Short History of My Mother

My mom was born Dorothy Omelia Scales in December 1922. She was born on an Indian reservation called Cloud Chief, Oklahoma, to Edith and Charlie Scales. She grew up on a farm outside Colony, Oklahoma, and graduated from Colony High School in 1940. She immediately, that summer, enrolled in Southwestern State College. After attending two years, she took a year off to teach school in Custer City, Oklahoma. She went back to Southwestern, and met and married my dad in 1943, while he was on leave from the Army. He was about to be shipped out to Europe to begin training for the allied invasion of Italy. My dad left for North Africa, and my mom finished her last year of college, graduating in 1944. She left to live with her Aunt Emily and Uncle Marshall Scales (and their 4 kids) in Oakland, California, for the rest of that year. During her time in Oakland, she worked at the photo finishing department at Capwell's Department Store (she had worked at Owl Photo in Weatherford while at Southwestern) and took extension classes at UC Berkeley. She returned to OK and taught school in OK City til June 1945. At the end of WWII in 1945, my mom joined my dad as he was posted to several jobs touring the south as part of a recruitment drive. One of his gigs was to drive Hermann Goering's Mercedes around and show it off to folks in the south. In 1947, they were stationed at Fort Ord, OK (Lawton), where I was born that June. In 1949, they were stationed at Fort Benning, GA, where my sister Patty Lou was born that December. In 1950, my dad was sent to Japan, and my mom and sis and I joined him there in 1951. I went to kindergarten there in 1952-53. Then we were sent to Monterey, CA, where my dad attended the Army language school learning German and Czech. The Army sent us to Austria in December of 1954, then to Germany the following year. After I completed third grade in Giessen, Germany, in June 1956, my family was transferred to Pittsburg, CA, where my mom has lived ever since. My dad retired from the military in 1961, taught elementary school for 10 years after that, owned a bar/restaurant for two years, and finally quit working in 1974. He passed away in 1989. My mom was a teacher her whole adult life, retiring at age 65 in 1987. She passed away on August 4, 2007, after a bout with ovarian cancer.