Wednesday, January 15, 2025

Taking A Chance**

Nineteen years ago today, I came back to Texas, after having lived in Washington state for just over 21 years.  

I was about to start my last semester of library school.  I had been doing an online program with the University of North Texas, but had accepted a graduate library assistantship in Denton for my final semester.  My hope was being in Texas would make it easier to get a librarian job IN Texas after graduation in May.

So two days before (Friday the 13th!), I'd finished packing up a ABF UPack ReloCube (6'x7'x8' high) and cleaning my apartment,* then flown to Houston the following day to pick up a 2002 Camry that my aunt, Sister Jean Marie, had arranged for me to purchase from the parish that had been leasing it.  I spent the night at my sister's place, and hit the road the next day to drive to Grapevine, Texas, where my cousin Tom and his wife Karen had agreed to let me stay a while.  (Grapevine is about 31 miles south of Denton.)

Heading north out of Houston on Interstate 45, I could see the giant statue of Sam Houston in Huntsville from over six miles away, "which for some reason I found exhilarating," as I wrote in my LiveJournal at the time.  So I stopped (the statue did not exist when I last lived in Texas), and a fellow visitor took this picture of me by a model of the face of the statue.




* So what does all this have to do with Mark's and my second romance?  We'd kept in touch over the years, but he'd moved to California after retiring in 1993, so our contact was infrequent.  However, while I was cleaning my Washington apartment, just before unplugging the phone to pack it away - he called that landline number.  He told me that he had moved back to Texas, just a couple months earlier, to a little town southwest of Fort Worth called Granbury.  I told him I was flying to Texas the next day and would be living, at least initially, in Grapevine, about an hour away from him.  He gave me his new e-mail address and cell phone number.  He already had my e-mail, but I gave him my cell number too - and we left it at that.... for the moment.

** And why did I title this post, "Taking a Chance"?  That's exactly what I was doing.  I'd left a nice apartment, a full-time paraprofessional job with a large public library system,  with decent pay, good benefits, and great coworkers, and good longtime friends in Washington, to accept a short-term, part-time job (albeit also with decent pay and good benefits), with no certainty of where I'd be living after my cousin's house, and no definitive job prospects beyond the assistantship.  But I needed some change to my life, and as I stated at the start of this post, I figured it would be easier to get a professional librarian position in Texas if I was already there.  (Definitely easier to interview.)

So yes, I was taking a chance.  And as it turned out, taking a chance on love again, too.  More on that in future posts.


© Amanda Pape - 2025 - e-mail me!

Tuesday, January 14, 2025

How We Met

The photos in this blog post were not taken on the day we met.  I can't remember exactly what day we met - although I'm pretty sure it was in April or May, 1979.  I can't remember exactly HOW we met, although I have a story I like to tell, which I'll share here.  

These photos were taken exactly 45 years ago today, on January 14, 1980, a Monday, and may have been as much as nine months after we met.  They are terrible pictures, but they are important (especially now), as they are the first photos of us together.  I'd gotten back home to Corpus Christi late the day before, after a nine-day road trip around Texas with my cousin Donna.

I believe he gave me the large dark green ring that you can see in the pictures on my left hand just a few weeks before, at Christmas 1979. The ring was sterling silver with a large malachite stone in an unusual shape. I wore it for years, until the stone fell out somewhere.  (I do, however, still have the dress I am wearing, which my mother made for me.  And it still fits.)


Above and below:  Mark Gresham and Amanda Pape, Corpus Christi, Texas, 14 January 1980.  Taken with Amanda's Pentax SLR mounted on a tripod and using a self-timer.



So here's the story, as I remember it.  

I started working for the City of Corpus Christi, Texas, Park and Recreation Department on Monday, April 2, 1979, two days before I turned 22.  One of the first assignments I got from my director was to prepare our department's revenue estimates for submission to the Budget Office - of which Mark was the director.

The Park and Recreation Department generated revenue - income - for the City through a variety of fees - swimming pool and tennis center admission fees, fees to play a round of golf and rent golf carts and other equipment, registration fees for teams participating in the city's athletic leagues, facility rental fees, and marina boat slip rental fees, just for starters.  

I had to look at the previous year's estimates and year-to-date revenues, and come up with estimates for the next fiscal year, as well as write a justification for my figures.  I looked at the forms for previous years and found little justification for the numbers generated, so I worked really hard to come up with good, well-justified estimates. (Fellow R&P major friends - Crompton's RP 401 helped!)

Not too long after submitting the estimates, I had to go to the Budget Office to meet with our department's liaison there, Randy Moravec.  Mark came by Randy's desk to introduce himself.  I'd like to think it was because Mark was impressed by the estimates I'd produced, and the detailed justifications.  No, he told me - he says he just saw an attractive woman at Randy's desk that he didn't know, and he wanted to meet her.

And the rest is history.  Tune in again tomorrow when I jump ahead to 2006 and our second romance.


© Amanda Pape - 2025 - e-mail me!