Susan Bjorklund

I just can't imagine 40 years have gone by, I still feel so young, but wiser.  I'm still living in the Puget Sound area doing road construction, but also added my own business to the works.  I am a certified flagger instructor, I actually teach classes for flagger certification.  I just purchased some retirement property east of the mountains of Washington, and I am enjoying with upgrading the property.  So when I get cold and wet in the Pacific Northwest, I just pack up and go east to warm up.

I'm still in a grieving mode due to the lost of my oldest son, complications due to juvenile diabetes.  He was such a vibrant young man so full of dreams and aspirations for life.  My youngest lives close and has finally decided what he wants to do in life, so he is currently attending the college of his choice. 

I am planning on coming to the 40th reunion, I am looking forward to seeing all who come.

Susan Bjorklund

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lions n’ Tigers n’ 30 years, Oh My!

We are not in Kansas anymore Toto.  Thirty years after graduation where did they go?  After graduation, I spent about a year in the work field in the local area.  It was at that time I meet my future husband.  In December of 1971 I went back east to Massachusetts and married Ed who was in the Army as a Military Policeman.  Then we spent a year and a half in Okinawa, Japan. That was an historical time, we were there when the first set of POW’s were released from Vietnam.  It was an interesting culture there; we lived off base in an apartment over an Okinawains home.  We survived three typhoons and went through the eye of one.  Talk about a small world, I had the pleasure of running into Mike Asher and his wife at the PX. The Army and I never saw eye to eye, I wrote countless letters to the editor about the atrocities of war, one got through, but the rest were censored, never made it off the island.  When my husband got ready to re-up, he did not.

In the spring of 1973, Ed and I started life on the outside in Vancouver, Washington. We added to our family a son, Scott was born in 1974 and life was grand.  After Ed’s father passed away, we moved to Stevenson, Washington to our first house, which his father left, to my husband.  My husband secured a job with the county as a bus driver for the Senior Citizen Program.  Then in 1977, we added another son; Eric to our home and life was grand.

In 1979, I decided to venture out into the work field again, this time working for the Forest Service seasonally.  I also started taking Tae Kwon Do, as a form of exercise, while learning something useful.  Little did I know I excelled in the sport and I was selected for our demonstration team for local events.  I also assisted in woman’s self defense programs in the area.  It taught me self-esteem and self-awareness, which I had none for years growing up.  The best benefit I liked was it kept me slim and fit for many years.  In 1983, I separated from my husband, bought a mobile home andmoved 4 miles away.  I continued to work for the Forest Service until 1990.  Then I went back to College for two years working on a Forestry Degree.  I ame back and worked two more years for the Forest Service.

In 1995, it became my worst year yet.  I was at a point in my life when my addiction was at a rampage.  I have been an addict since high school; it was something I could not control by myself, no matter how hard I had tried. What I did was, I worked with the Skamania-Clark Counties Narcotic Task Force.  Then I introduced an undercover office into the drug culture that I was associated with.  My part was that I would set up controlled buys and then I did some control buys.  The payoff was the Task Force would send me through treatment and relocate my family and I.  Since then I have been living a clean and serene life, rebuilding myself inside and out.

I live in the Puget Sound area, and have a professional career in a non-traditional woman’s job.  My children are proud of me with the turn around I did with my life, and they are a great support net work for me.  I lost my mother to cancer in 1997, but she got to see me clean and sober and our relationship grew.  My father passed away in 1979 and never got the pleasure of seeing his daughter on track.  My youngest son just moved out and I have just closed the deal on a condominium.  Life is grand.

AKA