Author Karin Brace Wargel
Karin Brace Wargel grew up in Johnston City, Illinois, and finished school there. She wasn’t involved in athletics because, as she told her stunned grandson, they wouldn’t let girls do that back then. She was a cheerleader and was involved in a myriad of extracurricular activities. She received her bachelor’s degree at Southern Illinois University.
Karin was an educator most of her life and retired after teaching in Juvenile Detention facilities, also in Southern Illinois. As good as retirement can be, she has found it impossible to be idle. After her kids were finished with college, the first thing she did was join the Peace Corps and go to Rumania. It was a lifelong dream, but she didn’t stay. Too many issues detrimental to her health. She then joined the Red Cross, helping fire victims, but also working tornadoes and went to Houston after Hurricane Harvey. She volunteered at the Williamson County Historical Society and Cumberland Island National Seashore, where she was a docent in a Carnegie mansion. She also worked in her daughter-in-law’s law firm for a couple of years. The most fun job she ever had was being a waitress. She also had a construction company briefly until a divorce. She had to have benefits.
She has enjoyed many days and nights babysitting her four grandchildren and attending their ballgames. If there are no games withdrawal sets in.
There is a need to be active, and so has attempted anything she thought she could survive: walking, running, bicycling, golf and tennis, water and snow skiing, and now pickle ball. She loves to read, and has been writing for years and even tried painting and took an art class. A group of friends meets monthly for dinner. With her husband, children, and a good friend she has traveled all over, but they are not finished. She also enjoys working around the house and yard, gardening, raking, and digging up weeds, and has refinished a boatload of antiques and built and redecorated and remodeled too many houses.
Her dislikes include politics, mean people, and doing her hair.
Like everyone, her interests have changed over the years, and now that this book is finished, a new life awaits.