Mignon Matthews

I was born during a blizzard in an old farmhouse located in the Catskill Mountains of New York in 1939. My brother was fifteen and my sister was thirteen at the time; I was something of a surprise.

The school I attended was small with all twelve grades housed in one building. We had excellent teachers, which resulted in lots of individual attention. Our graduating class had twenty-three students and five of us won New York State Regents Scholarships. I took mine to SUNY at Fredonia. My "claim to fame" in high school was my voice. I sang for school events, churches, weddings, etc.;so, I majored in Music Education at SUNY.

Health problems caused me to drop out; on recovery, I joined the WAC. During my time in service, I met and married my husband. When we both finished our service obligations, we settled down in New Jersey and were soon blessed with a daughter and twenty-one months later, a son. When the children were both in school, I returned to college and finally obtained my B. A. in Music Education; however, I never used it to teach music except for private voice and piano.

Our daughter died in 1980 and our divorce was finalized in 1982. I was employed to develop and deliver training programs for company specific software; later, I moved into customer service management. I retired in 2003 and our son died in 2005. Now, I live alone, do volunteer work, genealogy, sing in the church choir and write.