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Bring Back the Joy --- B B t J . O r g
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VIRGINIA H. LANE, an Autobiography
Whenever people ask me where I'm "from," my response is that I'm a Texan. From what part? you ask? That's the difficult part. We lived a number of places within Texas during my first 30 years. After marriage, I added other states to the list. Let me give you a summary of my life. I, Virginia Harriet Lane, was born August 8, 1955 to Kight and Harriet Lane of Dublin, Texas. My parents were Kight and Harriet Pierson Lane. They lived the first years of their marriage next door to Daddy's parents who lived at 450 N. Grafton. Katherine Kight Lane's parents, Henry and Loree Kight lived around the corner at 505 N. Patrick. Shortly before my birth, my parents finished a house they were building on 305 W. Clinton and moved in along with 2 year old Julia. My father had been managing the family-owned cotton gins. It was decided to sell the business. Whereupon my father became a traveling salesman for the Murray Company which manufactured cotton gins. In 1957, we moved to Brenham, Texas which was the middle of his territory. We lived in this German-Polish community for ten years. Even though we've moved on, I still treasure my continued friendship with Marth House McLemore who I met in the fourth grade when the country school closed and the students were bussed to town. On May 27, 1967, we moved to McAllen in the Rio Grande Valley. By coincidence, Petra Irene Gonzales who attended Brenham Junior High with me also moved to McAllen and was in several of my classes at Lamar Junior High. Even though we weren't close, it was nice to see a familiar face. My mother always said "If you liked the last place you lived, you will like the next place you live." The meaning was that people who complain will always find something to complain about. She said this in response to people who would ask if we liked McAllen or if we liked it better where we used to live. I liked McAllen. Although it was a rough time in my life. During the summer of our arrival, I grew four inches and four shoe sizes. None of my clothes fit right. My sister went off to camp; my mother and I raided her closet for hand-me-downs. Puberty hit with a vengeance; my hair suddenly went frizzy curly and my eyes got near-sighted. Despite the growth spurt, I was still one of the shortest in school when school started. For those of you who are familiar with McAllen, we lived in the Flowers on Orchid. I loved the way the streets were laid out square and alphabetical or numbered. The big thing of note that happened was Hurricane Buelah in fall 1968. My parents were in Houston at a business convention; Julia and I were staying with church friends. It was quite an adventure to have to go over to our house with masking tape and tape up the windows. We left the cat in the garage with plenty of food. He ended up climbing into the attic. The family we were staying with evacuated to grandmother's house in Houston; so we were able to enjoy a week off from school and a vacation at the Hilton. We stayed in McAllen for two and a half years. Then my parents decided to move to Dallas. We lived two blocks south of the Richardson line at 13527 Redfern Lane. My school was within walking distance. When the school year ended, we moved to the suburbs of Fort Worth. During the next three years, we lived in Bedford, Hurst, Euless, and Hurst. Julia spent her senior year and I attended the three years of high school at L.D. Bell High School in Hurst. The 70s was an interesting time to go to high school. Those of us who weren't radical, in Band or sports didn't really fit in. We had a choice of hanging out with the Jesus Freaks or the brainy crowd. I wasn't a super brain but did finish 37th out of 610 in my graduating class. I was part of the French Club and the National Honor Society. During my senior year, I was the copy editor of our school magazine. After graduating from high school in May, 1973, I joined the freshman class at Ambassador College, our denominational four-year college in Big Sandy, Texas. I enjoyed once again being at school with my sister who had started college ahead of me. I didn't distinguish myself during college, either by making exceptional grades or by goofing off. I had a double major of Liberal Arts and Theology with minors in French and Speech. That left little room for fun courses. My regret is that I was always taking required upper level courses during the times allocated for first year language classes. After two years of working for the college kitchen, I became the student secretary for Dr. Clifford Anderson, the chairman of the History Department. In my "spare time," I was part of the History Club, the French Club, Women's Club, and the Table Tennis Club. I served in various offices for those organizations. After college, I was able to spend the summer traveling in Europe. Two other graduates and their younger sister and I made a worldwind tour of Belgium, Holland, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. I later joined up with my friend Darlene. We hitchhiked to various spots around France. This was what I consider my "wild streak." Fortunately, God took care of us and we only had positive adventures. The final segment of the summer was spent on the beautiful Ambassador College, Bricket Wood campus where I worked at a summer camp for children of the European congregations of our church. My parents had known they were moving again. They had moved to Sherman during my college years. The company for which my father worked had been sold and merged with a company based in Lubbock. This became "home" as home is where the heart is. By this time, Julia had married Sammy O'Dell; they lived and still live in Amarillo. I was excited to be going to a city in fairly close proximity to my