Nita Barnes

Nita Steffanic Barnes is a granddaughter to immigrants from Spain and Czechoslovakia, daughter of a Marine who defended our country in three wars, and who married her amazing mother who raised seven siblings. The Steffanic family grew up during their father’s assignments in Barstow twice, and Camp Pendleton, twice.

Upon high school graduation, Nita attended a year of community college in Yuba City, worked a summer at Photomat in Whittier and then received her Associate of Arts in Business from City College of San Francisco in 1972. While attending college there, she resided at Twin Peaks with a friend, was a live-in babysitter at Pacific Heights, and finished the last month of school living with her sister’s friends on the Presidio Army Base.

For the last semester at City College, Nita thought she should switch from typing and shorthand classes to Computer Science (which she barely passed with a C-). Right out of college Nita interviewed for a secretarial position at a newly created office at the Bank of America World Headquarters in San Francisco. Being rusty at her typing and shorthand skills, she failed the entry exam but because she promised the Vice President of that office she could do the work, he hired her!

After working 14 months at that position, friends from high school who were completing their college education at the University of the Pacific, encouraged Nita to join them on a backpacking, hitchhiking trip through Europe in the autumn of 1973. Nita experienced her first very unpleasant task of giving her notice.

Returning from Europe Nita lived for several months with her travelling friend in Oceanside. She moved to her parents’ home in Portola and worked part time and attended Feather River Junior College, where she attempted a teaching credential in Home Economics. After one semester, she returned to San Francisco, where she had two different jobs and lived at four separate addresses.

Life took a big turn for Nita when she met her life-long friend Selena who told her about what Jesus Christ had done to change her life in amazing ways. Nita desperately needed that to happen for her too, and it did, for which she is eternally thankful!

Two years later, she and Selena, and some of their other friends, moved to Mobile to be part of a larger church group where they both enjoyed working at an international Christian magazine.

Three years later Nita married her husband (of 38 years! as of March 2021) and moved to be with him in Houston, Texas, where both their daughters were born. After her second daughter was born, she left her full time job and was able to homeschool. After her father passed away, the Barnes family moved to Nevada to be close to Nita’s mother. Nita homeschooled for a total of eight years in Texas and Nevada.

After her daughters returned to public school, Nita worked full time at two local companies in Dayton, the Department of Education, and at the Nevada Legislature.

Currently, she is thoroughly enjoying being retired and spending as much time as possible with her two grandchildren.