Today's Featured Biography

 
Joan DuBuque Moon

Update from my 50 year entry. We have embraced "multigenerational" living ... 8 months a year in Northville, Michigan and 4 months in Cypress, Texas. We were pretty isolated from family during COVID and decided we wanted to enjoy our remaining good years with our daughters and their families. We spend time each summer in Wyoming so we get "son" time too. We have three children, 7 grandchildren, and four great grandchildren. We will resume our love of travel next summer if things have settled down. I continue to teach doctoral and master's students at Walden University and really feel like it has been a life saver because teaching online has allowed me to be outside of the world of COVID restrictions. I have donated my women's health site (WomensHealthDynamics.com) to the University of Wyoming School of Nursing and was blessed to be named the 2019 Distinguished Alumni for the University of Wyoming College of Health Sciences and the School of Nursing. We are pretty healthy and eternally grateful for all that we have. I will miss not attending the reunion...to be honest it makes me quite sad but traveling during this time is not possible. My best to all of you and I hope to read your bios soon.



Fifty years - unbelievable. I don't even know where to begin except to think back to that young girl at Granite High School where school was a haven and the future not even thought about. I went to the "U" for one year and then to Jackson Lake Lodge (thanks to recruiting by Sherry Gowan) to work for one summer - which turned out to be two. Met my life partner there...Chuck Moon (hence retiring to his hometown of Bluffton, Indiana), and the rest is history so to say. Chuck was attending Arizona State University, and had also gone to the Tetons to work. We met on my first day there ... I was in the laundry getting shocked every time I tried to fold a sheet...he was a busboy in the dining room. Because I had worked at the Village Inn Pancake House on State Street and 29th South, he was able to help me get on in the dining room as well. We married 18 months later and were sealed in the SLC Temple (so his Indiana family could be at the wedding - in those days you could do so).

Over the next four years, Chuck earned his undergrad degree in molecular genetics and biology from the "U". We returned to Indiana where he taught high school for three years, and then off to graduate school. Since then, we have lived in Maryland, Wyoming, and Ohio before moving back to Indiana. After Chuck earned his PhD, I went back to school, and have earned a BS and Master's in Nursing, a certification in Nurse-Midwifery, and a Doctorate in Leadership and Policy studies. My motto has been (since my 30's)..."A degree in every decade"...you do the math :). I have practiced womens health and then moved into academia teaching at the Medical College of Ohio and most recently teaching for an on-line university in their MSN program which allows me to work anywhere in the US.

We have three children and five grandchildren. Life has been full but not without struggles. I had Stage IV lymphoma with the primary site in the bones six years ago...declared "cured" today, and have not wasted anytime since those critical months in not appreciating every day that goes by. We have downsized our lives to the point where we are free to travel as we would like, and have just returned home from four months in Vietnam where our daughter, son-in-law, and new grandson live. Our time there was very poignant for me because of the war and the suffering that both sides experienced. I was truly humbled by meeting the people and feeling their sweet spirits. The Saigon Branch of the LDS church is so incredibly special, and we were invited to share TET with the most wonderful family. The grandfather, who is 90, told the story of being shot in the chest during the war and being picked up by an American Captain who ran with him through a field to a hospital, thus saving his life. He could never find that Captain to thank him, and I think that he was able to thank me as an American for his life being given back to him. Anyone who was remotely involved with the Americans have suffered - to this day when they have to go back three generations when applying for school or jobs - very little opportunity to move out of that situation.

As I write this, I am sitting in a hotel in Sydney, Australia. We will be spending the next month here, at the end of which I am presenting a poster at an international nursing conference. Today is a national holiday for Australia ... their day of independence and of remembering their service men. World War II veterans are here from all over the country wearing all their badges and enjoying the recognition of their country men. So, once again, I am feeling very humble to be in the midst of humanity such as this.

Chuck and I have enjoyed a rich life...I went back to see the house I lived in when I was at Granite...a very small house on Garden Avenue...a challenging life was inside but marrying a wonderful man, gaining an education, meeting the challenges of life (although not always head on), and just plain receiving blessings has gotten me to this point of reflection in sharing with you. Thanks for letting me go on and on...I look forward to reading your stories.

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