Finding Fannie – A Daughter’s Journey [Hardcover] Reed Sally Shinkle.

Description

Private press [Published date: 2002]. Hard cover, 406 pp. [from front jacket flap] As a teenager, Fannie Fordon came from up-state New York to the Southwest’s new state of New Mexico to finish high school in Roswell, to teach school and to blossom. With a year’s leave from teaching to travel around the world in 1929-30, Fannie began to “find herself”, and she kept fascinating diaries of her world travels. Unfortunately, a catastrophe awaited her in later life, which ultimately helped her find another meaning for her existence. Friendships with Indian potter Maria Martinez, artist Peter Hard, historian and writer Eve Ball, Esther Goddard, wife of rocket pioneer scientist, Robert Goddard and marriage to long time school administrator, James D. Shinkle enhanced her sixty-two years in Roswell. Fannie explored the Carlsbad Caverns in a bat guano bucket, and took a three week long journey in 1923 across rugged, unpopulated country in a Model T Ford to attend a summer session at the University of California, Berkeley. She learned, first hand, from her husband, about the Dust Bowl, World War I warfare, coaching sports and other educational responsibilities in a community that was off the beaten path. This book presents an important period in Southwest history from the viewpoint of an intelligent and adventurous woman whose “grit” saw her through some devastating times. She left a legacy of courage throughout the example of her life.