The Love Boat Lady: The authorized real life story of Jeraldine Saunders (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781475079647)

Sheila Maureen Farrell was born in Pasadena, California on August 26, 1933. She attended public schools in Pasadena, graduating from Pasadena City College in 1951. She started her working life at age 19 at Citizens National Bank in Los Angeles and then went into the field of medicine where she was secretary to the Chief of Medicine at the Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles. She later returned to banking and spent 26 years at Union Bank in both Los Angeles and San Francisco. Sheila and her brother, Richard Jerome (aka Jerry) Farrell, lost their father in 1939 and were raised in the family home on Maple Street in Pasadena by their mother. When Sheila was in the 6th grade, she made up for her total dislike of math by reading more books and writing more book reports than required, hoping she wouldn't flunk the 6th grade. Her teacher, Mrs. Hilton, wrote in her autograph book, "To Sheila who may someday be an author." Sheila carried that thought all these years and began serious writing in the late 1970's when she created her first book, "Another Damn Cookbook." That was followed by "What's Sauce for the Goose...." In 1961 Sheila married Richard "Dick" Murray and became a wicked step-mother to three "kids", Cynthia, Valorie and Rick, and thus wicked step-grandmother to six grandchildren and now five great grandkids. She is just as proud of her "kids" as she would have been had they been "the fruit of her looms." When she lost Dick in 2009, she was bored, sad and lonely and it was then that the thought came to her to write a bio of her newly found friend, Jeraldine Saunders. It was an instant connection and she and Jeraldine have become fast friends as you will discover when you read the book. Jeraldine opened up to her and the result is wonderful -- a great story about a great lady who did it the hard way -- by working. Sheila lives in Glendale, California in the same little house where she and Dick had many wonderful times.