"Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm"
1960 Anchorage High Reunion: Classmates
Page posted May 28, 2010
Joann VanDolah Payne
AHS yearbook, 1960
After graduating from Reed College I worked many years in biomedical research in the fields of cataract studies, hormones, and transfer RNA. When my marriage produced four sons I became a full time mother and pursued studies in psychology.
As my youngest son entered first grade I returned to research in the field of myelin transplantation for MS disease. When my visual problems interfered with microscopic work I changed careers for mental health service. While in this new occupation I fulfilled a life long dream of writing and publishing poetry. This dream began in my junior year at AHS through the inspired teaching of Mrs. Truman. From her I learned the significance of literature in the history of humankind and that it was not just a graduation requirement.
2008 with AHS classmate Anne George McNeely at Joann's Retirement party
Two years ago I retired from mental health work and now spend time with my growing family, gardening, piano, writing, and visiting. As I live here in Gresham, OR I look back and see my life did not unfold as I planned. It has been fuller than I thought it could be in ways I could not have predicted. Raising four sons was very exciting!
Yes I will be at Reunion as will Anne George McNeely--she lives in WA about 40 miles east of Tacoma--also retired as a nurse.
The work you are doing is making the Reunion lively for me and I am glad to feel I can contribute.
Joann.
Joann VanDolah Payne
First home in Anchorage near end of Merrill Field Sept. 1949
Payne Family Hike above Columbia River Gorge Spring 1985
Steven 4, Daniel 2
Jonathan 9, Michael 7
John and Joann Payne
First Grandchild:
Alivia Payne Dec. 2006
We arrived in Anchorage in July 1949 in DC-3 from Seattle's Boeing Field landing at Merrill Field and lived in a rented shack til a man let us put up a tent on his property in exchange for house sitting his property. We lived in the tent til snow was permanently on the ground so that would have been til sometime after Halloween--I went to Chugach school (not quonset hut school til Christmas Break, then my class transferred to the new Denali school where I finished 2nd grade. We heated and cooked on a Yukon stove in the tent and had a dirt floor. Meanwhile my stepdad and his mining and roofing partner built a small house on Spenard Rd which we moved into after permanent snow. The house was not complete, but it was warmer than the tent and the property was ours. I then rode a school bus to school. The next year I went to North Star for 3rd thru 6th grades--walked a mile each way, but not uphill each way--just in the morning up Thompson Rd. Hill til I got to Fireweed Lane.