In junior high I worked as a janitor at Foster’s Freeze. I also had paper routes for the Lodi News Sentinel and the Stockton Record. In high school I was a janitor at Ward’s. In the summer of 1965 I was a farm worker on a crew run by a Mexican woman who lived next … Read more
Jill Lynn Finnegan was born on December 7, 1961, in Lodi, California. (From third grade on she spelled her name Jil.)
We lived on Sunset through my junior and senior high school years, and I came home here for the summers during my first three years of college.
In junior high I joined the Lodi Boy Scouts. The troop had little to do with merit badges and marching; it was all about camping and games. Meetings at the armory started with red-rover and dodge ball games. Then the next camping trip was planned. In the summer and over weekends we went up to … Read more
About when I was ten, on a winter weekend trip to Old Man’s Cave in Hocking Hills, my mother fell over a cliff. She landed on her locked leg, which broke through the hip socket. She was in a hospital bed at home for several weeks, her leg in traction.
In early elementary school I planned to join the army and become a general. By sixth grade I thought I would become an engineer. I was impressed with my uncle’s stories of doing human factor engineering during WWII. In 7th grade I outlined my life plans year by year. The only thing I remember is … Read more
Throughout my childhood, vacations and holidays involved my cousins on my mother’s side. We would often meet in Circleville, Ohio, for weekend picnics. Dave George was the oldest, and I thought, the coolest. Greg George was the closest to me in age, and the only boy near my age. Janet George, as a girl, I … Read more
When I was eight, our family drove Route 66 from Lancaster, Ohio, to Los Angeles to visit my grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. We spent $10 a night on cheap motels, ate breakfast at local campgrounds and stopped at national parks along the way. In LA we visited Knott’s Berry Farm and Disneyland.
I attended East School from first grade until the middle of sixth grade, when we moved to Lodi. Teachers: 1st grade Mrs. Marjorie Eastman 2nd grade Mrs. Eastman 3rd grade Mrs. Laura Kerr 4th grade Mrs. Douglas (Elsie Dunninton?) 5th grade Mrs. Cressie Ingmeyer 6th grade Eleanor Gills Principal Mr. Roger F. Combs
We moved to Lancaster when I was five and stayed until 1960, when I was in sixth grade.
