What have you been doing for the last 50 years?
After graduating high school in January, I worked in downtown Chicago for a couple of months. I started college in April of 1963. The school started out as Chicago Teachers College and changed names a couple of times. I graduated in December of 1966 from Northeastern Illinois University on Chicago’s north side. Instead of semesters there were tri-mesters; so one could go to school all year round. I met my husband John Edward Zid at a frat house on south Michigan Avenue. He didn’t belong to that fraternity but was there as a friend. Our college sorority was invited to the parties. We were married the day before I graduated college. I taught second grade at Jane Addams school in Palatine for 3 1/2 years. Our first child was born in 1971 and I became a stay-at-home mother. Didn’t have much choice in those days. You could not teach and be pregnant at the same time. Our second daughter was born in 1973. We decided we wanted some acreage to raise our family on. We went looking in Illinois but land prices were over $2,000 an acre so decided we needed to leave Illinois. We moved to Missouri in 1974 onto 176 acres. That turned out to be much more than we needed and that we could take care of. In 1976 we moved to our present location in south central Missouri on 60 acres. We have had six more children while in Missouri. As our oldest was fast approaching high school graduation we decided I probably needed to go back to teaching in order to pay for college. Luckily several of our children were able to acquire their college degrees through scholarships. I had my Missouri teaching license since 1974 but only used it to sub once in awhile. I went back to teaching in 1987 and obtained my Masters in Special Education in 1989 from Missouri State University in Springfield, MO. I retired from teaching in Mountain Grove, MO in 2005. Since then I have become a Master Gardener and have learned to quilt which I enjoy very much. I presently bowl on a league team once a week. John and I enjoy cruising and traveling to visit our fifteen grandchildren.
