There were very few military brats (American kids) in the area (all our fathers were in the Coast Guard), so shortly after this picture was taken (I’m obviously the one in the middle) I was then home-schooled with a U.S. government correspondence course until we moved back to the States. I often wonder what the Spanish thought of us celebrating the Bicentennial that July 1976!
By an incredible coincidence, in 2014, the girl in the red dress above, Marlene Kurkierewicz (Houtz), was discovered to be in this picture by her daughter, Melissa Lee Gagnon. They reached out to me on social media to identify her. Now the challenge is to find out who the blonde girl is!
My siblings are flanking me here in Torroella de Montgrí, Catalonia, Spain, just in front of our house at the time. If you look carefully, you can see the castle we used to hike up the hill to. Dad had the wherewithal to write the exact date on the back of this photo with the comment “fresh egg run.” I remember regularly being sent to the end of that street to get eggs from a woman who I used to witness pick them out from under the hens right there in her home.
I’m estimating September 1973 this was taken. I went to Hillview Crest, in Hayward, California, for kindergarten. Fortunately my parents had started teaching me English, because even though I was born in San Pedro, California, I started talking when we were living in Cagliari, Sardinia, Italy (my mother was from Calabria).
