On a milestone birthday, and on the Anniversary of two decades at News Channel 8, you start to look back on life's most important moments and all the stories thru all the years.
My three daughters were born and raised in the state of Connecticut and are now in High School and College.The lifelong friends my husband and I have made here. "Real" Italian cuisine is beyond words in the state, being raised in Indiana, I had no idea what I had been missing until a move here.
The countless stories of the past and the ones still to come are countless, but there are moments that were life-altering as a reporter.

The L'ambiance disaster in Bridgeport occured in my first weeks on the job here....so many lives disrupted. Interviewing Walter Cronkite on the stage at Southern Connecticut State University that was surreal for a journalist to meet and interview the most "Trusted Man in America."
Imus as Governor for a Day...remember that?...what a ride that was! Imus ended up helping me get the Toy Closet Program off the ground at Yale-New Have Hospital some 12 years ago now. The program sees to it that all children who enter the hospital are treated to a new toy...thru the years tens of thousands of toys have been given out. We have done alot of outreach as well...countless volunteers continue to allow the program to thrive.
Of course there was 911. I will be forever grateful that as a reporter I lived so near to the event. I was so better able to understand and report what people were feeling...I had friends and neighbors who lost loved ones.
Anywhere I travel in the state it sparks memories of live shots....the tornado that hit Bantam and Hamden...I was pregnant with my twins then, so waddling around in that state in the middle of devastation proved interesting.
I remember busting in to crack houses behind a police batttering rams and taking off from what was then the Pan Am Building and taking off over the East River experiencing wind shear and nearly crashing.
Reporting on the late Princess Diana's first trip to the U.S. and her stop at FAO Schwarz Toy Store...standing so close to her I will never forget how turquise her eyes really were.
I reported on Princess Fergie too on trips to Connecticut...she was apt to say or do anything.
Memories that will last a life time included covering Pope John Paul II in the communist nation of Cuba and also in Rome in Vatican City.
The coldest moments...on a U.S. Coast Guard Cutter headed up the Connecticut River one year to break up very thick ice to open it for commerce...and anytime I went out to report on the christening of a new Navy sub...oh the wind!
While the past is huge, there is the present and the future and the stories that will come...bring it on, I can't wait.
You're in good hands, I know and love this state and I am so humbled to be able to tell you about what's going on everyday.