User:Merrilymccarthy/sandbox

Merrily McCarthy is a real person. Her ancestors came from Europe. Her grandmother Dixie Storr, was an Allen, and before that was a Canadian Citizen, born in Montreal Canada, a Brueayette from France. She married a Carl Allen who died in a tragic oil well accident off the coast of Santa Barbara, California. Carl was English, Dutch and German descent. He passed down a document that stated He was a descendant of someone named Levinia Mead who was a daughter of the American Revolution. She may be related to Margaret Meade, the famous Anthropologist and a Carl may have been a descendant of the Allens who fought in the Civil War. In any case Merrily has the document and is qualified to be a Daughter of the American Revolution. They had 4 children, Merrily's mother Glee, and Jeanette Reid, who had married Jim, who worked for the State Department of Argriculture and Stanley Allen, who was a Highway Patrolman, and Ray Allen who was a Professor of Electrical Engineering at Atascadero Junior College. Dixie worked after Carl's fatal accident at the Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital as the Head RN of the Emergency Clinic. Glee A. Allen married Joseph Rudolph Nunes in 1937. They had three children. The first died of a little known disease at the time. The second was Joseph R. Nunes Jr. who became a construction site manager and a famous artist. Merrily A. Nunes, born March 13, 1944 at Saint Francis Hospital in Santa Barbara, California had a rather colorful life. Her father Joseph R. Nunes Sr. was 100% Azorean. His father was named Rodrigues after his Portuguese ancestory. When he came to the United States, through Ellis Island, his name may have been Rodrigues, however an attorney in the Irvine, California had his named changed to Nunes and made him an indentured servant until he earned his freedom. He became a manufacturer of shoes, a shoemaker, in the Irvine, Sunnyvale area of California. Him and his wife, Mary, had 7 children. Merrily's ancestory is French-Canadian, English, Dutch, German, and 50% Azorean. Joe and Glee met in Summerland while Joe was farming property there. Joe bought a dairy farm in Lompoc. They milked and raised Jersey's and Holstein's. Joe and Glee and their family worked hard and prospered.

Another interesting fun fact: There are five coat of arms in Merrily's heritage. One is from the English name of Allen, one is from the Portuguese name of Rodriegues, and one is from the Portuguese name of Nunes, and one is from the French name of Bruyette, and one is from the Irish name of McCarthy. Although the ironic inconsisitency is that although she holds heir to five coats of arms, women are not able to carry the coats of arms, althought they can bear arms. Strange rules.

Merrily lived in Lompoc, California until she entered the first grade, and then the family moved to Exeter, California. In Exeter Joe bought another dairy. They again, worked hard and prospered. Merrily joined the local 4-H club and became an excellent cook and grand-champion cooking winner at the Tulare County Fair when she was rather young, around 11. Merrily attended Exeter Union High School. There she was a cheerleader, and songleader. She joined The Order of Rainbow For Girls. She was selected to be Chaplain and then placed in The Chairs, of Love, Hope, Faith, Charity and so on. She also won a speech contest in her local high school. Merrily was also atheletic from a young age. She ran in the 50 yard dash, her time was 5.8 seconds. She swam, but not on the swim team, Her parents gave her swim lessons at the local high school swim pool. Her father taught her how to do farm work: she cut grass for her burro, she chopped thistels from his fields, chopped cotton, vined grapes, helped in the family vegetable gardens, helped with the watering of the fields, feed the calves, pitched hay, bailed hay, feed grain to the calves, washed the cow holding aprons, washed the cows for her mother in the barn, helped hose down the barn, helped clean the equipment. She spent her first 18 years working and learning farm work. She learned how to cook and cooked the family meals every day, washed dishes, did laundry, cleaned the house, and sewed her own clothes. Merrily read books all the time. It was her favorite time, when she was not doing all the other farm projects. Her favorite books were Lassie, The Dog of Newfoundland, Beautiful Joe, The Black Stallion Series and Angelique, and Angleique and the King by Sergeanne Golon. She lived in books.

After her Graduation from EUHS in 1962 she attended College of Sequoias. She had many interests, with not one predominant and so she studied Liberal Arts. Which means she took classes in just about everything that was science and art, but not math. Math was her weak point. Artistic Creative endeavors were where she excelled. When she turned 18 she moved her job focus into the Sierra Nevadas and took summer employment working at Kings Canyon National Park and Sequoia National Park, first in housekeeping and then in the restaurant. She finished a couple of years at COS and decided to try Iowa State University, Iowa. She met Charles Kent Line who was the son of Colonel BB Abrams of the Savannah Army Depot in Mississippi. He persuaded her to go with him to visit his folks and spend time together. They both went off to their schools, but she quit hers to join him on a journey to Cedar City, Utah, which began a year of domestic violence, unlike any other. They sang in the sunshine. The volitaile relationship lingered and after a week it ended. Merrily returned to her father and mother in Exeter, battered and nearly dead.

After recuperating she started back where she left off, at COS. This time she graduated. Then worked for VISTA as a volunteer. She worked with the people such as Peter Bender, Richard Unwin, Kenneth, and Rita and George Solinas. It was not her cup of tea, so she moved up to San Francisco. There she worked at Luwani's Tailoring Shop, and took a job as a dancer on Geary Street. The dancing job, from 1966, changed her life and probably saved her life, because from then and until 1990 she danced, all over California, Nevada, Canada, the United States, and Hawaii. Between those years rose a colorful and eventful life.

She was in two movies during her life. Although her dream was always to be a movie star, she never made it. She was in a movie called The Stripper, a documentary about the dimenishing world of burlesque. And way before that she was in a David Carridine movie called The Woody Guthrie Story. She and her small daughter are visible for half a second in a scene where Arlo rides into a crowd of migrant workers. Although that was the only screen time they recieved, she did record several images of David Carridine and one with her daughter the famous Kung Fu stylist.

Merrily is multi-talented. She paints, draws, writes, writes poetry, articles, films, documents, writes books, designs clothes, does photography, photojournalism, designs props, stage sets, cooks, sews, knits, makes jewelry, gardens, arranges flowers, and has run her own business of Singing Telegrams. She also makes and designs puppets and writes plays and dialogue for them. However she is undiscovered in the sense that although she stays busy with creative projects, they basically just sit in her drawer. No one notices her artistic work. Perhaps because there are so many talented people nowadays....and she is just one of millions who do exactly the same thing.