1940-45, Westfield, NJ: We lived in Westfield, NJ (Austin Street), and I attended kindergarten there. When my parents separated, my mother and I moved in briefly with my grandparents Lucile Strode and William Ralph Smith in Montclair, NJ. I started first grade at Montclair Elementary School.
Nov. 1945 - June 1946, St. Petersburg, FL: My mother and I lived at Medeira Beach, FL, during my parents' formal separation. I completed first grade in a St. Petersburg elementary school. My grandparents came to Florida to pick us up; my grandmother had a stroke on the way down causing her to have double vision. They stayed in Florida for a while until she recovered, and then we drove to Virginia, where we spent the summer of 1946 at my grandmother's family home, Kenmore, in Amherst, VA.
Fall 1946 - Fall 1957, Richmond, VA: My mother and I moved in with her first cousin, Rebekah Strode Lee, and her family until my mother found a job. We lived in various rooming houses (Grove Avenue and Hanover Avenue) until I was in about 5th grade when we moved into an apartment on the third floor of a house at 2005 Monument Avenue. I attended 2nd grade -12th grade in Richmond; William Fox Elementary, Binford Junior High and Thomas Jefferson High. My mother remarried on September 30, 1950, to Richard Frank Bates. He had been married before, also, and had a daughter, Brenda, two years younger than I. She visited every summer, which gave both of us "only children" an instant sibling. We moved to 2320 Park Avenue into a house which had been previously owned by friends, Mr. and Mrs. Joe Gibbs.
Fall 1957 - May 1961, Decatur, GA: I attended Agnes Scott College, where I majored in mathematics. At the end of my sophomore year, I met Tom Jay Irwin, who was a freshman at Georgia Tech and a member of Beta Theta Pi fraternity. We met at Canterbury Club, the Episcopal college group that met each Sunday night at All Saints Church in Atlanta, near the Georgia Tech campus. In 1960 my mother and step-father bought a house at 103 Gaymont Road in Richmond. They stayed in that house until 1990 when they moved into Westminster-Canterbury House, a retirement home, on the northside of Richmond.
June 1961 - August 1963, Tulsa, OK: Tom and I were married on June 17, 1961, at St. James's Episcopal Church in Richmond. We honeymooned at Cape Cod, and then drove from Richmond to Tulsa. Tom was attending Tulsa University with one year to go for his BA in Psychology. I taught 8th grade math and Algebra I at Edison Junior High for a year. On August 17, 1962, our first child Julie Richt Irwin was born. Her middle name was Tom's mother's maiden name. The next year, I tutored math while Tom completed his MA in Clinical Psychology.
August 1963 - June 1969, Columbia, MO: Tom got a job at the Fulton State Hospital in Fulton, MO, so we moved to a duplex at 2314? Braemore Road in Columbia, MO. In June 1964 we bought our first house at 1507 West Boulevard Court. Our second child, Laura Smith Irwin (middle name was my mother's maiden name) was born on January 20, 1965. When she was 7 months old, I took a part-time teaching job at Hickman High School teaching 4 classes of Algebra II. I had been substituting in the public school system at Hickman, and at West and Jefferson Junior Highs. The girls stayed with a wife of a Hickman coach, but she quit before the year was out and I had to hire another sitter. The year was too rough on me and the girls, so I didn't work the next year. Tom was now in a Ph.D. program in Counseling Psychology at the University of Missouri, but also worked at several jobs to support us. While Laura was a baby, I had taken a 2-hour course in Health Education, required for a teaching certificate in Missouri. When I completed that course, I was given a "lifetime" teaching certificate.
Because of my substitute teaching, I was hired to teach 5 classes of Algebra I at West Junior High, team teaching with David Kerridge. Julie was now in kindergarten and Laura attended pre-school at the Stephens College Children's School. We hired Armenia Griffin to pick up Laura at noon and watch the girls, clean the house and iron until I got home from school. It was a wonderful setup.
June 1969 - September 1971, Blacksburg, VA: At the completion of his Ph. D., Tom was hired by the Counseling Center of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia. Again, I did some substitute teaching, this time at Blacksburg High. Julie was in 2nd and 3rd grade in Blacksburg and Laura attended a Methodist preschool when she was 4 and a Montessori-type kindergarten run by a Mrs. Couch when she was 5. Our third child, David William Irwin (middle name was Tom's father's and my grandfather's name), was born April 10, 1970. We joined the Shawnee Swim Club near our home (202 Watson Avenue); Julie had swim lessons there and continued ballet lessons that she had begun in Columbia.
September 1971 - June 1976, Radford, VA: We were unhappy with the school system in Blacksburg, so we moved temporarily into the Belle Heth Apartments in Radford while we built a house at 112 Buckeye Lane in College Park in Radford. I had learned how to wallpaper when we were trying to sell our Blacksburg house, so I wallpapered or painted all the rooms in our new house while Tom finished the family room, 2 bedrooms for the girls and a bath in the lower level of the contemporary split-level house. Julie completed grades 4-8 in Radford, at Belle Heth Elementary and Radford High. Laura completed grades 1-5 at Belle Heth. David spent 1 year in childcare with Belle Heth's principal's wife, Linda Absher and spent 2 years at the Radford Childcare Center.
I got my Virginia real estate license during the year we were in the apartment by studying the materials on my own before going to Richmond to take the test. I worked for Bondurant Real Estate for 2 years. Again, I had done some substitute teaching, which caused me to get hired at Radford High to teach Algebra II, Trigonometry and Advanced Algebra and Math Analysis for our last 2 years in Radford.
