Ray and Doris Choriki in Bozeman Montana around 1957. This is probably the house on Mendenhall they shared with Effrosyni (Efrosine) Voulkas.
To this day, I have an affinity for Bozeman, Montana. There is a calmness to enters my psyche when I am in Bozeman. Like many things, there are things I don’t really like that go with the things I do like. My parents Ray and Doris, came here so dad could finish college. He would graduate with a Masters Degree in Soil Science and would go on to change the way people farmed in Montana.
This picture is taken on a side street in Bozeman, Montana, probably the front yard of the house on Mendenhall they lived in for years. It is a parking lot now. Dad says he came to Bozeman because friends of his were going to school there. Mom on the other hand, was married, got on a plane and landed in Butte, Montana in the first week of January 1956. If you know anything about winter in Montana, it should be that the worst week of winter is usually the first week of January. Thier plane slide off the runway as it was taxiing to the terminal. Mom claims she should have insisted on staying on the plane and returning to Kauai.
Brave souls.
While raised in both Christian and Buddhist traditions in Hawaii, their options were limited in the Bozeman of 1956. So they became Catholics, a choice that would frame their sense of community through the rest of their lives.
For me, what I see in this picture are a couple of kids raising a kid and a blue spruce tree. Something else I have an affinity for.