I was born in Mount Carmel Hospital, Colville, Washington, USA, on February 1, 1984, to an international school teacher mother and a father who was involved in international rural development outreach work at the time in Bangladesh. His career path would change by the time I started 2nd Grade when he got involved in the world of biotech, the booming "thing" in the 1990s...but let's get back to where we were. Within the 7 years before my birth, my mother had finished her Master's Degree in Education, completing her student teaching overseas at The American Embassy School of New Delhi, in New Delhi, India. In 1978, my father began doing research for his Doctor of Public Health Degree (a Dr. P. H. Program that he did as a Ph.D.) some hundred miles north of Delhi in the foothills of the Himalayas through the Berkley Program of Professional Studies in India. His research was a demographic study of birth, death, and migration in the Himalayas, and appropriately named as such in his culminating book: Birth, Death, and Migration in the Himalayas: A Study in Social Demography and Community Intervention. Gross, 1982.
No, although my parents were living and working in Bangladesh when I was born, I am not Bengali, nor even Asian by any stretch of the imagination. I am your typical post-1492 American "White Guy Mutt." My mom and dad are both of mixed European ancestry as well, with my mom's side hailing a majority of Scotch-Irish and Serbian DNA, and my dad's side hailing a majority of German and English DNA.
My mom was teaching Elementary School at The American School of Dhaka in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and took leave to fly back to the U.S. especially to give birth to me. My parents bought this house (pictured below) at Newman Lake, Washington, one month after my birth, on March 1, 1984. Although they flew back to Dhaka very soon after my birth - as soon as they were allowed to board a plane with a young baby - they left after the end of that school year and moved back to the United States to live in this house at Newman Lake starting in the spring of 1985. My earliest memories of life were formed at Newman Lake - memories that would carry forward and launch me into life in this world. Memories that would mold me and help me form my whole perception of the world and life as I know it.
I didn't live continuously in this house all throughout my childhood, though. I would go on to have many other childhood adventures, living in Virginia, Maryland, Colorado, and overseas in Malaysia and India, and traveling as a tourist/visitor to still many other places as a child/teen/young adult; however, my parents always kept this house at Newman Lake as our "home base" - and a solid home base it was! From wherever we were in the world at the time, I remember returning to the Newman Lake house for all but only one or two summers of my life from childhood through undergraduate school. Home is where the heart is - and every summer we went back to Newman Lake from wherever we were at the time, it truly was coming home for me.
My parents never rented the house out, so it was always there, just as we had left it from the summer before. We'd come in, open things up, live there for the summer, then shut things back down. As I got older I'd learn the ropes of opening up and shutting down the house ("winterizing it" - which basically amounted to draining all the water out of the pipes), and when I was in college getting my undergraduate degree some 95 or so miles south in Pullman, Washington, my dad put me in charge as the official "man on the ground" caretaker of the place.
We did "actually" live in the house (for more than just the summer) from the spring of 1985 to the spring of 1986; for some of the first semester of my 2nd Grade year in school, before moving to Malaysia where I would finish 2nd Grade and spend the rest of my Elementary School career at The International School of Kuala Lumpur; and for the entire second semester of my 8th Grade year, before moving to India, where I would start 9th Grade at Kodaikanal International School.
Later, several years after college, my parents would move back to the Newman Lake house and live their permanently from the winter of 2007 until the spring of 2010, when they would buy a house in Pullman, Washington (my parents seem to have a thing with buying houses in the spring).
Although they had the house in Pullman, they wouldn't sell the Newman Lake house until December of 2018 - two months before my 35th birthday.
Below was the house as photographed on March 1, 1984, the day my parents purchased it when I was one month old. Many of these below pictures (especially the pre-2010 pictures) are scans of old film photographs or slides.
No, although my parents were living and working in Bangladesh when I was born, I am not Bengali, nor even Asian by any stretch of the imagination. I am your typical post-1492 American "White Guy Mutt." My mom and dad are both of mixed European ancestry as well, with my mom's side hailing a majority of Scotch-Irish and Serbian DNA, and my dad's side hailing a majority of German and English DNA.
My mom was teaching Elementary School at The American School of Dhaka in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and took leave to fly back to the U.S. especially to give birth to me. My parents bought this house (pictured below) at Newman Lake, Washington, one month after my birth, on March 1, 1984. Although they flew back to Dhaka very soon after my birth - as soon as they were allowed to board a plane with a young baby - they left after the end of that school year and moved back to the United States to live in this house at Newman Lake starting in the spring of 1985. My earliest memories of life were formed at Newman Lake - memories that would carry forward and launch me into life in this world. Memories that would mold me and help me form my whole perception of the world and life as I know it.