In 1980, Julie graduated from AHS and began studying psychology and English at William and Mary. I stopped teaching and took two accounting courses (Commerce 101 and 102) at the University of Virginia to determine whether or not I would like to become a CPA. I decided I didn't! I also taught some math courses at Piedmont Virginia Community College. Then, with Tom's encouragement, I entered graduate school in the summer of 1982 to pursue a master's degree in computer science. I completed that program, graduating from UVa's Engineering School in May 1984 with a Master of Computer Science degree; this was one week after Julie completed her BA at William and Mary with the double major, graduating with honors in psychology.
June 1984 - June 1985, Woodbridge and Wintergreen. VA: By fall of 1984, Laura was a sophomore chemistry major at James Madison University and David entered the 9th grade (or 3rd form) at Woodberry Forest School in Orange, VA, a preparatory school for boys. We sold the house we had built in Charlottesville (100 Wildflower Drive) and moved into a townhouse in Woodbridge, VA, (2572 Treehouse Drive) to be near my new job as an associate programmer at the IBM Federal Services Division in Manassas, VA. In March of 1984 we had purchased a condo (647 White Oak) at Wintergreen Resort near Charlottesville, a golf/tennis/ski resort in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Tom spent most of his time at Wintergreen or on the road to his offices in Staunton, Fredericksburg, and other locations in VA, while I was living and working in northern Virginia.
June 1985 - August 2000, Charlottesville and Wintergreen, VA: We spent our weekends together at Wintergreen, not a satisfactory arrangement. In addition to that, I didn't care for my work at IBM, so I quit IBM and was able to get a job at the University of Virginia in their Academic Computing Center back in Charlottesville. We sold our townhouse and spent the summer in our old neighborhood in Charlottesville (Key West Subdivision) while I started my new job. In the fall, we moved to our condo in Wintergreen when Laura and David returned to school and Julie moved to Boulder, CO, where she would pursue graduate studies in experimental psychology at the University of Colorado.
In December 1985 we purchased a house at Wintergreen, after finding that condo living didn't provide enough space. The house at 394 Blackrock Circle was in an ideal location, so we remodeled it to our liking and lived happily there until we retired in 2000. It was the scene for many happy family gatherings over 15 years, the longest we had ever owned one house. We initially rented the condo, but finally were able to sell it.
My job at UVa first involved support for mini- and mainframe computers. I wrote and edited documentation for our users (students, staff and faculty of the University), taught short courses on software and operating systems, and researched and answered computer questions. It was the perfect job for me. Whereas I had gotten bored teaching the same math subjects over and over, the computer field is ever-changing, requiring me to learn new things every day and then have the opportunity to share that knowledge with others.
After commuting to Charlottesville from Wintergreen for almost 5 years (and Tom to Staunton where the corporate office of JobShop was located), we purchased a condo (1102 Mill Park Drive) where we spent our weekdays. Tom moved his office from Staunton to Charlottesville, so we were both finally working in the same town.
Over my 15 years at UVa (my longest career; I had spent 2 years in real estate and 10 years of public school teaching) I moved into several leadership positions. These included managing the staff of a newly formed Unix Support Group, managing all the managers of the Consulting Services Group (Unix, Mainframe, Microcomputer and Help Desk) and finally as the Associate Director of Systems and Communications within the Information Technology and Communication division of the University. I worked with many wonderful people at the University whom I am still privileged to have as friends.
During these years, Julie completed her Ph.D., did postdoctoral work in quantitative psychology at the University of Illinois, Champagne-Urbanna, was on the faculty of NYU's business school and at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. She currently is an Associate Prof. of Marketing at the McCombs School of Business, University of Texas, Austin. She and her daughter live in Austin.
Laura completed her BS in Chemistry at JMU, her MD at the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond, her residency in Dallas, TX, and Hershey, PA. She has worked as an attending physician in obstetrics and gynecology at the University of South Carolina's medical school in Columbia and at the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta. In 2008 she went into private practice in nearby Aiken, SC, at the Magnolia Medical Center. She and her husband Eric Smith and their 2 children live in Augusta.
David completed high school at Woodberry, got a BS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Washington University, St. Louis, and worked at VMIC in Huntsville, AL, Broadband Technologies and Micromass near Raleigh, NC. He is now with Blue Stripe Software. Dave and his wife Lisa Lukasik live in Cary, NC, with their 2 children.
August 2000 - August 2002, full-time travelers: On July 31, 2000, Tom and I both retired. He turned part of his business over to his brother and I retired from t he University, which used the same retirement system as public school teachers in Virginia. I had 21 years in the Virginia Retirement System, which would help finance our next step. We sold the Charlottesville condo over the winter 1999-2000 and in August put our house on the market and climbed into our new motor home to begin to see the country. Other web pages document our retirement travels and life since 2000.
August 2002 - September 2007: After 5.5 years in our house in Aiken, we realized that we weren't in the Aiken house much. So we sold the house, bought a place in Augusta, GA, which we have rented, and went back to living in our motor home.
September 2007 and beyond: I
still spend lots of time on computers, presently we own a Macintosh iBook and
two Dell laptops. I try to keep my web pages current (emphasis on "try"), and maintain the web site for Tom's business, JobShop Inc. I am still kind
of "geeky" as you can see from this "Nerd" test I
found. Try it!
I also try to jog regularly, something I began
in Charlottesville in 1977, and I ski each year, but no longer in Virginia.
Tom and I go to our condo in Winter Park, Colorado, for a couple of months each winter for
me to ski while he catches up on work. We also go for a couple of months in the summer for him to play golf and me to hike. We enjoy having family and friends join
us there.
Updated August 9, 2009