PATRICIA WERNER

"P" and her husband Alfonso Gutierrez have returned to Madison and are living, working and raising children here. Their two sons are Alejandro - 23 and Martin - 22 and their daughter Camila is 19.

What has P been up to ? "I'm still teaching--this will be my 35th year!
My family and I moved back to Madison several years ago after having lived in quite a few different places. It's good to be back! Madison is a wonderful place to live. We'll stay here until our children are done with college (one's finished, one's almost finished, and one's thinking about starting...). Then we may split our time across countries."

Favorite memories? During EHS she remembers "Ski trips, poetry readings by the excavation for the new pool (!), sleep-overs at the Marquis' cottage, Ma Caravello's hash brown potatoes, Mrs. Goggin's and Aunt Sabina's cookies, canoe trips down the Wisconsin River, Sr. Margaret Mary Toomey, cruising in U-Haul trucks"


"Some highlights of the past 40 years: I...worked at the hotel where Dirty Dancing was filmed...studied in Switzerland, and many Madisonians came to visit (some of them multiple times)...taught at a medium-security men's prison in California, where Bill Harris (of the Patty Hearst kidnapping) was one of my teacher aides and where Tex Watson (of the Manson family) was in my GED prep class...published several textbooks and other teaching resources...had two sons and adopted a daughter...raised our children bilingually (English and Spanish)....was a U.S. Foreign Service nominee, a Fulbright scholar, and a Harvard teaching fellow. Now, after all these years, I'm happily teaching at Verona Area High School--bilingual GED classes and several ESL classes--and enjoying life back in Madison."

P - we are so happy to have you back ! but you are the second person to mention Aunt Sabina's cookies and I'm starting to feel I really missed something.
See you in July !