William Allen Shade - Biography
From Genealogy
Contents |
A work in progress........................
[edit] GENERAL
[edit] Childhood
[edit] Hawaii
I was born in Aurora, Colorado but did not stay there long. My father was in the Air Force and we soon moved to Hawaii where we stayed for the next four years. I don't remember much about this time except lots of lizards, a giant (to me) praying mantis in the sink and being thrown into the ocean. Things I have been told include that one day I was looking in the trunk of the car as my father was closing it. Well, I had blood rushing down my face, my mother was screaming and I was taken to the hospital. Was just a flesh wound luckily. I have also been told that I used to crawl around backwards and never learned to crawl forwards, just went right to walking.
[edit] Colorado
Sometime in 1972 we were moving back to the continent and my mother and I went to stay with her parents as my father went on to Mississippi to get things ready for us. My mother's side of the story is that she received a letter from my father saying that he wanted a divorce. My mother hired a lawyer and got everything ready but he refused to sign the papers. Eventually she had to write his commanding officer in order to get the papers signed and the divorce finalized. My father would not comment to me on this.
We lived with my mother's parents for a few years....
[edit] Arizona
[edit] Early Adulthood - Coming of the Darkness
[edit] School
[edit] Work
In 1986 at the age of 18 I began working for a company called Leonard's Luggage. It was a nice but small family owned retail luggage and travel goods store. It was began by Leonard Goldman in 1949 and bought by Malcolm Straus in 1960. I began as an accounts receivable clerk, processing the daily receipts from the stores. Eventually I was able to take on more responsibilities by helping the office manage and eventually taking on that job around 1997. Unfortunately by this time the company was having problems including poor expansion plans and competition from an out of state company. The company went out of business in 2000.
[edit] First Love
[edit] Reunion?
When I was 22 I decided to try to contact my father's parents. I remember being very scared that they would not answer or if they did how my mother would react. Well I did hear from them and they got me back in contact with my father. This is when I found out I had 2 brothers and sisters. About a year later I went out and visited my father's family in Pennsylvania. It was a lot of fun and I was able to meet a lot of other family members. I again visited about 8 years later for my sister's wedding. The wedding was beautiful and I enjoyed seeing my family again. Unfortunately all did not go well and that is the last time I have really had communication with my father's family.
[edit] The Fall
