I was born in Wilmington and raised in Southport, NC. I graduated from the Women's College of UNC and skipped my graduation ceremonies and took my exams early in order to begin teaching English at the American School in Managua, Nicaragua. The school there starts in June and I was teaching when my class graduated. I did not know my grades until Christmas but I assumed I passed.
I met my future husband in Managua and we were married there. He was was with the State Department and shortly after our wedding, we were transferred to Istanbul. We served in Turkey, Washington, DC, Mexico City, and Florence, Italy before leaving the State Department and returning to my husband's home town, Paul's Valley, OK. My father died shortly after our return and my Mother moved to Paul's Valley to be close to me and her grandchildren. (I was her only child.) After a year in land-locked Oklahoma, Mother gave me a budget and told me to go buy a place on the water. We had lived on the corner of Lord and Bay in Southport and woke up every morning looking out over the Cape Fear River toward Bald Head where the river enters the Atlantic.