Born on June 15, 1971 Marissa Gold was the second child born to Paul and Catherine Gold. She grew up in Wisconsin on the outer edge of some wood land in a small cottage. She grew up with an older sister, Beatrice and two twin brothers, Paul Jr. and Dicken. When Marissa was five her father died and her mother took her and her siblings to live with their grandparents by the coast. Marissa especially liked to look at the tide pools in Acadia N. P. the crabs and barnacles and sea stars and such. She went to the Maine department of education for elementary school while her sister Beatrice went to junior high. Her brother stayed home with her grandparents. She got normal grades and was an average student. She graduated middle school with high hopes for her future. Her family,was now just her, her mother and Dicken. Paul Jr. had caught a disease and died in kindergarten. Her mother moved them and brought them to Portland, OR. There she went to Lincoln High for high school. She graduated and went to Oregon State University (O.S.U.). She took classes in Health, Education and Biology.  She graduated in her focus classes and applied for a job as a nurse.  She worked as a nurse for a time and then decided to be a teacher.  When she first applied she was rejected she worked as a nurse for a time more, then reapplied and was accepted.  She worked as a first-grade teacher at Boise Elliot Elementary School.  She always taught her students, “It’s easier to walk forwards than back0wards, so why go backwards at all?”  Eventually she was moved up to third-grade.  Around this time she was married to Edward T. Hollender.  She kept working as a teacher for time more but when she became the mother of twin daughters, Bebe and Delilah, she decided to relocate.  When her girls were old enough the family relocated back to Marissa’s childhood home.  Eventually she had a son Dicken named after his uncle.  Now that the older twins were in school she decided to, having turned 35 the year before, to run for president.