Biography

Bradford Junior College in Bradford, Massachusetts where I continued to concentrate on my writing winning an award in my senior year. There followed a brief stint at Bennington College, Bennington, Vermont where I majored in Theatre Arts and an even more brief one at California State University, Fresno, California where I added a few more credits in Theatre Arts.

I must have been bitten by the bug at an early age. I’ve been told that, when I was three, I taught myself to sing “Pennies from Heaven” and, during a winter visit to Miami, would break away from my family every chance I got to “work” the boardwalk. I could usually pick up a few pennies before my mother made me give them back.

I began composing little ditties on the piano at the age of five but my earliest recollection of writing is when I was seven years old on a trip to Arizona. Again I was singing, this time a few Deanna Durbin numbers at the pool one afternoon when a family friend asked me if I could write a song. When I offered to try, she suggested I go somewhere quiet and work on it. (In looking back, I suspect there may have been more emphasis on “go somewhere” than on “write a song.”) I did manage to write the song and “Take Me Back to Arizona” became a brief hit on radio stations across the state.

My first publishing credit came in seventh grade with a poem in a national anthology. I

published several more pieces of poetry throughout high school, two of which won regional awards. Armed with a couple of journalism classes I served as coeditor of the school paper for two years and, later, as editor for the school’s Alumni Bulletin and several other local publications.

I left college to take a job as Stage Manager for a Detroit-based production of “Can-Can” directed by my high school drama teacher and learned more about theatre in eight weeks than I had ever known. My next job was as nightclub vocalist. I loved it but an offer to co-host Michigan’s first FM Radio talk show proved too tempting to resist and, once I managed to rememorize the alphabet, I became the proud bearer of my very own FCC card.

Following a failed marriage I finally found my true love while singing at a piano bar in Nassau. Bahamas. George and I were married a year and a half later and I became a resident of California’s San Fernando Valley and inherited three adult stepchildren. Our son, David, was born two years later and, shortly after, we moved to the Southern Sierra Nevada just a few miles from Yosemite National Park.

How lucky could one get? It was here that I found the perfect happy medium between my love of writing and entertainment. I spent ten years as Manager of Public Relations for The Golden Chain Theatre, a nationally recognized summer melodrama group, with a number of acting roles thrown in before I began to co-author (with me composing the music) a series of plays along with a book on melodrama. See: LITTLE ORPHAN ANGELA (Or, The Magician's Dirty Tricks!!!), TRAPPED BY A TREACHEROUS TWIN (Or, Double Trouble!!), SHOWDOWN AT THE RAINBOW RANCH and HISSES, BOOS & CHEERS (Or, A Practical Guide to The Planning, Producing and Performing of Melodrama!) Dramatic Publishing Company.

During the next ten years I was thrilled to accompany one of these musical melodramas to the prestigious Edinburgh Fringe Festival during which time I was an adjunct faculty member at California State University Fresno. It was at this time that I began to write trade shows such as THREE CHEERS FOR THE YONDER, WILD & BLUE (Or, Would a Tail-dragger Pilot Lie to You?) and found myself somewhat in demand as a director for numerous other theatre groups.

My husband and I managed to fulfill our dream, a trip around the world (in five months with no advance planning!), and join Circumnavigators Club. I began writing a few travel articles.

As of this time, we commute back and forth between the mountains of the Sierra Nevada, and the Great Lakes in southeastern Michigan and southwestern Ontario, Canada. I am still directing occasionally and, yes, still writing most of the time as can be seen in Sophie’s Corner.