Dave Blanchard

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I grew up in Los Gatos, CA (San Jose area). I attended a private school from 1st through 12th grade in Los Gatos and Saratoga, and graduated in 1972. I moved to Portland, OR to attend Multnomah Bible College and got my degree in Christian Education, then transferred to Lewis & Clark College and got my teaching degree. I subsequently taught for 37 years in Portland Public Schools, teaching mostly 4th and 5th grades. I have four children (two adopted from South Korea) and eight grandchildren; most live in the Portland area.

I'm a musician (and have collected musical instruments since I was 10 years old), enjoy woodworking, and love to read. Writing poetry has come easily to me most of my life, and I consider myself a wordsmith. I play electric bass and classical guitar, and sing bass on the praise team, at the church I attend.

My father Robert grew up in Berkeley, CA. Hey father served as a radioman on a ship in WWII, went to M.I.T., and worked for I.T.T. in New York, and at Lockheed in Sunnyvale, CA. He had one sister, Dorothy, who married and lived in Massachusetts, and had two adopted children. My paternal ancestors were sea captains in Searsport, Maine.

My mother Nancy was an only child, and was born and raised in New Jersey; her mother had four siblings (family name Crane; I remember one uncle was named Arthur.) She taught at a girls' high school before she married my father. Her aunt Mary taught kindergarten for 31 years. (Guess it runs in the family!) My mother's grandparents came from Scotland.

My parents served as short-term missionaries in San Jose, Costa Rica, where my father was the engineer at the radio station for Latin American Missions. When they returned, they lived in my maternal grandparents' home in New Jersey, which they inherited at the death of my maternal grandmother in about 1958.

I grew up with four siblings (three brothers and one sister). One brother died in 2010; the rest of my siblings are living, and I have eight nieces and nephews. My only first cousins were adopted by my father's sister.

Sources

• First-hand information. Entered by David Blanchard at registration.