I didn't live continuously in this house all throughout my childhood, though. I would go on to have many other childhood adventures, living in Virginia, Maryland, Colorado, and overseas in Malaysia and India, and traveling as a tourist/visitor to still many other places as a child/teen/young adult; however, my parents always kept this house at Newman Lake as our "home base" - and a solid home base it was! From wherever we were in the world at the time, I remember returning to the Newman Lake house for all but only one or two summers of my life from childhood through undergraduate school. Home is where the heart is - and every summer we went back to Newman Lake from wherever we were at the time, it truly was coming home for me.
My parents never rented the house out, so it was always there, just as we had left it from the summer before. We'd come in, open things up, live there for the summer, then shut things back down. As I got older I'd learn the ropes of opening up and shutting down the house ("winterizing it" - which basically amounted to draining all the water out of the pipes), and when I was in college getting my undergraduate degree some 95 or so miles south in Pullman, Washington, my dad put me in charge as the official "man on the ground" caretaker of the place.
We did "actually" live in the house (for more than just the summer) from the spring of 1985 to the spring of 1986; for some of the first semester of my 2nd Grade year in school, before moving to Malaysia where I would finish 2nd Grade and spend the rest of my Elementary School career at The International School of Kuala Lumpur; and for the entire second semester of my 8th Grade year, before moving to India, where I would start 9th Grade at Kodaikanal International School.
Later, several years after college, my parents would move back to the Newman Lake house and live their permanently from the winter of 2007 until the spring of 2010, when they would buy a house in Pullman, Washington (my parents seem to have a thing with buying houses in the spring).
Although they had the house in Pullman, they wouldn't sell the Newman Lake house until December of 2018 - two months before my 35th birthday.
Below was the house as photographed on March 1, 1984, the day my parents purchased it when I was one month old. Many of these below pictures (especially the pre-2010 pictures) are scans of old film photographs or slides.
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Photograph taken by Vicki Gross, March 1, 1984
Photograph taken by Vicki Gross, March 1, 1984
Below are some various shots of the house, outbuildings, and surrounding property and area through time:
Scan of an old film slide taken by my Grandfather, Ken Gross (RIP), winter of 1986-87; my Dad (in orange hat) and other uncles and cousins out on frozen Newman Lake, accessed from the Honeymoon Bay Property Owners Association Beach.
Photograph taken by Vicki Gross, July 4, 1994
Photograph taken by Vicki Gross, July 4, 1994
Photograph taken by Vicki Gross, summer 1995
Photograph taken by Vicki Gross, June 2007; my Paternal Grandparents Ken Gross (RIP) with cane, Molly Gross (RIP), and my Dad, Phil Gross (with beard), in front of the nearly completed Pyramid House outbuilding. Yeah, we built this pyramid on the roof according to the dimensions of the Great Pyramids of Giza, as outlined in Max Toth's classic Pyramid Power. Yes, we built it for personal studies, experiments, and experiences in pyramid energy. Yes, laugh if you will, I "believe." The pyramid on top of this studio is a second floor loft that you access by ladder from inside the studio.
Photograph taken by Phil Gross, June 2007; my Mom, Vicki Gross (read shirt, seated), with my Paternal Grandparents Ken Gross (RIP) and Molly Gross (RIP) in the frame of "The Hillside Studio." This was an old wood shed that my Dad and sister rebuilt and modernized into a little stand-alone waterless studio.
Photograph taken by Vicki Gross, July 2007
Photograph taken by Vicki Gross, July 2007; view looking down at Honeymoon Bay from the hillside up behind the house. The long dock (above the red roof) is the Honeymoon Bay Property Owners Association Dock. Our Newman Lake house was a part of the Honeymoon Bay Property Owners Association (and, as far as I would guess, probably still is).
Below are photographs of the house, outbuildings, property, lake, and surrounding woods taken on June 4, 2017, the last time I saw the house - and, well, Newman Lake, for that matter - in person. I was lucky enough that my daughter got the chance to build some good early childhood memories at the house between the ages of 2 to 9 years old and my oldest son got to spend one night out-of-the-womb in the house - the night of June 3, 2017 - two and a half months before his First Birthday. Even my mother-in-law got to spend the night of June 3rd in the house - she's the one in the black shirt beside my wife and the baby (my oldest son) in the second picture below. My wife spent time in the house on three different occasions - the summer of 2014, the summer of 2016 when she was pregnant with our son, and the night of June 3, 2017.
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