beloved sister. Julia had always been my best friend. It was nice that my parents wanted me to be with them; I could live with them while deciding what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I had not worked between returning from Europe and the time of our move. I was blessed to quickly find a job at the Texas Tech University Law Library. I worked there from January 1978 through August 1980. At that point, I moved to Denton to work on my Master of Library Science degree at Texas Woman's University. My parents said they could help me out for a year. Therefore, I received my degree in August 1981. My first position as a professional librarian was at the Tom Green County Public Library in San Angelo, Texas. I really enjoyed San Angelo. This was the first time I had really lived on my own, without parents or roommates. I quickly found a niche at church as one of the pianists. It was difficult since I had to practice at someone's house (anyone that had a piano) or before church. I also played volleyball on the church team. Not because I was athletic but because they needed a warm body. In Spring 1982, I was offered a position as cataloger at the Ambassador College Library. Therefore, I returned to my alma mater for a wonderful four years. While not quite like being in college again, I enjoyed fellowshipping with both students and faculty. It was nice to be back with others who shared my faith and beliefs. A number of graduates from my college years still lived in the area so I was able to renew old friendships. However, the new friends I made during those years were very important to me. In September 1986, as what I call an aging single...I attended a church conference in Anchorage, Alaska. My parents went with me. While I was taking care of checking into the conference hotel, a young man offered to help my parents with their luggage. This turned out to be Mark Bolzern. We began exchanging information. It turns out that his brother Ron had worked for the AC Library a few years before. (My mother later reminded me that I had told her about a boy who told about his big brother who had built a home in Anchorage and had his own business. This impressed me. "Why can't I meet a guy like that?" I asked?) We had other mutual friends. Mark asked me out the next evening. I reminded him that I was there with my parents so I needed to be with them. Whereupon, he immediately said "Bring'em along" with no hesitation. That spoke volumes to my heart. To make a long story shorter, we dated during that one week and then continued with a long distance courtship. He proposed when he came for Thanksgiving. My guess is that we spent about a month together in person during the eight months of our relationship prior to the May 26th wedding. Mark was doing some work in Denver during Christmas break so I joined him there; I stayed with a couple of girls he knew. During Spring Break I flew to Alaska to help him clean house. It had been "smoked up" with an oil fire. Then he flew down for the end of school activities, went back to Denver for more business and then returned for the wedding. Mark's family lived in Europe at that time. I was pleasantly surprised that they spent the time and money to come to our wedding. Ron flew from England, Mark's mother Nelly and the other brother Chris came from Germany, and Grandmother Bolzern came from Switzerland. Our honeymoon was driving from Texas where I lived to Alaska where Mark lived. Although we shipped a lot of my belongings to Alaska, and my parents took some to store in Lubbock, we still stuffed my car to the brim. We took our time, visited several friends and tourist attractions along the way. We went to Expo '86 in Vancouver. The Yukon Territory through which we would be driving offered a "Treasure Hunt." One had to visit certain places in the Yukon and look for something that would give you the answer to the clue and tell you where to look for the next clue. One had to cover the entire loop around the Yukon. We had a good time. In Haynes Junction, we visited long-time friends of Mark's. They didn't really believe us when we said "seeya for breakfast in a couple of days." But they were glad to see us when we showed up with a dozen eggs. We arrived late one evening. The house had been closed for some time. Mark and I dropped in on the neighbors who gave us a home-quilted blanket which we still have. Mark and I were so tired that we quickly made up the bed, threw the new quilt over us and went to sleep. It was hard to awaken the next day to a house that needed lots of cleaning. One of our first tasks was to do laundry. We went through Mark's "change pitcher" so we could go to the laundromat. I remember that there was $74 in quarters. Fortunately we didn't need quite that much...however, we washed every washable item in the house. Let me explain about Mark's house. Lot's of people would nastily say that it wasn't worth anything. However, it was and still is a miracle in my mind. Picture a 22 year of whose mother had been told that she was going to have to move. The agreement was that she'd make payments on a piece of property and he'd build a house. And build it he did--with a chain saw, his pickup truck, an ax and little else. It was a two story log cabin with a dirt floor and no plumbing. The property is grandfathered to allow an outhouse as long as one stays continually on the property. The outhouse was very nice. In August after living there for a few months, I encountered a visitor from the "Lower 48" who asked if it ever got dark at night. She looked at me like I was out of my gourd when I responded "Of yes, I can't read in the outhouse at midnight any more." I consider the house a masterpiece of ingenuity. What bothered people is that the house was made of birch which is a very flexible wood. It had the tendency to "bounce" when one walked across the floor. I never bothered me