opportunity to know the Becherer family better because we had no extended family in MD and I lost out growing up with any grandparents, my uncles and cousins who are truly wonderful people. My older siblings Rick and Sherrie, 11 and 10 years older than me respectively, moved out of our house before I turned 10. My brother Scott, being a teenager and 5 years older, was often with his friends which gave me a lot of time alone with Mom and Dad and our dog Pennie who was a German Shepherd / Collie mix and was a wonderful friend. Our neighborhood had 4 other kids close in age and we spent a lot of time together, especially with my next door neighbor Matt Cockrill. He was kind of wild but we enjoyed many of the same things and spent each summer together all day, everyday. He once dropped a rock on my head when we were climbing a tree. We eventually played on the same baseball and football team in high school but we lost contact after graduating. When I was about 14 Dad bought some land down on the water at the Eastern Shore. It was undeveloped and covered in honeysuckle and poison ivy and thus began our many, many trips to the bay house to work on the property. Mom and Dad would attend my baseball, football game, or wrestling match and then off to the bay we would go. It was a lot of hard work clearing the land but looking back I learned a great deal and I really enjoyed spending time with my dad. He showed me how to plaster, do some basic plumbing and electrical work, drive a walk-behind mower, dig out stumps, build a dock, drive a boat, fish, catch crabs and water ski. He even let me drive once when I was 14. Mom didn't always go with us but whenever she did she worked just as hard as we did. I learned to love this type of work and now spend just about every Saturday working on my own 5 acre property, most of which are covered in mature trees and dense foliage but I'm
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