Barbara Tomlin:  

I'm proud to be a fourth generation American. While I was born in Oregon I spent very little time there in my youth. I spent most of my childhood in the Uranium Capital of the World -- Grants, New Mexico. When I graduated from high school there, I could hardly wait to leave town to head for college in Southern California. After spending so many years in a small town, I was determined to spend the rest of my life in a big city and L.A. was happening at the time. After attending college in Southern California, I worked for Haskins & Sells, an international CPA firm in the One Wilshire Building in Downtown Los Angeles. It was in the elevator of that building I met my future husband. It was almost a year later when we met again.After four months of dating we got married on October 5, 1974 in the Angeles Forest on Angeles Crest overlooking the L.A. basin. Shortly after my husband earned his CPA certificate, we left the smog in L.A. to make our home on the Oregon coast. I opened up my fired glass manufacturing business there and he launched his first CPA practice. We spent a little over a year on the Oregon Coast but the weather was just too damp and cold for us to enjoy staying there year round. So, when my husband was offered a job opportunity in Central Oregon, we moved there. We settled in Bend, where I continued running my own business and he worked for a major recreational real estate developer. After two years with the developer, my husband bought an escrow company and opened another CPA practice. My business was located in the light-manufacturing district of Bend and it was there a friend convinced me to sell real estate in addition to running my own business. To this day, our favorite spot in Ame...Expand for more