Margaret (Maggie) Lyen

Life doesn't get much better than this. I have 4 beautiful grown children and 6 amazing grandchildren. Two of my grandchildren live nearby and I take every opportunity to spoil them (just a little). I have lived on Whidbey Island since 1983 and love now being retired in such a beautiful place. I remarried in 2012 after being single for 19 years. In addition to a wonderful (and patient)husband, I gained a beautiful and talented daughter, Melanie. I'm also fortunate to have my amazingly active 94-year-old mother and 3 of my 5 sisters living nearby. Robert and I love to travel. He prefers well thought-out, planned trips to foreign places and I am especially fond of spontaneous road trips. All it takes is for someone to say, "I'd sure like to see . . ." and my bag is packed and in the car.

Like I said, life doesn't get much better than this.

One thing that had a significant impact on me in high school was the building of a new high school (Mountlake Terrace) and the subsequent use of Highway 99 as the dividing line for students. As sophomores, we all attended Edmonds High, many of us with classmates that we had gone to school with since our elementary days. In many cases, those long-time friendships were torn apart when, at the beginning of our junior year, we found ourselves attending one school while our best friends were relegated to the other, based solely on which side of the highway you lived. For some, this left one person out of a whole group of friends "stranded" on the opposite side. At a time in our lives when sustained friendships played such a huge role in how we viewed ourselves and where we "fit", this was hard to deal with for some.