Husb

My dear husb will have his artwork for sale tomorrow at the annual Fundraiser for the San Diego Brain Injury Foundation. The event is Sunday, October 25, from 1:30-4:30 in LaJolla, and costs $50 to attend. Click here for the invitation. He'll have 5 or 6 paintings and sketches for sale.

He asked me to update and print out his 'art' bio for the event, so I thought I'd share it with you.

Don Strom, originally from Seattle, Washington, graduated University of Washington and earned an MBA from San Francisco State University. After a stint in the army, he joined Hewlett-Packard as a member of the personnel department in Palo Alto, California. During his nearly 20-years with Hewlett-Packard, he and his wife, Jane LaFazio, relocated as his career warranted. Don and Jane moved from the San Francisco Bay Area to Corvallis, Oregon; Seoul, Korea; Los Angeles; and in 1989, to San Diego, when Don became Site Personnel Manager at Hewlett-Packard in Rancho Bernardo.

June 1992, Don suffered a brain aneurysm in the left side of his brain. He was 46 years old. As a result, Don has aphasia, a language disability. He had to relearn communication, from understanding language, learning the alphabet, and pronunciation, to reading and writing. He battles the symptoms of aphasia daily. After years of perseverance and with continuing therapy, Don has developed a rich and rewarding quality of life. As a Hewlett-Packard executive, he was active in community service, and his family has always valued volunteer work. It was a natural transition from his extremely active management position, to an equally busy life of volunteer activities. Over the years of his disability, he has been active with Palomar Rehab’s "Time to Communicate," Y.E.S.S. (Young Enthusiastic Stroke Survivors), Toastmasters, and San Diego Watercolor Society and the Hewlett-Packard Retirees Club where he was President in 2004. In 1994, became a board member for San Diego Brain Injury Foundation and served for a dozen years (including a term as president and vice president) and continues to run the SDBIF monthly meetings held at Joyce Beers Center in Hillcrest.

Don enjoys sketching and painting on location and works in pen and ink, color pencil and watercolor. He began painting in 2000, and has studied with Helen Shafer Garcia, Jane LaFazio, Walter Brunning, and Norma Soule. His watercolor was selected as the cover art for "Brain Injury Guide for Families" with over 5,000 copies printed in English and Spanish and his painting "Lemons" was featured on notecards for a SDBIF fundraiers. Don has won numerous awards in local art exhibitions for his paintings and drawings