Using MATE, I found "Administration", but not "Users and Groups". Using Gnome desktop, I searched for Users and Groups, but all there was was a folder with a omf file that says:
<omf><resource><creator>Joey Hess, Colin Watson, David Mandelberg</creator><title>Users and Groups in the Debian System</title><date>2011-11-01</date><subject category="System"/><description>Descriptions of important system users and groups in Debian.</description><format mime="text/html"/><identifier url="/usr/share/doc/base-passwd/users-and-groups.html"/><language code="C"/><relation seriesid="c67c6ae0-ee65-40cf-a8f9-47b40c5890f7"/></resource></omf>
Nothing to edit, nowhere to change anything. Man, I'm lost. Another whole day gone by and I'm no farther than I was yesterday. I KNOW there's just one or two stupid things I have to vchange to make it all work, it DOES dial out, it DOES connect to my ISP!!! (They probably think I'm nuts, on and off over and over.) Tomorrow my son goes back to the college so he's going to get me 2 more copies to try. pena and Zorin. MAYBE one of THOSE will work for me "out of the box"?
Dialup sux and I hate living in BFE for this reason, but it sure is nice looking out every window in my house and seeing green woods! (See? There's a bright side to everything!)

I'm still open to any suggestions and of course I will keep trying!
Thanks!
M