Know2SkamaniaNeighbors.com

To the reader,

I am Howard Lawrence, DNA father to Amanda Rae Lawrence and Ryan Matthew Lawrence. I have not had a connection to my children for ten years. I am located in Palm Beach County, FL and after two visits perceived your local communities to be close knit and thought before sending this website to other locations, I would see if you had the resources to renew my relationships and secondarily to possibly ignite interest in the Amanda and Ryan Co-parenting Foundation. If the Foundation is not grounded in Skamania County, it will be formed in another location. 

I do not have kind words for Duane Menter because his actions to separate me from my children were deliberate – they did not emanate entirely from his stupid side! 

Duane Menter was a divorced, 5th grade math teacher and my wife, Joanne Lawrence was a kindergarten teacher in the same school; Prairie Elementary School, Buffalo Grove, Illinois 60089. Dewey hit on Joanne until he persuaded her to have an affair. Our children were enrolled in the same school at the same time in the 1st and 2nd grades. (Imagine your wife or husband as a kindergarten or 5th grade math teacher and your reaction to discovering they were involved in an affair with each other in the same school where your children were enrolled. This could cause rage or physical violence). Dewey did not care then and he defends himself now. Neither one has humility and I thought Joanne would have learned humility in Catholic School? Duane Menter and Joanne Lawrence Menter are two individuals with an unethical and morally corrupt history in Illinois. Likely, they are in denial of their past and lied their way into new friendships and associations in Skamania County,  Washington.

Their relationship would likely not have led to marriage had there been due diligence by people who did not act professionally considering their informed knowledge of the situation.

As a result:

  1. Joanne did not read the section of the divorce decree related to co-parenting with the children. She simply threw them under the bus because Dewey told her she could never talk to the father of her children again.
  2. It occurred because my attorney knew the law and was a hand holder as he knew the words to explain why I had the best of a bad situation (and he was correct as based on my earnings they only wanted $700 per month, the amount Dewey was paying in support. I wanted custody each day school was legally closed and they gave it to me. I was able to buy the marital home, a treasure as it was the children’s comfort zone and accessible to their friends).  The attorney was in a long-term first marriage and was trained by his father who also had a long-term marriage.  He never lived the behavior of a person going through a divorce. If the attorney would have said, “why does she want a divorce”. I would have said, “I don’t know”. Under those circumstances without knowledge as to why the plaintiff wanted a divorce, the attorney should have said, “Let’s not wave the two year separation period and we will find out what is going on”. This action would have changed the course of history for my children and ended their manic sexual encounter.
  3. With the requirement to live a separated life for two years, the problems and personal complications with family and everyone would have likely ended the affair.
  4. The principal and the superintendent had a responsibility to fire Dewey and Joanne and without employment and without the ability to get a good reference, their affair would have easily ended.         

You will find reference to the many problems Duane Menter initiated with the help of his obedient wife and enabler, Joanne Sheehy Lawrence Menter.  Like all but a small number of parents, I love my children. You will learn how Mr. and Mrs. Menter deliberately manipulated my children and created trauma and emotional abuse in their lives as they persisted for years in their successful long-term effort to sever my bonds to the children.

In addition to emotional child abuse, 

You will learn of Duane Menter’s sexual disease and it deeply concerns me as a father that he may have violated himself in some way with my daughter and or son. I am retired and disconnected from corporate contacts and would greatly appreciate referral assistance to any organization, or government agency with the expertise to provide a thorough investigation into the existence of any possible physical violation toward my two children.

I wrote and developed this website because this was the only communication vehicle I could conceive that would allow me to have mass distribution and through the law of large numbers, find people and organizations who could help. I believe people would tell you that I am a standup father. I made phone calls and mailed letters over the years and no one offered help. Most of these letters are in the Menu tab, “Divorce Correspondence”.

