By Craig

I worked as a picture framer while I was going to Western New Mexico University in Silver City, NM. By the time my degree in accounting was complete in 1980, I was a bookkeeper for the stationery store where I had been framing. In 1986, I went to work in the office of a propane distributor. Four years later, in 1991, I transferred to their corporate office in Las Cruces. Since 1993, I have been working for a CPA firm in El Paso. I still live in Las Cruces and have an easy forty minute commute on the Interstate.

Because Mom and Dad went to many square dances, my brothers and I grew up around it. I was the only one of us who became interested enough in dancing to get involved. I took square dance lessons when I was thirteen years old. Dad was the club's caller and conducted the class every year. While I was in high school, I started calling, too. The two square dance clubs in the area sent me to a school For callers. I helped Dad with the clubs and classes until he quit calling. After that, I called an occational dance in Silver City and Deming (fifty miles south) until About 1986. I was out of square dancing until I moved to Las Cruces.

About a year before I moved, a friend told me she was taking ballroom dance lessons And they needed men. So I went to fill in. After I moved, one of the women in the class sent me a clipping of an advertisment for dance classes in Las Cruces. The first night, the teacher paired me up with Judy. We have been dancing ever since, Western, ballroom, and square. And I call a square dance now and then.

Over the years, I have had a broad variety of hobbies and interests besides dancing. I was a member of two shooting clubs, one of them was for muzzle loaders. For a few years, I carried a camera everywhere I went, and I processed my own black and white photos. I had CB radios when they were popular, but when everyone was buying IBM compatible computers, I bought a MacIntosh. I still use it. I have half heartedly played guitar for more than twenty years. Just the last few years, I got a little more serious about it. Judy likes me to sing to her.

I have been active in the Methodist Church, seems like forever. I have ushered, taught Sunday School, sang in choirs, gone to Bible Studies, helped with Sunday worship service, served on the finance committee, and was church treasurer for three years.

Judy has been such a large part of my life since our first date in 1991. If we are not together, we talk every night on the phone. She shares some of my interests. She goes to church with me, likes to go shooting with me, and even likes my amaturish guitar playing and singing. She now listens to more country music and I now listen to more rock and roll. We are engaged to be married but we have not set a date.