...I wondered if you guys would notice the "shoe" theme. If you look at some of the candid snap shots, and you see a group of us sitting on a windowsill outside of a house......that house was our high school! I wouldn't trade that time of my life for anything!... The year before, my Junior year, I was in Naples, Italy and we only had 1, yep.....one.....Senior that year! There, too, our school was an Italian house and we had to walk across the parking lot to the Excelsior Hotel where we ate lunch. We were also able to smoke in the "study hall" and over in the lunch room or outside on the grounds.....as long as our parents sent a written permisson slip saying they knew we smoked. Yes, that included me and just about all of us high school students that year. ( But I am most proud to say, I have not lit a cigarette since 1981.) Again.....I would not trade that year. And......I had the opportunity to attend the 5th, 6th & 7th grades in Munich, Germany back in 1947 - 1949....while all the bombed rubble was still laying all around........and thru our Ankara web-site, I found my very best friend from those school years......her name is Janet Day (Rouvales). When we left Germany, we did not keep in touch, so it was 54 years later that we made contact. She paid me a visit here in GA and it was like we picked up our conversation where we left off all those years before! We discovered that she was leaving Turkey with her family at the very same time that I was arriving with my parents. It is a small world but oh, so big sometimes! So, again, I have all your hard work to say "thank you" one more time.....for getting Janet & myself back in touch! Thank you, thank you and lots of hugs........

...and from her second letter (also by permission):

I am very proud to say: I was an Army daughter, an Air Force wife, and both of my sons are Marines. And if they would take old ladies.......I would sign up in a heart beat! I have led an extraordinary life, was lucky to have the kind of parents that made sure we took advantage of "where we were" by touring & doing what was available to us at the time. We "brats" are lucky to see history.......not just read about it.
Liz