Chelley (Fallang) Patterson PhD

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I was born in 1960 in Dayton, Ohio and lived and attended K-12 school in a suburb, Centerville. My father (Orviel W. Fallang) was born in 1919 in South Dakota and served in the Navy from 1939 to 1949 before attending veterinary collage at Ohio State University and later starting a practice in Dayton. He died in 1970 at the age of 51. He has one brother who died in 2016 and has 3 living sisters as of this writing. My mother (Ruth Yarnnelle Springer) was born in Celina, Ohio in 1922. She also joined the Navy during WWII, where she met my father. She was a teacher in Columbus while dad was in vet school and later in Dayton. She retired in 1960 to stay home with her kids and support dad's growing business.

I have two older brothers and a younger sister. My first 10 years were idyllic until my dad died. After that. thing were essentially "fine" but not perfect like they had been until then. In hindsight, I realize I was a resilient kid in a supportive environment and survived father-loss better than many girls my age. I studied dance (ballet, tap, jazz, acrobatics) from age 5 to 14, played the saxophone, was a girl scout and later was involved in some highschool musicals and the HS gymnastics team. I was sort of shy (hard for those who know me now to believe), but had friends at school and church, did a lot of babysitting, and got good grades. I had two boyfriends during HS and was a tiny bit rebellious (hey it was the 70s) but mostly a "good girl."

I graduated from HS in 1978 and headed off to Ohio State, where I stayed for 2 years trying to do a pre-med focus. I discovered I hated studying chemistry and struggled with calculus so the pre-med dream started to fade. I took an econ course and found it really interesting and so decided to switch to business and to transfer to Ohio University. It was much smaller than OSU, allowed me to correct some GPA issues I'd created at OSU, and was closer to my first boyfriend from HS who I'd started dating again during sophomore year at OSU. I finished my BBA in 1983 and graduated with honors. My first few jobs were very exploratory because I still didn't feel a professional "calling," the economy wasn't great, and my personal life was a little messy.

For the first 3 years worked in retail for a federated department store and then sold yellow pages advertising in the Dayton area. I married my HS sweetheart right after graduation under some pressure by both his and my parents who were bothered that we'd been living (in sin) together during college. That lasted 3 months. I was the first person I knew from my HS cohort or family to divorce. My siblings were more successful (a doctor, a lawyer and a little sister in med school). So in my early 20s, I was feeling like a screw up and seeing my glass as half empty and was living very much in the moment with no future plans or ambitions. I was having fun -- but was adrift.

When I was 24, I started dating a guy, John, I'd known for about 5 years as a friend and the relationship was blossoming ... but he got a job and moved to Atlanta. We carried on long distance and with flights at $99, I visited several times and really like Atlanta. When his sister decided to move and offered me space in her moving van for free, I ran the idea passed my mom and she said "go for it!" I landed a job and got my own apartment within a couple of weeks. I worked as a recruiter for about 2 years and became fascinated with HR and particularly employee placement.

My mom (a huge proponent of education) had suggested several times that I think about getting an MBA, but the time hadn't felt right. Then, I took a few days off my job to go to Ohio for my little sister's med school graduation and mom said that she could help me financially now that she was done helping my sister. I said I'd think about it. Then, Monday morning my boss called me in to hassle me about having taken two days off when I really should have been focusing on making more cold calls. She said that if I wasn't willing to work harder, we could part friends. This was about the 10th time she'd leveled this threat when she thought I wasn't doing enough. This time rather than kowtowing and working late until she got off my back, I said OK and watched her jaw drop as I got up, walked out and cleared out my desk (head held high). When I got home, I called my mom sobbing over what I had done. She told me to dust myself off and call Georgia State to find out what I had to do to get admitted for Fall. So I did. Two years later, I had an MS in Management and a 4.0 and had been accepted into the PhD Program. 5 years later, at the age of 35, I was Dr. Fallang and had a job as an internal consultant for NCR.

On the relationship front, I'd continued to date John and I could really imagine a future with him. He was handsome, smart, funny and talented and we cared about each other deeply. However, he did not want to talk about marriage or kids -- but he didn't want to break up. My biological clock was ticking, my educational distractions were out of the way and I was ready to settle down but could see that wasn't going to happen with John. So when an opportunity to move to England with NCR came along, I took it. I half-hoped it would snap him out of whatever fugue state he seemed to be in about the future -- but it didn't. He wanted to follow me to the UK but still did not want to get married so I said I was done. And even though starting a new relationship was the furthest thing from my mind...I met someone my first day there. I didn't suspect it then, but I married Matt Patterson 14 months later and we are approaching our 20th anniversary.

We were married in 1998 and moved back to Atlanta a few months later. We moved to Seattle in March of 2001 and our first child, a son, was born in April. Our daughter was born 3 years later. I had the dream job of stay-at-home mom for 8 years, and then worked in another dream job at the University of Washington Foster School of Business for the next 8 years. I have just started on my next career chapter by joining a boutique consulting company that focuses on helping firms navigate leadership, culture and strategy challenges that come with growth.

I have been interested in genealogy since I was little. My mother and my aunt Helen were avid genealogists and were particularly interested in DAR related stuff on their side of the family. I am interested in that as well as my dad's side of the family. I'd grown up hearing that his grandparents were Norwegian and Irish -- and were recent immigrants. While that holds true for my dad's dad, when I starting looking at his mom's ancestors, I found nothing but deep early American roots. One branch goes back to the Winthrop Fleet and also has a Revolutionary War soldier. I am still exploring other branches. This has been really fun and educational. One of my older brother's is also interested in geneaology (he loves tracing a branch as far as he can in hopes of connecting us to Charlemagne or some Viking king like Erik Bloodaxe).

I also enjoy researching my husband's (and my kids') family history. Matt was born in New Zealand and his mother has purely British roots while his father was born in Northern Ireland.

One day I'd like to write something I can leave for my kids and grandkids and so on that tells some of the tales of their more colorful ancestors and interesting lines. I watched my mom do genealogy the old-fashioned way - poking around dusty courthouse basements before Xerox machines were invented. She taped pieces of graph paper together in long scrolls that she would unroll on picnic tables at Springer family reunions in Troy, Ohio. I have all of her old, handwritten files and letters she wrote asking for transcribed records plus things I faxed her in the 80s when I was living in Atlanta and could go to the National Archives to look up records for her/us. Somewhere along the line the genealogy bug bit me and I picked up the torch. I did a lot when I was a SAHM -- including volunteering to transcribe digital records for other to facilitate online searches for other people. What a big leap in technology from the pre-Xerox era. Sadly, I had to put the torch down the last 8 years when I was working and commuting so much while raising a family. Now that I am consulting and working from home, I want to make more time to get back to it.

My cousin just did a swab on her mom (my mom's only living sibling) and a few of us girl cousins are talking about doing the mtDNA test and hopefully my two brothers will do the Y-DNA test (my dad's brother only had daughters). We've come a long way baby since the dusty courthouse dungeon days!

Sources

• First-hand information. Entered by Michelle Fallang at registration on Septemer 8, 2017.

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