Families Forever Story

Outline review

Draft chapters map to answer ids. Thin chapters should ask for more material instead of padding.

First-person memoir

Edited from spoken interviews, written as the subject's own remembered life.

Chapter 1

A Word to My Grandchildren

I recorded this history for the people I hoped would know me long after the stories stopped coming up around the dinner table.

Chapter 2

Two Pounds, Twelve Ounces

My life began with my twin brother George, a doubtful prognosis, and two improvised incubators made from orange crates and light bulbs.

Chapter 3

Between City and Farm

Denver made us city children, but Idaho gave us horses, cousins, grandparents, and a living connection to the family that came before us.

Chapter 4

Denver During the War

Childhood in Denver meant stable homes, wartime rationing, troop trains, and learning that nothing useful was casually thrown away.

Chapter 5

Making Do and Moving Up

My parents improved our circumstances through ingenuity, long hours, and one improbable business involving rabbit brains.

Chapter 6

Bring On the Adventure

At fifteen, I left Denver with my family for Australia, crossed the Pacific in first class, and entered a world larger than any of us had known.

Chapter 7

The Snowy Mountains

Australia placed our family beside one of the century's great engineering projects and showed me what experienced people could build together.

Chapter 8

Learning Another World

Australian school, music, rugby, politics, and friendship required me to listen closely and adapt quickly.

Chapter 9

Around the World at Seventeen

The journey home became an odyssey through a dock strike, the Indian Ocean, Suez, Europe, and the Atlantic.

Chapter 10

Working for an Education

Returning home meant sugar-company shifts, university tuition, and the discipline of earning an education without a straight path.

Chapter 11

Two Years of Faith

Missionary service returned me to Australia with a different purpose and deepened the beliefs that guided the rest of my life.

Chapter 12

Orchestra, Senate, and History

At the University of Denver I tried to make room for business, public life, music, and the past all at once.

Chapter 13

Degrees and Detours

IBM, retail, real estate, graduate business school, and an eliminated position taught me that a career can emerge through failed fits.

Chapter 14

A Career in Trust

An unexpected opening in municipal bonds became more than thirty years of responsibility for banks, communities, and other people's money.

Chapter 15

March 8, 1973

I met Judy on a very long first date, lost the timing, found her again years later, and began the life I had been waiting for.

Chapter 16

The Call That Made Us Parents

A Friday-afternoon phone call gave us ninety minutes to reach a baby boy and changed the meaning of every room in our home.

Chapter 17

A House Full of Family

Homes, church service, neighborhood tradition, married children, and grandchildren made the later years rich beyond measure.

Chapter 18

The Best Is Yet to Come

Looking back, I found the meaning of the story in family, faith, useful work, gratitude, and confidence in what future generations could build.