In January of 1979 I was a nursing student. I grew up in Sonoma County, just a few miles from PUC, and we didn't get snow there. So it was fun for me when it snowed enough that we couldn't get down the mountain for 2 days! Between classes we had snowball fights and built snowmen. It only lasted for a few days, but I sure remember having fun.

It was my second year at Pacific Union College, autumn of '82. My mother--Patricia Anne McKinney Simpson Sehorn (no relation to anyone Adventist and a zealous black sheep of our Southern Baptist ancestral herd)--had offered to drive me up to Angwin from Santa Cruz. We cruised up the South Bay and along the Silverado Trail in her 1976 t-top corvette, enjoying the valley's first-crush air and the windy roads. When we got into Angwin, my mother pulled into the gas station and asked where she could get a cup of coffee and buy some cigarettes. I was aghast, but the attendant gave her a beaming smile and told her to head back the eight miles downhill to St. Helena. He added we'd have to go there for liquor, meat, and colas too. Mother knew she was setting herself up for the joke, but she never missed an opportunity to give me a good natured ribbing about my Adventist church, its lifestyle, and even the "points of faith" I had chosen. She was not a member of any church and did not want to be. Nevertheless, she was the one who sacrificed to send me through four years of Adventist Elementary school--she paid the tuition by bartending at night--and she and my stepfather stepped up while I attended all four years at Monterey Bay Academy. To her I was a kind of exotic plant, a treasured child to be supported and encouraged in my faith, but not joined. I was an adamant, some would say arrogant, christian, and I truly believe that my mother not only enjoyed ribbing me for it, but took great satisfaction in my choices, in the support that she saw that I received from my teachers in academy and friends and professors at Pacific Union College. When I turned 21, that benchmark year of legal drinking age, my mother sent me $100 to party with. I took several friends to Giugni's in St. Helena and borrowed one of their cars to personally deliver 21 roses to my mother back home. Back at college, one of my older friends--a returning student--shared with me how much better that sounded than his 21st birthday with its mandatory drunkenness. It certainly pleased her, not just the roses, but the thoughtfulness and tenderness that my Adventist education included and nurtured. She only made the trip to PUC a few times, and remained always my prodigal/holy mother until her passing. She taught me about tolerance and love, about disagreeing and encouraging simultaneously, and her example tempered my religious fervor into an experience of God and others that is ultimately more devoted, humane, and loving. PUC was not just where I got my degree in Behavioral Science--a BA in BS was my mother's discerning comment--it was a school that captured my mother's hopes for me and took upon itself giving me what she wanted me to have but did not herself have to give. In the end, while the PUC gas station was eight miles from the nearest cup of coffee and cigarettes, it turns out to have been at the epicenter of both her and my hopes and dreams, the training ground for a life that I have been able to live because of her ability to give, and a school that provided what she wanted me to have, even though it didn't have what she wanted.

After graduating from Campion Acadmey in Colorado (where there are many mountains!) I was accepted at 4 colleges before deciding on PUC. A major factor, the location up in the hills while the other three were either out on the flat or in a city. So I loved to hike the hills and a special memory is the early Sunday morning breakfasts out in the woods, like Overhanging Rock, Inspiration Point or in the hills above Friesen Lakes with a group of friends. No doubt about it,for me "Our College on the Mountain" was the place for me. I thank God for a college where Nature and Revelation united in my Education.

Recently I was talking to Ernie Bursey, 1964, about our lives since PUC. He asked why I did not put anything on the website so I said why not? I have never been back for an alumni weekend but next year is 45 years since the great class of 64, so maybe I better plan to see who shows up. I have been in Fresno for nearly 20 years raising funds for Fresno Adventist Academy and for Fresno Pacific University. I have two children and two grandsons. My son, David, received his Ph.D. last May in math education and is a professor at State University of NY, Cortland. My daughter, Sonnie, graduated from Loma Linda Dental School and is practicing in Virginia. My wife, Dianne DeVries (Blue Mt. Academy & Andrews University, 71) is associate Dean of the Graduate Division at Fresno State. We are looking forward to retiring in a couple of years and will spend a little more time traveling, seeing the grandkids and getting involved in our other favorite pastimes. Hope to see you in 2009 at PUC.