Every person wants to find out who they are. It is in our nature to discover things about ourselves: what we like, what we don’t like, where we want to go, what we want to do, etc. For most people, that includes finding out more about where they come from. All the people in our lives all shape us, for better or for worse, but none so much as our parents. On a quest for answers about who I am, I asked my mom about her life. This is her story.

Julie Howard was born on March 18, 1961 in San Francisco, California to Ghillian and Donald Sichel. She moved to Los Angeles two years later with her parents and her older sister Laurie. Her sister Robin was born there when Julie was two and a half years old. She moved to San Diego, California two years later when she was four with her parents and her older sister, Laurie. Since she was an early reader and her mother didn’t need three toddlers at home, Julie started kindergarten at Evans Elementary School when she was four and a half. She liked it there. Her best friends were Kim Creamer and Kathy Fraser, whom she liked to ride bikes and play outside with. When she was in first grade, her brother Chris was born. When she reached third grade she switched schools and began attending La Jolla Elementary. There she spent the majority of her time with Martha Stutz, Tamlin Redfern, and Nini Crie. Julie still enjoyed playing outside, but she was also developing a new hobby: horseback riding. She often rode with her friend Martha, continuing to do so into Junior High, when she and her three friends started seventh grade at Muirlands Junior High School.

Because she was so happy there, Julie stayed at Muirlands for eighth grade, then moved to Fort Lauderdale, Florida when she was thirteen, where she went to South Plantation High School. In ninth grade she got a bright white horse who she named Blue. Julie spent every day at stables with her friends Sue Porath and Lisa Worthington, riding horses and flirting with the boys who rode junior rodeo. When she wasn’t riding Blue or doing homework, Julie went over to Lisa’s with Sue. There the girls listened to music and talked about some of their favorite subjects, Monty Python and rock concerts. Since Julie had started school almost a year early, she was only sixteen when she started her senior year of high school. That was when she had her first boyfriend, a boy named Gary Smith who had glasses the size of Texas and a ridiculous afro. They stayed together until the two went off to separate colleges and lost touch.

Julie moved to Gainesville, Florida after her senior year when she was seventeen years old and attended the University of Florida, where she studied Landscape Architecture. Her freshman and sophomore years were fairly uneventful.  The summer before her junior year she took a train through Europe with Laurie for three months. The two sisters traveled through 7 countries and had many adventures. They met some very intriguing characters there, including several cute Norwegians, some shockingly attractive Austrians, a few forgettable Greek boys, and a French boy whose only English was “I love you”. After an eventful summer abroad, Julie returned to Florida and started attending the college of Landscape Architecture, where she worked very hard for two sleep-deprived years. For half of her senior year she studied in London, where she shared an apartment with seven students. Then she returned to Gainesville, wrote her thesis, and graduated.

When she was twenty-one years old she moved to San Diego with her friend Natalie, where she got a job watering office plants. It wasn’t long before Julie quit and started working at a landscape architecture office called Gillespie DeLorenzo. When she was twenty-five years old she met John Howard at work, although it took two years for the two to begin dating. They were married when Julie was 29 and bought a house in Alpine, CA. John started his own company in 1992, but Julie stayed working for Gillespie DeLorenzo for another four years. Julie joined John at Howard Associates when she had her first child, William, so that she could stay home with her children while they were young. They had a second child, Olivia, three years later. When Olivia was two, they moved to La Mesa.

Now Julie enjoys painting, playing tennis, and spending time with her friends, which she gets to do when she is not driving teenagers places. She is the CEO of Howard Associates and enjoys designing many different types of projects. She is stuck with two surly teenagers who rarely do anything, but she loves them very much.