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Today's Featured Biography

Mary Julia Pendergast Klimenko-Decker

I left our class a year early to have my son, Bobby Acker and am happy that I've been able to go to the reunions to see the "kids" I went to school with even though I didn't get my official high school diploma until 1965. I had another child during that time, Juliana Acker and began college. I divorced Bob Acker and two years later married Rob Raahauge. We had our daughter Sarah and moved into the old Servente home on Illinois Street. I still remember the garage in back with Marlboro boxes lining the walls when we cruised with 25 cents worth of gas in my parents car, which my son eventually took over converting it into his room, claiming his sisters were impossible to live with. I graduated from San Francisco State with a BA in English, concentration in Creative Writing, got an MA there in English, concentration in Creative Writing and taught creative writing there for two years before returning to school at USF with my cousin, Nancy Gonsalves, to get a Master's Degree in Counseling Psychology. I did internships at The Concord Vet's Center, Parent's United, and Solano County Mental Health, worked at First Hospital Psychiatric and then Solano Park Hospital before opening a private practice in Benicia in 1990.
In my late twenties I began working with sculptor, Manuel Neri, as his primary model and later we collaborated on three limited edition books, my poetry and his images of me. We traveled throughout this country and Europe to galleries, museums, and universities, lecturing on the importance of collaboration in art. He had a studio in Carrara, Italy so I was able to explore Italy a bit more than other countries. My career with him lasted forty years until he retired three years ago.
I had two careers running parallel to each other for many years and was also busy raising three children and then blessed with grandchildren, a total today of five boys, one girl, and one great granddaughter.
Rob and I parted and he passed away at only 56 years old from melanoma (wear that sunscreen).
I married a TWA pilot, Wit Klimenko, in 1982. We built two homes on the waterfront in Benicia and lived on our yacht in the Vallejo marina while we built the second one, which we lived in and then purchased a weekend home so the grandchildren could experience real country life, a fifty acre ranch in the Sierra Foothills with a year round river.
I divorced him in 2003 and continued to maintain the ranch by myself until 2013 when I sold it and purchased a home in Glen Cove. Throughout this time I maintained my private practice in Benicia.
I'm happy to be back in Vallejo, excited to see all of the creative activity in downtown Vallejo, the opening of Vic's place owned by Rob's brother, Eric, and the restoration and use of the beautiful Empress theater.
Last year I acquired a second license as a Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor and also some years ago became certified as a Master Hypnotist. I'm currently taking classes in life coaching and building an online practice because I think online therapy and coaching is the wave of the future where people won't have to leave their homes to talk to a professional.
I've continued to be published in literary journals, somewhere around a hundred journals now, and recently had two short stories published.
I was invited to read at The Red Devil Lounge in S.F. last month to celebrate the publication of Red Light Lit and was surprised and pleased to see that I was the only person over the age of 35 published in the journal or reading at the reading. That meant to me that my poetry is still considered contemporary and young people can relate to the themes in my work.

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