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Salvation Freeper since December 19, 2000
Salvation was born and raised in Scottsbluff, Nebraska. She attended elementary, high school and two years of college there. After earning her Associate's Degree in Education, she taught second and third grades in Dix, NE. A few years later, she wound up moving to California, near Anaheim, and it was there that she met her husband-to-be on a blind date. They were married a year and a half later and moved to the Bay area.
During the next few years, Salvation's husband Dave worked first as an auditor for the Federal Home Loan Bank Board and then as Controller for what was then called Central California Federal Savings and Loan in the main office in Auburn, CA. Also during this time, Salvation had given birth to three girls and a boy. While Controller for Central California Federal, Dave had the pleasure of meeting Ronald Reagan during a trail ride on horseback sponsored by his employer.
Ronald Reagan, lovingly rendered by our own Billie (c)2001.
Desiring a change, Salvation and her husband flew to Salem, OR to look at a child care center that was for sale. They decided to purchase the child care center, licensed for 50 children with a staff of five adults and two teacher aides, usually high schoolers. Two years after moving there, their youngest son was born. Salvation's husband Dave worked for the State of Oregon as a fiscal analyst for the Child and Protective Services. He also handled all the bookkeeping for their daycare center.
What appeared on the surface as a life of bliss as parents and business-owners, in reality caused stress leading to the request for a divorce by Dave. Salvation signed them both up for a Marriage Encounter weekend without Dave's knowledge. He consented to go, however, when the weekend was finally scheduled. It turned their marriage around. Subsequently, they went for training to be a presenting team couple for Marriage Encounter weekends - as if they didn't already have enough on their plates! They did that for about five years, and also presented several Family Weekend Experiences for families in the Salem area.
Their children were active in Little League; Dave served as League president and umpired games for the region. In high school, their daughters were involved in Spanish Club, dance team and soccer. The boys went out for football and wrestling. During this time Dave was also the campaign treasurer for several Republican candidates in local elections. Salvation says she was "still too busy to get into the politics of it all, however."
Then, in 1985, as Salvation puts it, "the big bomb hit. It may as well have been a bomb, because I was devastated. We found out that my husband had lung cancer in April and he died the last week of August of that year. I am thankful that the Lord gave me those four months, don't get me wrong."
It was a year later that Salvation attended her first Beginning Experience weekend. She returned a year after that for another weekend and relates that her life has never been the same. It was as though God was preparing her for her next painful experiences. Over the next 6 years she experienced four more deaths in her immediate family. Drawing on her strength and her deep faith in God, she became an active member in her Catholic parish (Disciples in Mission) and during Lent she is on the Pastoral Council.
This all leads up to Salvation joining Free Republic. She credits her late husband with her Republican "conversion." She was brought up in a Democratic family who believed in government subsidies for farmers. Dave helped her to see that the subsidies, by and large, did not really help the farmers at all, while taxing all of the other citizens of the nation.
Salvation's actual Free Republic membership began by lurking during the hearings after the presidential election and the subsequent Democratic election fraud fiasco in Florida. She ended up tiring of being a lurker and signed up. She is pro-life and anti-government-takeover of privately-owned land. As a former business-owner (she no longer owns the daycare center, having sold it in 1991), Salvation feels that when a person's income depends on the land they own (such as in the farmlands surround the Klamath Basin in Southern Oregon), "it is vital that we all stand up and speak out."
Salvation is proud to be a Roman Catholic and contributes to threads in the religion forum on a regular basis. She also posts the "Catholic Caucus: Daily Mass Readings" on FR each day and the "Sunday Mass Readings" on Sunday. She also tries to post the "Radio Address by the President to the Nation" each Saturday morning but is not always so successful in getting it posted. She says that is due to her "laziness," but with all of her accomplishments and raising 5 children to boot, it is very difficult to believe the word "lazy" even exists in her vocabulary.
Salvation's five children are all grown and live in Chicago, Phoenix, Cornelius, OR, Salem, OR and her youngest son is a student at Portland State. Salvation also has "three and almost four" grandchildren. Two grandsons are in Phoenix and a granddaughter is in Cornelius. Salvation feels it is important that "I also try to enjoy the each day as the Lord gives it to me. Smell the flowers, gaze at the sunset."
Finally, Salvation cites the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi as her favorite:
~Prayer of St. Francis~
Lord, make me and instrument of your peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are both to eternal life.
St. Francis of Assisi.
Please join me in giving another deserving FReeper a warm welcome to FR's Finest... Today that Finest is
Salvation!
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