I suddenly started growing! I shot up from a nice 5'5" to a long, awkward 6'12". I was horrified at the thought of being so darned tall. I didn't want to be a six foot girl-but the coaches were happy. I went out for sports, but I was never better than second team in basketball- but I made Honorable Mention All State Center in Football my Senior year.

After graduating, I went to work for a construction company building highways; and when I was eighteen, joined the Marine Corps. The 81⁄2 years I put in the Corps were rewarding ones for me. I traveled to China and back before WWII started. Altogether, I spent a total of 59 months overseas (25 in the Pacific during the war). I liked the Marines and de- cided to make a career of it. I married and we had a son. As my enlist- ment drew to a close, my wife asked me again for the umpteenth time if I were going to reenlist. When I told her I was, she informed me that she had no intentions of following me all over the world for the next 12 years and that if I did reenlist she would divorce me. I didn't reenlist but she divorced me anyway. But damn her, she waited 92 days so I couldn't reenlist with my rank of First Sergeant. I'm still a little bitter about that.

During those years in the Corps, I didn't dress. Once in awhile I would get the urge, but something always happened to help me keep it under control. When stationed in San Francisco after the war, though, the old desires came on pretty strong at times. I'd walk through the large Depart- ment Stores admiring the dresses-and envying the woman I saw buying the dress that I would have picked out for myself. My wife didn't know, at this time, that I was a TV.

After my discharge and divorce, I returned home to Wyoming and took a job with another construction company—again building highways. This job was up in the mountains in the west end of the State. I was able, how- ever, to put some of my Marine Corps demolition training to use as we had many thousands of yards of rocks to be blasted away. Late in August, though, a premature blast almost blew my head off. I was lowering a 'primer stick' (a stick of dynamite with a blasting cap in it) down a shallow hole when it exploded without reason. I was rushed to the local hospital for emergency treatment and then transferred to a hospital in Denver. Both arms, my face and neck suffered first and second degree burns as well as being cut and torn by the flying rocks. The only perma- nent injuries were the loss of my left eye and some disability to my left

arm.

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