Author: Linda A. Wingfield

I was born in Long Beach, California, on November 29, 1949. My parents were both from Aberdeen, South Dakota (only about 100 miles from where I presently live). Daddy was working as an apprentice cabinetmaker, and we actually lived in Seal Beach, which didn't have a hospital, thus my birth place being Long Beach. Not too long before we moved to Alaska, we were back in Aberdeen, South Dakota, where my parents "babysat" a farm for some people who were traveling overseas. My brother Gary was born there, when I was 18 months old. Before he was a year old, we moved to Valdez, Alaska. My parents had actually both thought about at least going to see what Australia was all about, and had planned to start their trip over there, from the port of Anchorage. After arriving there, however, they fell in love with Alaska, and after checking out Valdez, decided to stay. There's a lot more to the story, but that will be written in a Blog. The huge Alaska Earthquake happened on March 27, 1964, when I was in 8th grade. That changed our lives in a big way, along with the lives of all the people who survived that quake. We had less than 1000 people in Valdez, at the time, and we lost 31 of them (out of the 123 deaths in Alaska and 16 in Washington, and Oregon). I was 14. I graduated from 8th grade in Fairbanks, at Main Jr. High. By the fall, our Valdez High School had been fixed enough for us to hold school, so my Freshman year was spent there, and by the time I was a sophomore, we had moved to "the new town"...another story for the Blog. In 1968, while still a senior in high school, I married my first husband. In 1976, with four children, we divorced. By then I had lived in Soldotna and Kenai, and was living in Anchorage. I moved back to Valdez to live with my mom, who was also on her own, as my dad had passed away (at age 54), in 1973. In 1978, Mom and I packed up my four kids and moved down to California (we drove the Alcan, and then down I5...her in her pickup and 5th-wheel trailer, and me in my AMC Ambassador Brough, pulling a small vintage Shasta trailer with its signature wings on the sides, at the back. After that, we moved around to several areas of Southern California (beginning in Huntington Beach, where one of my aunts and my grandmother lived), ending up at California Hot Springs, in the Sierra Nevadas above Porterville. A couple of years later I met and married my husband David Wingfield, who was one of the ushers at the church where Mom and ministered with our little worship band from Hot Springs, in Porterville, a couple of times a month. He had one little boy, and I had my four children (two boys and two girls), and together we had one more little girl. Now, after many more life changes, all of our children are grown, with children of their own (as you can see on the HOME page, in my WELCOME Blog). We now love with Judi (the youngest girl), her husband Harry, and their seven children, on a wonderful little hobby farm that we purchased jointly with them in June 2015. We love it here. Through all of this, I grew up loving arts, crafts, and music...the things my parents also valued and used all of their lives. We were also taught great family values and work ethics. These are the things I'll be sharing with you, here on this site. I hope you enjoy the journey through my life...not necessarily chronologically, but by the bits and pieces you'll see of it as I share them here.
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Voted!

Just went and voted. COLD outside…brrr…snowed lightly sometime before we left (about 7:30 AM), then snowed very lightly just as we got home about 45 minutes later (we only live about 5 minutes from our polling place). It’s 29 degrees F. right now…brrr!

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New Post Test

TO AUTHORS…

I have just pulled up a New Post form, and am writing this as a test, to show that once it’s saved, it actually does show up on the “New Posts” Page as it should.