I contacted therapists to review Know2SkamaniaNeighbors.com and they would not work outside the traditional doctor-patient office consultation. COVID minimized the number of contacts I could make as business activity is limited and communications are difficult, at best. I contacted two professional proofreaders and they were so repulsed by the content of the behavior of Duane Menter and Joanne Lawrence Menter, it too deeply penetrated the emotional comfort and stability they enjoyed in their marriage as a wife and mother. So, this is written in my words and expresses the reality I experienced in coping with the complications that altered my children’s growth and development in the radically unacceptable (and possibly illegal) behavior in which they were raised in their mother’s second marriage. I did not mention my health challenges as a reason to appeal for your help. My purpose is to focus on the emotional abuse related to Amanda and Ryan.

Due to the calculated effort by Dewey and Joanne, I have yet to meet my two grandchildren.

Thanks to Dewey, you will learn why my son is unable to have children.

After the Menter’s successfully severed my relationships with each child and transferred their fabricated hostility toward me into Amanda’s self-concept, one change in the behavior of this English major was to return my emails saying, “your grammar is so bad I will not read your email”…so please be patient with me as I am a graduate of the NYC school system and they taught grammar and sentence structure in late spring and summer and the classrooms were not air conditioned –

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The psychosis of Duane Menter is that in their affair he influenced Joanne to seek a divorce. After causing the collapse of our family, he displayed anger and hostility toward me!! He used that hostility to put fear into Joanne and the children. As a sidecar, after he had sex with my wife for months and broke up our family, he retired with Joanne to Bayfield, CO and had an affair with a waitress. After all the carnage to my family, Joanne married an adulterer. The embarrassment and disgust to my children that their mother divorced a father they loved to marry this low-life was devastating. Joanne walked around Bayfield and I presume in a small community of 2,300, people likely stare at a scorned woman. It was obviously an overwhelming situation for Joanne, a demoralized woman and in using those emotions negotiated Amanda into finding acceptance so she could move to Carson with her “idiot” husband. It was against my advice to Amanda; however, Amanda acquiesced and that is how they became your neighbors in Skamania County, Washington.

If Dewey’s sexual disease was not mental illness, then what is it? He is still hostile toward me because I wanted him fired for his unprofessional behavior as he did not have any form of respect for the students of the school or his peers by soliciting sexual favors from a married co-worker in my children’s school. The bully decided to get even by telling his future “bride”, you must never talk to the father of your children again….and that is more of Dewey’s behavioral insecurities at the expense of the loving relationship I had with my children. After reading this website, if you are not convinced that this man is very much mentally off, call me and I will give you more information. When he said to Joanne, I will be your children’s surrogate parent, Joanne was either afraid or stupid and said “ok”. In thirty-five years, Joanne has never called me. Through those years, there was nothing she had to share with me regarding our children! Call me and I will tell you other stories that put Joanne more on the side of stupid than afraid in this marriage. Joanne emotionally turned on her children and “threw them under the bus” because Duane Menter said, this is what I want you to do. He “owns” his second wife and as it affects our children, in my opinion, Joanne is a white slave.

Joanne was attracted to this father of three as he is a hunter, just like her four brothers and it was a fit for her comfort zone – a return to her childhood self-concept. I believe Skamania county is the right community for Joanne, with another man and not her low-life husband, Duane Menter.

Amanda and Ryan were caught in their mother’s impulsive, careless and reckless choice of a second marriage to Duane Menter. My children have suffered emotional abuse and Joanne Menter knowing she was caught in a bad situation likely believed she could never go home to her devout Catholic family with two divorces, considering no one in her family had any concept of divorce. I was sitting with neighbors on the other side of the street when Joanne drove by and stuck her finger out of the car window to show everyone her new wedding band (I do not know the stores where she had a bridal registration). I looked at her and saw a woman who was emotionally blown away. A mother with two children remarrying within three weeks of finalizing the divorce from the father of her children, is a woman likely “blown away”.

Of my health issues at age 72, the biggest medical issue relates to the separation anxiety suffered through the loss of the love and good feelings shared with my children Amanda and Ryan. Please look at all the beautiful notes and cards from Amanda and Ryan. Duane Menter and Joanne Sheehy Lawrence Menter are the names of the two people who put their knee on the neck of my children to suffocate that part of their brain to end the good feelings, fun times and loving bonds we shared.