By TCTV Founder Rosalyn Fay
April Gentile Mulholland and I were good friends in high school. Even as a teenager, April had a strong sense of who she was and what she believed. She had a lot of integrity and I admired that in her. As life often happens, we went our separate ways after high school but I frequently thought about April and wondered what became of her. Well, wouldn’t you know it, thanks to Facebook and a mutual friend, we reconnected last year. It had been 16 years since we last spoke! I was thrilled to be back in touch and not soon after, we made arrangements to meet up at her ranch in Idaho.
Sorry. FLV player did not load.Well, ironically, it seems that April and I have switched lifestyles a bit during those 17 years. To explain, I’ll have to give you a little of my own background. I was raised in rural Montana on a farm. When I was 16, my parents decided that I would probably have a more promising future if I moved to Fresno, California to live with my aunt and uncle. It was at Fresno High that I met April. I remember feeling like I didn’t fit in very well with the city kids, but April didn’t seem to mind. Unlike short, awkward (and yes, chubby) me, April was confident, tall, thin and beautiful and had aspirations to be a professional model when she graduated.
Fast forward 17 years and you can imagine how surreal it was for me to be walking around in my heels and city clothes on her 75 acre ranch hearing about her family’s hunting trips and her desire to teach her 3 kids to weld! As much as has changed though, some things have remained the same. April is still the kind and gentle, yet confident, purpose-filled woman of integrity I knew back in high school.
April told me the story of how she and her husband, Ed, left their fast-paced Southern California lifestyle to live a simpler, quieter life in Idaho and I found the story so unique and inspiring, I decided to film her for True Colors TV.
