The preceding four segments illustrate the
fact that having time to fully participate in activities and events in which
Arlette and I have been interested has been a major benefit of retirement. We have done things we would never have had
time to do while working, and have been relatively free of time pressures.
The largest family event we’ve attended was
a big Stribling reunion on
July 23, 1989, when dozens of descendants of James Hodges Stribling (my
Grandmother Grammer’s dad) met at Acton Baptist Church. My mother particularly enjoyed the day,
visiting with relatives she hadn’t seen in many years – and most of which she
never saw again before her death October 7, 2000.
◊◊◊
I’ve had opportunities to help relatives (other than our kids) with
worthwhile activities (e.g., two early-‘90s jobs in Bolivar, Missouri):
The
climate control unit in the “missionary house” utilizes a closed water
circulation system for heat transfer, wherein the water is routed through
several hundred feet of high grade plastic pipe placed eight feet under ground,
during which process it assumes the constant temperature of the earth at that
level (67 degrees in Bolivar).
Utilization of constant temperature water in the heat exchanger (instead
of outside air) means that less power is needed for operating the heat pump in
winter and air-conditioning in summer; savings are supposed to pay for the
higher initial cost in seven to twelve years.
[Twila and
Hugh moved from Bolivar after I started these writings, having built a new
house at the Baptist Memorial Retirement Center in San Angelo, Texas.]
Retirement’s “time dividend” has provided opportunities for more social
activity, something Arlette greatly enjoys; she likes people and loves to talk
– to anyone, anywhere, at any time, and has said she would rather talk than
eat; perhaps that explains how a trip to the grocery store can take hours if
she meets an acquaintance.
I dubbed
Arlette “Motormouth” when most everyone had a CB
“handle” years ago; I called myself “Pencil-pusher,” also an earned
appellation. (Her dad, a barber,
selected “Mr. Clipper.” I liked that so well I called him “Mr. Clipper” the rest of his
life.) Arlette and I intended to use
“Footloose” and “Fancy Free” after retirement, but the
CB rage and the use of handles had dissipated when that time arrived. We are, however, relatively foot-loose and
fancy-free.
I’m not the socializer Arlette is, but I’ve appreciated the
opportunities retirement has brought for more contacts with friends,
particularly those whom we seldom, if ever, saw during most of our working
years:
Don and I
devised a scheme whereby, without saying a word, we could disclose to each
other the suits in which we were strongest.
We almost never lost, and Mrs. Coleman would invariably say, after
losing a few games, “Ken Miller, I know you’re cheating, but I
just can’t figure out how!” We never
told her how we did it – or even admitted we had a system.
Mrs. Coleman
took part in more than our “42” games.
Don and I talked often, when Toni home permanents were popular in the late ‘40s, about getting
Toni kits and curling our hair. Mrs.
Coleman, after hearing us talk about it for a while (“backing each other out”),
finally said, “I’m tired of listening to you two; I’m going to get a couple of
kits and give you each a permanent myself, to hush you up.” The kits were obtained, Don and I got our
Tonis, and for a few months I had the only curly hair I’ve ever had.
I liked
the curly hair, and wished it were natural.
I received a few compliments, the most memorable of which came from
Jeanie Gray, an attractive young evening clerk at San Angelo’s Cactus Hotel,
where L.C Green and I stayed while doing “city revision” work for Dun &
Bradstreet; Jeanie told me I had the best looking hair of any man she’d
ever seen. I didn’t say anything at the
time, but, after leaving town, I sent her a picture of myself with “normal”
hair, telling her how the curly stuff had come about. She replied, saying the natural hairdo also looked good – but
didn’t say it was the best looking she’d ever seen.
Don
related the stories of our “42” scheme and “Tonis” during a dinner party
celebrating the golden anniversary of my marriage to Arlette. I’d never told anyone about our “42” system;
now I wonder if he “confessed” to his mother and Geraldine, but can’t ask him.
·
Carolyn and Homer Swartz, whom I’ve mentioned in
previous segments, came back into my life in 1983, thirty-five years since I’d
last seen them (when I graduated from Howard Payne in 1948). Arlette didn’t know them in Brownwood, so
didn’t meet them until 1983, but since then we’ve visited in each other’s
homes, have been together at reunions of Brownwood High alumni and
get-togethers of HPC ex-students, and have camped together in New Mexico.
