Photos: 1964 - 1980

Getting Married and Moving West  (Age 19 - 35 years) 

Doti graduated from East Lansing High School in 1963 and that fall she enrolled at Michigan State University.  There she met Bill Parks and in 1964 they decided to elope.  My Dad, who was in California at the time, was not happy about it but eventually both my parents came to accept it and they warmly welcomed Bill into the family.  

Bill graduated from Michigan State in 1965 and he and Doti moved to Silver City, New Mexico that summer, where he worked on the local newspaper and Doti attended Western New Mexico University, eventually earning her B.A. in Education.  The rest of the Leu family visited Doti and Bill in New Mexico that summer and there we picked up a new addition to the family:  a kitten named C.C., who would be in our household for the next 12 years.  

In 1967, Doti and Bill moved to Butte, Montana where Bill worked on the local newspaper.  The next year, in April 1968, Doti's only child, Myles, was born.  I remember that well because, at age eight, I proudly walked around my elementary school in East Lansing bragging to everyone that I was an uncle.  

A few months later, the Leu family (Don, Anne, Dwight and Del) left Michigan and moved to San Jose, California, and shortly afterwards, Doti and Bill also moved to the Bay Area, so our families got together quite often.  In fact, I saw Myles so often that he became like my younger brother.  Doti and Bill lived in Hayward, near Oakland, where Bill worked for a newspaper and Doti, with her lifelong love of children, taught at several elementary schools. 

Doti and Bill separated in the late 1970s, which was a difficult time for her.  She continued living in the Bay Area, though, to be close to my parents.