Cheryl McGinnis is a typical 1947 post war baby. She was raised on the grounds of a German Dominican convent in Anaheim, California, where the nuns ran a boys military academy in the shadow of Disneyland. She later majored in Physical Education/Dance and Biology at the University of Arizona. She married on August 15, 1969, the same weekend as Woodstock but 3,000 miles west. The next 20 years were a combination of packing, moving, and raising three children as her husband was an FBI agent specializing in Soviet counter-espionage, domestic terrorism, and white-collar crime. When he retired, she went to work. She liked Oregon and wanted to stay. She received her Master of Arts in Teaching from Lewis & Clark College in 1994 and taught eighth grade earth science and health at Scappoose Middle School, in Scappoose, Oregon, until she retired in 2004. Now she lives in Bend, Oregon, with her family.