·
I’ve referred twice to spring get-togethers (since 1993) of
a small group of Howard Payners from the ‘40s, but have said little about the
group itself. Persons other than
Arlette and I who have attended two or more of those gatherings are Reitha
(Thomas) Brannan/ChiChi (Govett) Cornelius/Ruth (Hicks) and Milton Dowd/Nell (Garrison) and George
File/Fern (Heath) (Dannelly) and Bill Goree/Betty Lou and Don Green/Jane
(Black) and Leo Lacey/Bonnie (Swartz) and E.F. Lewis/Lillie Jo (Horton)
Newsom/Treva (Verner) and Claude Roy/Doris “Charlie” (Ridge) and John
Rusciano/Twila (Miller) and Hugh Smith/Carolyn (Hays) and Homer Swartz/Doris
(Moeller) Thomas; Theo Powell, now deceased, attended two gatherings in Glen
Rose back in the mid-‘90s.
George
File, Betty Lou Green, John Rusciano, and Hugh Smith “married into the HPC
family.” Treva and Claude Roy are the
most senior members of the group; they were upper classmen when Milton Dowd, ChiChi Govett, Homer Swartz, and I entered Howard
Payne as freshmen in September, 1943.
The other Howard Payne exes started later.
Early on,
the ladies thought the group needed a name, so entertained suggestions for an
appropriate appellation. They
ultimately settled on "Jackets" (derived from
"Yellow Jackets," the name of Howard Payne's sports teams), although
some of us thought "Jackets" should be preceded by some adjective;
"Blue" was suggested first, but was rejected because "Blue
Jackets" is a Navy term, or was when several of us served therein. Other adjectives suggested were
"faded," "frayed," "gray," "old,"
"worn," and "wrinkled," but none of those went over well
with the girls; I liked "faded" and "gray." I also like “The Paynes,” with no reference
at all to “Jackets.”
Twila
suggested, after our 2004 gathering, that I set up a webgroup for oldtime
Howard Payners; when doing so, I selected HPCyberjackets as a name for the group – a mixture of HPC,
as the school was known when we attended, cyber for the electronic world in which
we now live, and Jackets. Registrations
haven’t been as numerous as I would have expected, perhaps because some older
Jackets are a bit afraid of cyberspace.
Although
the major purpose of getting together is fellowship, food, and fun, the group
started a “Pass-it-On” Fund (administered at Howard Payne) to help worthy
students out of financial binds.
Repayment is not expected, but beneficiaries are asked to continue the
pass-it-on tradition when they become able.
The folks at Howard Payne who manage the "pass-it-on" fund
called our group the "Pass-It-On Club" in a 2001 write-up in the LINK
(Howard Payne’s alumni publication), but that was their appellation, not ours;
"pass-it-on" contributions are a byproduct of the group's operation,
not its purpose.
·
H. Don Rodgers and I had little contact, other than
Christmas card exchanges, from the time my family left Abilene until he
contacted me in the late ‘80s, after which we continued sporadic contact, by
mail and telephone, for several years, and Arlette and I visited with them one
evening when we stopped overnight in Abilene while on the way home from an
RVing trip to western states. I wrote
Don a letter soon after I started these writings, to ask if he or Lucile could
supply a name I was trying to recall; I was surprised to receive no response,
because Don had always been prompt in replying to my communications. I continued wondering about him until
Arlette and I attended the 2001 reunion of the 1947/48/49 Brownwood High School
classes, when I asked Don’s younger sister, Nelda Ruth, about him, and learned
he had suffered a major stroke more than three years earlier, and was confined
to an Abilene nursing home. Contemplating
Don as a stroke victim was difficult, because his personality had always been
effusive/outgoing/effervescent, and I couldn’t imagine him helpless and unable
to communicate. I wondered again about
H. Don while preparing our 2001 Christmas card mailing list, for I didn’t want
us to address a card to “Mr. and Mrs. H. Don Rodgers” if he were no longer
alive, so I checked a social security death index on the Internet, and learned
he had died on October 7, 2001, at the age of 80.
·
I’ve mentioned Bill English several times. Bill and I
stayed in contact throughout the years after I first met him in Dun &
Bradstreet’s Fort Worth offices.
Although we’ve only lived in the same town one time after our days in
Fort Worth (at Waco), and then for only a year and a half, I saw him fairly
regularly until his death July 18, 1996.
He lived in the Dallas area from about 1960 onward, so Arlette and I
often stopped to visit with him as we traveled between Little Rock and the
homes of Texas relatives, and he occasionally visited us in Little Rock.
