Kyiv to Warsaw. I got one for myself from Montana to Warsaw. I timed them so that her flight landed 5 minutes before mine. We meet in passport control and spent a week together in Poland. She did her interview and was given a K-1 visa (the 90 day fiancee visa). We each returned home. I had to work, she filed paperwork to leave Ukraine. In about a month she had it. She took the train from Ukraine to Moscow and I bought her an airline ticket from Moscow to Sea/Tac.
I picked her up there and brought her back to my apartment in Oregon. We lived there for five weeks, while we planned our wedding. We got married in Las Vegas. It was close enough my friends and family could come. Vegas has so many weddings it is very geared up for it. We had a nice wedding for not a lot of money. After a honeymoon in California, we returned to Oregon. After a while we bought 2 acres of land and had a house built on it. We helped doing work on the house. We moved in about a month before our son was born.
When he was two he wanted playmates but there was few people around, and no kids. We decided that we would move to somewhere there were kids. I told Svita to choose where she wanted to live. Her being Ukrainian had no ties to anywhere in the US. She wanted to live where she could swim in the ocean. You can’t do that in Oregon. (You think the water is cold at Huntington beach, wait until you feel it at Lincoln, Oregon.)
She choose Delaware. I got a job here, we sold our house and bought one here. I worked in a hospital. After a while they needed two night shift charge nurses. Three of us applied. As it was the two of them had 3 years experience as nurses combined. I had 15 years. They got the jobs. I was more than a little pissed about that.
I found a job in the prison, 12 hour nights, which what I wanted, and it came with a $5,000 sign on bonus, so long as I worked at least a year. I ended up working there more than four. I worked in the SHU, (Super-max Housing Unit). I passed meds did sick calls treated medical and mental health emergencies. One place I passed meds was to the men on Death Row. So I knew at least some of the condemned men.
After four years of that, I took a short term job in a hospital in Maine. I then returned to Delaware and took a travel nurse position in a prison in North Carolina. I did six months there, then came home. I took a job in a jail, and worked there four and half years. While over to pass to the work release inmate, someone came to say that the thought this inmate returning to the work release center was OD’ing on heroin. He didn’t think it, he knew it. He was OD’ing and they brought him back. He was actively dying. I had the officers call 911 while I kept him breathing until they arrived. He got narcan and was taken to the hospital. He lived, but that got him trasffered to the prison with new charges. I got a commendation for my knowing what to do and doing it, to keep him alive. Let me tell you the antics that those people pull are something else. I left there, one can only take so much without a break.
I took a job in a nursing home, as charge on unit two. We had a lot of older residents who were not in very good shape. If it looked like they might die sometime soon, the doctor would talk to the family about code status. Did they want us to preform heroic measures if their heart should stop? If not that were made DNR (Do Not Resuscitate). We also get an order, RN may pronounce. Doctors don’t want to come into the home in the middle of the night, or even in the middle of office hours to look at them and go, “Yep they’re dead.” As an RN I could do that. We had a large facility, we might lose one resident every couple of months. I pronounced a few, of them. Their Death Certificates carried my signature.
The nursing home was far from my home was falling asleep on the drive home. I got a job at a mental hospital near my home. While there I saw some of the people I knew from the jail. I worked there a year and a half. I can tell you that you burn out quick working with crazy people.
I got a job in another nursing home close to the house. I was the night shift supervisor. That was my title. My title didn’t match my job. They lied to me about it when they hired me. Also there was one day they screwed me over royally, and it wasn’t accidentally, it was planned. A month later they were going to do it to me again. This time I saw it coming and quit before they could do me again.
I took my last job as a travel nurse in prison in South Carolina. It was the biggest and worst prison in the state. The 13 weeks I was there, they had 6 stabbings, one fatal. It was all inmate on inmate. The nurses were pretty safe. We were behind locked doors when inmates were out. My contract ran out eleven days before I reached the age to collect full Social Security benefits. I returned home and put in for SS as soon as I was able. I’ve been happily retired since then.
I don’t just sit around the house getting fatter, well a little of that my wife is a good cook. I work the elections as a poll worker. I have seen how the elections are done from the inside. All of us swear an oath before we open to be fair and honest and not to try influence the voters in any way. Also the votes are recorded electronically with a paper ballot back up. We tell the voters look at the paper ballot, is that how you wanted to vote? Does it match what your vote on the touch screen says? If so hit vote and they have voted. There is no way an election could be stolen.
In addition to working as a poll worker I was a volunteer campaign worker for our governor. As such I know him and he knows me and my wife. Being that Delaware is a small state, I also got to know the Lt. Governor. She is/was a nursing instructor, so she and I had things to talk about. I know the Jr. US Senator, he knows me but he keeps forgetting my name. When I remind him, he’s like, “Yeah I should remember that,” he is friends with the Senator from Virginia who has the same name as me. I don’t know our Congresswoman or our other Senator as well but I have met them a few times. I don’t know Joe Biden, but I did know his son, (Beau- not Hunter). Maybe someday I’ll get to meet Joe.
Since I have made decent money as a nurse, I was able to travel, I’ve been to 6 countries, not counting the ones I transited through. I did have to over night once in Vienna, Austria. I have been to 49 states. I plan on making it to Alaska someday. I also have been to all the major battlefields of the Civil War and the Revolutionary War. I love going to the National Parks, with Yellowstone as my favorite.
I live with my wife and our son. We have been married 24 years. She is a financial wiz and is the family CFO. She made sure by the time I retired the house, all credit cards, cars, and other debts were all paid off. All this time she has been very happy as a homemaker/stay at home mom. She home schooled our son since she had been a teacher. My wife is a US citizen. We also have my mother-in-law living with us. So our son has a multi generational family experience.
Register for Free to view all details!
Reunions
Photos