charlotte krasnoff:  

After graduation from ACHS, I attended the University of Pennsylvania and entered the field of education . I taught a few years at the NJ College of Commerce, my father's school. I went on a trip to Denver, Colorado and fell in love with the West as well as falling in love. I continued teaching, first in elementary school and then at the University of Denver for a year. After marrying my first husband, a mining engineer, we moved to Nevada to a small company town of 300 on the edge of an open pit copper mine. It was a fascinating experience! I learned to appreciate the beauty of the desert, found out friends could be of any age, learned attending high school could be a privilege if one lived long distances from the nearest one, traveled the West widely and met people of diverse backgrounds. I taught in the four room schoolhouse with only one outline map of the USA as an instructional tool. The Russians put Sputnick into outer space and we began above ground atomic testing near Las Vegas, some 350 miles south. We would go up on the nearby mountain at 5 am and watch the umbrella cloud explode with the sky lighting up orange. We had no idea of any danger. Because I was a teacher in our little town and therefore a non-transcient miner, I was asked by the US Government to wear a badge to measure fallout. Each month it was exchanged for a new one and I received a letter saying everything was fine. Later people in our area were called downwind people and there was large incidence of cancers, babies with anomalies etc. I sadly became unable to have children. After divorce, I returned home to Ventnor briefly and then to Denver where I enjoyed living. I had a fun job at the Denver Jewish Community Center developing their adult program. One of the requirements of the j...Expand for more