Presenter Profile:Dear Myrtle

DearMYRTLE's Bio

Pat (Player) Isaacs Richley-Erickson, who attended Brigham Young University, is the proud mother of three grown daughters, and the grandmother of six -- Tracen, Aubrey, TJ, Tannon, Braden and Tyler. She considers being a grandmother her greatest joy and accomplishment.

Computer Instructor: From 1991-2006, Pat taught computer classes part time at the Manatee Technical Institute with an emphasis on corporate training. She also provided computer tutoring services in Sarasota and Manatee county, Florida. Specialties include corporate and government training in Windows, Excel, Access, PowerPoint & Outlook.

Radio Show Host: In January 2000, she began co- hosting The Seeker & DearMYRTLE, a weekly call-in talk radio show on local AM radio, with internet streaming. In June 2000, Myrt began exclusive internet broadcasting of DearMYRTLE's Family History Hour internet radio show. Now in podcast format, listeners may automatically download the next episode through iTunes.com.

Public Speaker: As DearMYRTLE, Pat has spoken at national, regional & local genealogy society meetings since the late 1990s. She has spoke at the NGS Conference in Nashville, Tennessee, giving 2 computer lab training sessions. Myrt has been featured as the keynote speaker, instructor at numerous genealogy conferences in Florida, Canada, Washington, Utah, Georgia, Tennessee and Virginia.

Genealogy Training & Service: Pat received training at the Washington, DC Temple Family History Center in Kensington, and served for five years as the Patron Services Librarian at the Family History Center in Bradenton, FL. She has spent hundreds of hours researching at the National Archives, the Library of Congress and the DAR Library in Washington, DC. In addition, Myrt now resides in the Salt Lake City area, facilitation intensive research at the Family History Library.

From 1993-2006 Myrt has served as the instructor & newsletter editor for the Manasota PAF Users Group. She is a past president and webmaster for the Manasota Genealogical Society. She is also webmaster of the Weiser Family Page.

Author: Beginning in 1995, DearMYRTLE's Daily Genealogy Column appeared in the Golden Gate Genealogy Forum on AOL until AOL folded the forum in Sept 2003. DearMYRTLE.com debuted in 1999 as a place to archive special columns for access by anyone on the net. Myrt's The Everything Online Genealogy Book debuted in Nov 2000 followed by DearMYRTLE's Joy of Genealogy in 2006. Myrt has written numerous magazine articles, published in Heritage Quest Magazine and Everton's Genealogical Helper. She wrote the chapter on church records for Family Chronicle's Introduction to Genealogy. In March 2003, Myrt began her series of "little books", including Getting Started with Your Family History and Internet Research: Top 20 Things to Do Online.

Chat Room Hostess: Myrt joined the Your Family Tree on Q-Link for Commodore computers in the winter of 1984/1985. Working with Russ Kyger, they expanded the chats from 1 to 7 week nightly. She remembers begging Russ to "hire" Terry Ann Morgan as the message board host. Q-Link and Apple-Link merged to become AOL, where Myrt served on the leadership team of the Golden Gate Genealogy Forum (AOL's Keyword: roots) until it was disbanded in August 2003. Now sign on to Second Life and search for JUST GENEALOGY and Clarise Beaumont.

Pat/Myrt lives in Utah with five computers, 113 research notebooks and enough shelves to finally unpack her genealogy library.

Dear Myrtle is speaking at the Utah Genealogical Association luncheon on Thursday. Here presentation is titled "Genealogy: It's Not Just for Mormons"