Biography of Kathleen Dewey
I was born on June 27th, 1950 in Emmett, Idaho. My brother John was a year and two weeks old when I was born. After me my parents had James (Jim) and Steven (Steve). Our parents were John Cecil Dewey, Jr. and Norma Roesberry Dewey. On December 11th, 1957 our Dad was in a car accident outside of Emmett. He lived for just a few hours without regaining consciousness. I remember that night and part of the next week, like a movie that I’ve seen over and over again, seeing what people looked like and what people said.
John and I went to Middleton Grade school along with the Blanc children. When I was 9 my mother moved us to Boise because she was lonely on the farm. She had a hard time breaking the news of the move to my grandparents, Minnie and Cecil, but they were happy that she agreed to let us come to visit them on the week-ends. Usually this would be John and Jim, and then Steve and I on alternate week-end.
Mother married Bob Akovenko in 1960. We mostly lived in Boise, but for a year or two we moved back to the farm where Bob worked for my grandfather. Then we moved back to Boise, then to Nampa, and when John and I were in high school moved to the Seattle area because Bob had a job for Boeing.
John went into the Army after graduating from high school and I followed him into the Army a year later (1968). This was during the Vietnam war. I was in the Army for three years, and after two years I was a Sergeant in an Information Technology shop before there were computers. We used a IBM 407 Accounting machine for reports, a card sorter, and so on. Programs were flow charts with instruction on the order to do things. The IBM 407 Accounting machine had wires that could be changed to produce the reports created from cards previously sorted and then fed into the machine.
John finished his tour of service in the Army after three years, and enrolled at Edmonds Community College. I followed him in a year. We shared an apartment which mostly worked out. I was working in the evenings as a keypunch operator while going to school and I would go home tired and see that John had set up a 12-hour war game for us to play. My strategy was to lose as fast as I could so that I could go to bed.
After that John and I went to different colleges, so I’ll veer off from my parallel tale of John and I.
After two years at Edmonds Community College, I transferred to Washington State University where I earned a B.A. in History/minor in Economics in 1975. I then moved to Idaho and stayed with Mother and Bob while I looked for work. Idaho was in a major recession then, and I found out that a History degree was not a good degree to have a job. But I found a job as a keypunch operator and moved to an apartment in Boise.
My siblings were growing up. Jim had been in the Navy after high school and then went to the University of Idaho. Steve got married and worked at a tractor dealership. Jeff joined the Marines to be a computer programmer. Peggy was still in High School.
As Jeff and I talked about his career choice I realized that I should become a computer programmer too. I took some classes at Boise State at the encouragement of my boss, and then took a test and became a computer programmer.
Then I decided to move to Portland, so I found a job as a computer programmer there for a bank and worked there for about 20 years. During that time period, Jeff was a computer programmer and I set up an interview with him and the head of the department. Jeff left with a job offer. He and his wife, Robin then moved to Portland.
I worked as a developer for most of that time, but before the year 2000 project, the person assigned to manage the work at the bank got really sick so they pushed me dragging and screaming into that job. I found that I liked management and liked project management so I stayed with that.
My mother died in 1993. Although she had been ill from pneumonia she had been getting better but then she suddenly died while in the hospital from a blood clot. She was 62. Our family was heartbroken over this. For all six kids, not just the Dewey kids, she was a main force in our lives. Since then, it has been hard to get the family together without our mother doing the work but we work hard at it.
About a year later after much thought I decided to adopt a child, and decided to go through an agency that would allow me to select the child from a picture. It took almost two years, but in 1996, six-year-old Aleksei Michael Dewey joined the family. A few times in his life I’ve asked what is the most important thing that I’ve ever done in my life. He never remembers the answer so I repeat to him that the most important thing that I’ve ever done was to adopt him. He was sworn in as a citizen when he was twelve years old, and of course I filmed it.
In 2002, it felt like a good time to move back to Idaho so that Aleksei could get to know better our Idaho relatives. He was, and still is, very close to Jeff and Robin’s kids, particularly their son Robert who he thinks of as almost a brother. Now he has gotten to know better Jim’s kids and Peggy’s kids. I could write a whole book about he and Jordan Dewey’s (Jim’s son) escapades but I won’t. Let’s just say that they were frequently grounded from each other.
I worked for Boise State University for five years, first as an IT Development manager, and then as a project manager. While there I got my Masters in Management Information Systems. My emphasis, and thesis was on project management.
Aleksei turned 18 then, and I felt that I could then pursue the idea of being a consultant since he could take care of himself with a little watching over by Jim. There were three companies wanting to interview me, mostly because a friend had left Boise State, to become a consultant and he had put my name in at two companies. Ellucian, which was then SunGard Higher Education interviewed me by phone but when they found out that I was planning on taking a trip the next week to interview with another company they offered me a job right away. I said “but you haven’t met me” and the manager that hired me said “you don’t have purple hair do you?” I said no, and he didn’t think that there would be a problem.
I’m still working for Ellucian. At first I traveled every two or three months to university’s and colleges where we were implementing our software projects but several years ago I was diagnosed with stage 3B colon cancer and stage 3A endometrial cancer. So I went on medical leave for major surgery, and then went back to work, continuing to travel while I went through six months of chemotherapy, followed by a short recovery period, and then 8 weeks of daily (Monday thru Friday) radiation. Then I started to recover from the treatments and my cancer markers were negative which is really good.
There was a minor glitch when I had an intestinal hernia, which was operated on, and I continued to get better. Then about five years ago I got really sick from damage to my intestines from the cancer treatments and surgeries. I almost died and was put in a medical coma for a week. It was a long trip back to health.
That’s all in the past. I am cancer free, and my digestive system has some inconveniences but I manage it pretty well mostly by being careful of what I eat. I’m healthy. Although I currently don’t travel much for work but if careful, I can. I love my job most of the time and am not currently thinking of retiring for a while. It is great to work from home with my dog nearby. Aleksei, his wife Sara, and I are planning a trip to Seattle for the week after Christmas.