Question 39:Chapter 11

Chris McCandless
1. When he was only two years old, in the middle of the night, Chris made it past his parents and went to his neighbor's house to raid the candy drawer.(p.106)
2. Chris was a lot like Billie's father, Loren Johnson. He loved hunting.(p109)
3. When Chris was eight years old, Walt took him on his first overnight backpacking trip.(p.109)
4. Chris played the guitar, piano, and the French horn.(p.110)
5. Chris loved Tony Bennett the musician. (p.110)
6. As a teen, when Chris was a French horn player, he was a member of the American University Symphony.(p.110)
7. Chris would use spiritual aspects to try and motivate his running team when he was the captain. (p.112)
8. As an eight year old, Chris grew vegetables in his yard and would go around to his neighbors and sell them. (p.115)
9. In 1985 after his junior year at Woodson, Chris was hired by a local building contractor. The owner loved how handy Chris was.
10. Chris was born on February 12, 1968.

Walt and Billie
1. Walt was NASA's project manager for a pioneering Seasat launch. (p.104)
2. Walt grew up in Greeley, Colorado. It was an agricultural town. (p.105)
3. Walt won an academic scholarship to Colorado State University in Fort Collins. (p.105)
4. Walt was a very talented musician. I can now see where Chris and Carine get their musical talents from. (p.105)
5. Walt had a previous marriage with a woman named Marcia and he had four other children with her. (p.106)
6. After his separation with Marcia, Walt started dating Billie who was a secretary.
7. Billie's real name was Wilhelmina Johnson.
8. Walt was a serious racquetball player. (p.111)
9. Walt and Billie worked extremely long hours. (p.107)
10. After Chris was born, Walt was still secretly talking to Marcia, while dating Billie. When this information leaked many were hurt. (p.121)

From my reading of this chapter, I could see that during Chris' high school years, his relationship with his parents was normal. They got along most of the time, and fought other days. It progressively got worse after he found out that his father was secretly talking to his ex-wife. Chris basically withdrew from his parents and started to act rude and not talkative. His parents never found out why because he didn't tell them that he found out about that scandalous information.