Name/Title
Gretchen Klug - Telling Stories - Raksha Care HomeDescription
Gretchen Klug - Telling Stories - Raksha Care Home
Gretchen was born in Alliance, Nebraska, and lived in several Midwestern cities in her youth before the family moved to San Diego. Her German-born father, an osteopath, and her mother believed in the importance of healthy living and Gretchen was raised in a nudist camp from the age of 10-18.
After coming to Berkeley, she worked as a secretary, taking dictation for Chancellors Robert Gordon Sproul and Clark Kerr. She remembers fondly the sense of community in Berkeley at the time—the wine and spaghetti parties, poetry, meditation groups, and folk music. For years Gretchen helped raise her sister’s children and she and her mother rented rooms to students who weren’t welcome in other places. She has also worked for the California State Dept. of Vocational Rehabilitation, Workmen’s Comp and an alcoholism clinic, her favorite job.
Gretchen has been interested in art since her childhood when she made art with the children she babysat, and despite serious vision issues continues to this day. What she describes as her best painting was a huge tiger, which she had to stop painting because it kept getting “bigger and bigger.” She’s a fan of Frida Kahlo and her AWE art teacher describes her work as “having a shamanic, Native American feel.”