but others would worry that the house would fall down under them. It was kind of funny to have the house shake when the cat would run up the staircase. What can I say about our time in Alaska? We settled into a routine of Mark working at home in the morning and then doing his computer consulting work in the afternoon/evenings. I had some difficulty adjusting. I thought I was grownup (at age almost 31) but it was psychologically hard to be so far from home. Plus, even though they spoke English and used the same currency, it is a different culture. But an experience I wouldn't trade. I especially enjoyed reading books written by the early miners and settlers. To make a long story short, in 1988 we had a major contract go sour. Mark felt like his name was mud in Anchorage. (We eventually received a settlement in a lawsuit. So when an opportunity in Denver came, he decided we'd make the move. It was a change to move "to the city." Mark once again had to shovel sidewalks and mow grass. One advantage to living in the country is that you can make your own rules as to what needs to be done on your property. I enjoyed our years in south Aurora (suburb of Denver). I've always liked modern suburbia with convenient shopping and easy access to friends. It was hard getting used all the traffic. It was almost scarey to drive. However, in 1991, we made a trip to New York City (a bicycle hit us and we got egged). I told Mark that driving in Denver would never scare me after that. I haven't driven in either New York or L.A. but I've since had opportunities to drive in or through many major US cities. My mother died in 1997. I still miss her; however, I'm glad to have gotten closer to my father. I always thought I was like my mother. Yes, but I now recognize traits that I have in common with Daddy. How did we support ourselves all those years? We had interesting times and lots of ups and downs. Mark had been a compuer consultant in Alaska, owning General Computer Services (GCS). After our move, we registered GCS with the State of Colorado and began to take on clients by word of mouth. While slowly building the business, we worked other jobs. I did temporary jobs for a number of months. Mark did contract computer work for the Colorado Department of Education and US West Communications. He then worked for another company which became financially unstable. This gave us the push to become totally self supportive with General Computer Services. We were fortunate to find a couple of good clients which gave us the income we needed. In the fall of 1992, Mark and a friend, Jerry Olson, attended Comdex (the largest US Computer Trade Show). They noticed a German product called FlagShip. Our new company, WorkGroup Solutions was born. We sold Flagship as our basic product while evolving into a Linux support company. Linux is the Unix for personal computers. Flagship for Linux became available as one of the early Linux products; we transitioned into selling the Linux Operating System along with Flagship. In 1995 our WGS Linux Pro distribution was about 3rd in the Linux marketplace and won "A Best of Comdex." Linux Journal lists Mark as one of the Founding Fathers of Linux. Eventually we decided that we should stop being a Linux OS distributor and simply to become a distributor of Linux products. Our company name became LinuxMall. We were the first real seller of goods on the interest. We sold everything from T-shirts to software. Our Linux Penguin became a favorite of the Linux Community. I did the bookkeeping and sales while Mark did sales, marketing and technical support. Over the years we added a number of loyal employees whom we still count as friends. Things begin to fall apart in 2000 when we got investors. They promised financial support and encouraged us to spend money for rapid growth. We assumed they knew what they were talking about; it backfired big-time when the dot.coms started dying. They pulled out of the deal without notice and left us hanging. Even though we were are real company, we were in difficulty because of the debt load. We ended up selling the business to another company. Because of the unstable market, they ended up declaring bankruptcy before we were fully paid. Stock we were holding became worthless. Mark was "laid off." But life goes on. We began to rebuild. Mark learned to trade stocks and after a year or so of trading and losing, it suddenly turned around. However, God had other plans for us... A major change occurred in our lives beginning with summer 2002. We attended Andrew Wommack's Summer Bible Conference in Colorado Springs. Mark got the urging to attend Charis Bible College (CBC). Unfortunately, I was uncooperative. I said I would support his going but was not willing to go myself. A number of factors made him decide to wait even though he sent in his application for the fall term. Eventually I agreed to take the Video Correspondence Course with him. Completion of the entire course would allow one to enroll in the second year class on location in Colorado Springs. By February 2003, I began to see that we needed to make some changes in our life. The obvious one was the need to attend the second year. Rather than commuting, we decided to move to Colorado Springs. The decision was made to go "portable." We purchased a 40 foot RV bus. Our new home started out life as a transit bus in San Francisco. As Mark would say, it's the same bus Sandra Bullock drove in the movie Speed. Fortunately, ours has nice oak paneling and cabinets, basically a small apartment on wheels. It was quite a change to go from 3004 sq ft to 340 sq ft and be together 24/7. As I write this, it's now summer 2004. We completed our year at CBC and are waiting to see where the Lord leads next. We feel called to a ministry called Bring Back the Joy, see http://www.bbtj.org . --to be continued...
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