It all started with 1022 Park Place, Coronado, California. This is where my grandparents, Alfred and Mary EllenVingoe, came from England in the 1920s to settle in Coronado. As my mom’s siblings matured, they spread themselves out through Coronado and San Francisco to make their own homes.

I was born at the Coronado Hospital in 1946. Dr. Booth delivered me there and said at the time that “I was going to be a showgirl in Vegas.” Little did he know, I spent 37 years there in the gaming business, and DID dance VERY often at all the clubs there.

All these years later through Facebook, Aleene Sexton Queen and Helen Nichols Murphy Battleson found we had more in common then being raised in Coronado. It was “1022 Park Place”, where Aleene’s aunt and uncle lived for quite a few years in the 1930s; then many years later, Helen and her family owned the house, who then sold it to Donald Hubbard, the present-day owner.

I had been by “1022 Park Place” many times to look and stare and wonder what it was like to live inside that beautiful home back in the 20s. Finally, one day while HOME for the 4th of July Class Reunion last year (2010), I was taking a picture of the house with my best girlfriend, Carolann, and Don Hubbard came out and jokingly said, “We charge for pictures you know.”

That’s when after all these years of wondering what it looked like inside, Don invited Carolann and I in for a tour of the house. (What a kind and wonderful man he is. He and his daughter are both authors of wonderful stories.)

This meeting brought Aleene, Helen, and I into full circle. They are both just a tad older then me and wouldn’t have noticed me as a kid running rampant in Coronado. Aleene and I had a closer bond then we thought. My mom and her and other great friends use to play cards together — one of the friends being the fire chief at the time, Ted Kohl and his wife Edna. Now that we are all older, the age gap has closed between us and we have MANY fond memories to share.