I thought things were back on track and we were OK, but the marriage was broken beyond repair. I am not going to go into details about the breakup in this blog. I think my kids need to know my feelings about this (Karen can write her own feelings, if she desires), but I do not want the world to know these details. When I publish this memoir as a book, I’ll include a chapter about the breakup, but not until then. And that will be for family, only.
I think David was the first one we told. Maybe Katy and Kristy knew first, I’m not sure. But we told him on his birthday, Aug 28, 1994 because that was the first opportunity we had when he was at the house. He was really upset about that and I’m not sure he ever completely forgave us for spoiling his birthday. We told Matt and Kim by phone which really sucked. That’s no way for kids to find out their parents are breaking up.
As you all know, I moved out about October of 1994 and got an apartment in Rochester. I was still working at IBM, fortunately. We sold the house sometime that winter and Karen moved to Orem with the only 2 kids who were still at home, Kristy and Katy.
David was living in an apartment in Winona, Kim had moved west to go to school and Matt was at BYU working on his degree. As I said, I moved into an apartment in Rochester and settled in. When Karen moved, four of my five kids were in Utah, so I decided it was time for me move out there too. I called Matt and asked him to send me the Sunday classifieds from the Salt Lake newspaper every week. So, about Friday of each week, I would get this package of newspaper from him. I studied the want ads for job offerings. I looked for anything that I thought I was qualified to do.
A company called HAI (Human Affairs International) called me and said they would like to interview me over the phone. They wanted someone who knew the AS/400 computer for a new project they starting and I had been working on it for the past 10 years or so. I had a phone interview with the boss and then a second one with a technical guy. He asked me all kinds of technical questions (to see if I really knew the AS/400). I guess I passed because they offered me a job.
Dad