Annette Larkins
Born
in Asheville, North Carolina in 1942, Annette knows so little of her birthplace
that she has always claimed to be from Detroit, Michigan. She has lived
in Miami, Florida so long that it has become home. While attending George
Washington Carver High School in Coconut Grove, Florida, she met and married
Amos Larkins, Jr., with whom she will soon celebrate their forty-third anniversary.
The year was 1958, and she was sixteen years old. Two years later she
gave birth to their first son Amos II; their second son Anthony was born ten
months and eighteen days later, a little over a month after her nineteenth
birthday. Annette announced that she had contributed to the perpetuation of
the species and was finished with childbearing. "They were so close together;
it was like having twins." she says. When the boys were ten and eleven
years old, she began singing at a local nightclub on Miami Beach, where she
remained for two and a half years.
Choosing not to pursue stardom on a grand scale, Annette chose, instead, to
enroll at Miami-Dade Community College, majoring in liberal arts. She graduated
with high honors, receiving the highest achievement award for foreign languages;
Spanish is her second language.
In order to determine if she wanted a career in teaching, she taught Spanish
as a substitute teacher. Also, she worked as a reservations clerk for
an airline, which afforded extensive travel benefits. In their in flight magazine,
the company published an article that Annette wrote. She manufactured a salad
dressing; The Little Chef's dressing was a popular item in health food stores,
and customers were disappointed when it was no longer available. One day while
shopping in one of the stores where the dressing had been sold, Annette encountered
a lady who asked, "You're The Little Chef aren't you?" "Yes,
well, I was." replied Annette.
"They told me that you stopped making the dressing, and I am, now, looking
for something comparable to it. My son says that if he can't have The
Little Chef's, then he just won't eat salads."
"What a commercial!" thought Annette; however, she would not be
swayed by such remarks. The reason she had produced the dressing in the first
place was because people said she should market it; so she did, but she lacked
the passion to see it though to its greatest potential.
One day when her husband, a diversified businessman, requested that she obtain
a Property and Casually Insurance License, in order to complement his Life
and Health License, she did that too. Her perpetual quest for knowledge and
new experiences eventually landed Annette into the computer age. In this world
of motherboards, CPU's, and unknown peripheral devices, she found fascination
and challenge. No longer a stranger in foreign territory, to date, Annette
has built ten personal computers. After learning so much about computers,
she wondered, "What now?" She proceeded by combining acquired technical
knowledge with innate creatively to compose personal greeting cards, using
poetry to accommodate the occasion, along with clipart, photographs, and a
protective plastic cover. She also wrote a textbook for her grandson that
taught him how to read and helped with his first grade studies. "I have
always been passionate about motivating individuals to make changes that will
enrich their lives; I like stimulating the psyche of others and helping them
to discover the power within themselves." she expresses.
Via her recent booklets, Journey
To Health, Annette
introduces her lifestyle to the masses and looks forward to the next writing
project.
Website: www.annettelarkins.com
