Meeting Ruby's Fiance

Ann first met Wayne Miller (her sister Ruby's future husband) when she and her mother met him in 1948 at Ham's Field airstrip (now the site of the ISU Minidome).

The airstrip was part of the University of Idaho - Southern Branch Vocational program and was sometimes called the University Field. The airfield did not have scheduled commercial aircraft but served private flights and was an educational site for the university's aircraft maintenance program.

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Map from the 1950 Idaho Airport Directory.

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Sent Away

After her high school graduation, she was sent to live with Don and Ginny in Mountain Home, Idaho, because of persistent nose bleeds. She was told the drier climate would help. Nosebleeds may be genetic for our family as several family members suffered from them. In retrospect, Ann said, she felt like she was constantly being sent away. She doesn't know if other siblings got sent away as much as she did. She also spent some summers in Montana (in Butte or Bozeman - she couldn't remember which [see note below]) to spend time with her sister Dorothy and her husband Grant. Dorothy was ill, and Ann recalls that the water there was bad. When they moved out of Montana, she got better. One of the funniest sights she ever saw was while visiting her sister Dorothy. She remembers her nephew, little Lewis, coming around the corner inside the house wearing one of Ann’s skirts. It was a beautiful full skirt that she loved. Lewis was about 7 years old and must have just grabbed something to ...

Wedding & Marriage

Ann was braver than Gene -- she was the one who asked him to sit by her when they first met. Gene was a safe person, she said, but not a brave person. After they got married (eloped to Twin Falls), Gene and Ann went up to the church youth camp where his mother and father worked during the summer. Ann got the impression that his parents didn't know they were getting married. Gene had to borrow some money from them to pay for a short honeymoon. Mostly they camped out. They argued like normal married couples, but Gene hit her only once. She was mad and slapped him first. He slapped her back. ----- Photo of Eugene Price in front of a camping tent in the middle of a forest.

Williamsburg, Virginia

Once she landed in Virginia, she lived briefly with her brother Don and his wife Ginny in Portsmouth and then g ot a job and an apartment in Historic Williamsburg, Virginia. Her apartment was on the third floor of a building on Prince George's Street, across the street from the Tri-Delta house near the campus of William and Mary College. The room was so small she would prefer to go down to the second floor to look out the windows and watch the people on campus walking around. She remembers the end of the semester or year when big limos would show up to pick up the students to go home. She walked to work at the Williamsburg Inn (a distance of about a mile). The walk took her through historic Williamsburg every day. At the Inn, she had to enter by the back (employee) entrance. She worked in the coffee shop, drawing beer, making sandwiches, and serving the customers. She loved that job. She never really did the touristy things in Williamsburg, though she did remembe...

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