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PW: And then so how long were you in that period of graduate school, finishing your teaching degree?

RO: Well, and then I had... let's see what happened now. I was there two years, and then I got my teaching credential, and then I got a job at Fresno High School. And this is when there was three high schools in Fresno. Fresno, Edison, and Roosevelt. So then I got this job, and I went, wow, terrific. 1962, '63, I guess it was. And at that time, of course, then Sandy and I were very close. And so we were just dating basically, and then I had thought there was probably more what we want to do because my roommate and I talked a lot about teaching and other places, or are we committed to Fresno High School and spend the rest of our teaching careers there? I loved teaching in Fresno High School, it was new friends and having students of that age group to be able to go ahead and impart what I knew about art. And yet, I was also trying to do some small painting in the apartment where I was living, but you don't get very involved, because teaching takes over so much of your time. So you do as much as you can when you can.

So then my roommate and I had decided we would then apply for teaching positions any place in the world. So we looked at all the jobs that the Department of Defense, they had naval bases, army bases, air force bases throughout the entire world. And so we said, well, let's go and apply for that. So at that point, then we applied, and I had, the previous summer, gone down to Mexico to vacation with another teacher friend. So we went down there looking around, and we went into a little place called Puerto Vallarta. And at this time there was one little hotel, and you had to take a bus to get into the little village. There was nothing else there, and it was just this beach, and then I found that there was a small American community, and there were basically a lot of young men that had permanently bought property there, and this is where we were living, kind of expatriate Americans, hippie types. And so then I thought, wow, this is a great place, there's nothing here but this beautiful sand and water. So when we came back, I had decided I was going to go back the following summer to buy property.

Meanwhile, then, this position, when we applied to teach overseas, came through, Sandy let me know, she says, "Hey, you got a telegram here," so then we found out that I was accepted to teach abroad. And so then at that time, Sandy and I, we talked, I will share this, I said, "This is a two-year commitment," I asked her if she would wait. And said, "I'm not going to do that." At that time -- this was very, very personal -- at that time, I asked her if she would marry me. So then okay, now, I left and ended up in Frankfurt, they said there were two positions open, one in Paris and one in Munich. The Paris position was only for one year, then they would close down the school, transferred everybody to other schools. So I took the Munich position because I was a very avid skier at that time, and I was here at the base of the Alps. So then I taught in the junior high school there, and then Sandy came over during the holidays. At that time, we contacted, I had heard that there were Americans that couldn't marry in certain times of the year or certain places, we found that in Basle, Switzerland, if they marry Americans. So then at that time we made arrangements for that, so then she and I went to Basle, Switzerland, and in this little old church that had been there, and then the pastor that had taken us to the chapel part of the church. And so here he was, spouting vows and so on, Sandy and I were sitting there in two tie-back chairs, and he was marrying us. So then after we married, and so then we then had made reservations to go to Zermatt, Switzerland, because a lot of the faculty that taught at Munich High School would always to go Zermatt because it was the place where they had a friends, and a great place to ski and people that they knew. So then we eventually honeymooned in Zermatt, Switzerland, after being married in Basle, Switzerland, of all places. [Laughs]

<End Segment 21> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.