Me and my sister, Dorothy Lee, in Tampa, Florida...This photo was taken at Clearwater Beach on the Gulf of Mexico, where we would go all the time when the weather warmed up...I was twelve years of age here and my sister was 20 years old and married to my first brother-in-law, Kenneth, who was stationed at MacDill Air Force Base at the time....I only spent one school semester living with my sister and her husband in Florida...Everyone seemed to think this would be a good change for me and I went along with it, being very naive, at the time, and thinking my guardians must know what they are doing and if they say this will be good for me, then they must know what they are talking about...However, I did notfeel at home. at all, living with my sister and her husband, and that they were not all that much older than myself at the time and not all that qualified to be my parents, or to take the place of my parents...So, the only explanation one can come up with as to why my mother saw fir to dump me off onto my older sister and her husband, 3,000 miles away, was that she had enough of me, and I was getting a little older now and not quite as cute and easy to handle as I was when i was littler, so she simply didf not want to deal with me, or any of my problems, and just let someone else handle me..."Out of sight, Out of Mind"....The same explanation can account for why she also, the next year, sent me to military school in San Diego, CA...And while I was attending school in Tampa, I felt very strange there, indeed, and everyone would call me a "Yankee"...I felt like a "Fish out of Water".....Please click on photo for larger image....

Please click on photo for larger image...