During
one of his later visits Bill told me none of his relatives wanted his stereo
equipment and record collection when he passed on, and asked if I’d like to
have them. I told him I certainly
would, if I were still alive myself.
About a year after his death I received a letter from his attorney,
Steve Jones, telling me the probate judge had released Bill’s estate and that Winikates & Winikates, the law firm with which Steve
was associated, was handling distribution of the property; the stereo equipment
and record collection had indeed been bequeathed to me.
Arlette and I traveled to Dallas to collect the
bequest. Our pickup wouldn’t hold
everything, so we left four speakers for Marty to pick up when he collected
Bill’s library, which had been bequeathed to him; two of those four speakers
became a part of Marty’s stereo system.
Among
the stereo equipment were three tuner-amplifiers, two turntables, a
reel-to-reel tape recorder/player, two 8-track tape players, a cassette tape
recorder/player, and three CD players.
Although much of the equipment was old, all except the reel-to-reel
recorder/player functioned.
Bill’s record collection included 112 45-RPM
records, more than one hundred reel-to-reel tapes, nearly nine hundred 33s, and
about three hundred each of 8-track tapes, cassette tapes, and CDs. I had difficulty finding space for the added
equipment and recordings, for we already had a built-in stereo system, plus
several hundred 33/45/78 records of varying vintages. With astute shopping and construction, we finally made space for
everything – and have recordings stored in four different rooms or closets.
I
had already set up a computerized indexing system for the recordings we had
before Bill’s death, so have integrated Bill’s collection of records,
cassettes, and CDs into that system. I
haven’t indexed reel-to-reel or 8-track recordings.
◊◊◊
The deaths of Don Coleman, Bill English, and H. Don
Rodgers illustrate one sad aspect of retirement – friends and relatives
pass on as the years go by. Arlette’s
dad died just before we retired, in May, 1982; Walter “Bud” Grammer, my
mother’s brother, died in February, 1984; my dad died January 16, 1985; Virgil
Goforth, my uncle by marriage,
died September 20, 1997. My mother died
October 7, 2000, and Arlette’s mother died March 2, 2002. Other relatives and friends have also gone
on during our twenty years of retirement.
Even deaths and funerals have provided pleasant memories, however. Most notable was Virgil’s funeral, where
Terry and Gregg provided the music.
“Stardust” had been Virgil’s favorite popular song, and he always asked Terry
to play it for him when she visited his home, so she played it at his funeral;
I doubt that “Stardust” has been played very often in a church, and I doubt
that Virgil’s pastor even recognized it as a popular song, for he said,
"AMEN!" when Terry finished playing it, then again, of course, after
Gregg sang, "My Savior First Of All (I Shall Know Him)." Somehow, the "AMEN!" didn't sound
inappropriate in either instance, and Hoagy Carmichael might be pleased to know
his “Stardust” was played in church; I know
Fanny Crosby would be pleased to have heard her tribute to her Savior sung at
Virgil’s funeral.
Terry again played the piano, and Gregg again sang “My
Savior First of All,” at Arlette’s mother’s funeral on March 4, 2002, then
Gregg preached the best funeral sermon I‘ve ever heard. Though sad, funerals can also be uplifting
experiences.
We’ve attended several Brownwood High School reunions to which Arlette, as a BHS graduate, has been
invited. I’m like a fish (or maybe a
duck) out of water at those events, having known few of her contemporaries;
they were all five or six years younger than I.
I’ve often wondered how things might have differed had I
met Arlette when I first went to Brownwood as a Howard Payne freshman in 1943,
when she was only eleven years old. She
was a young lady when I met her in 1949, but she had been only a sixth-grader
back in 1943; I suspect it’s a good thing I didn’t meet her then.
I’ve never attended a Poly High School reunion, but have been to a
couple of Howard Payne’s homecoming events – in 1983 and 1998.
I recognized only one 1983 attendee (Ed Garrett) on sight, and only one
attendee (Billy Joe Taylor) recognized me; Ed Garrett had changed relatively
little.
We attended Howard Payne’s 1998 homecoming because all 1948 graduates
present were given a diploma recognizing the golden anniversary of their
graduations. Thirty from the class of
’48 were present at the ’98 event. I
saw a number of acquaintances I hadn’t seen since 1948; no one recognized me,
so I can’t claim to have held on to my youth.
Cynthia
Clawson Courtney, renowned vocal artist and a 1970 Howard Payne graduate, was
the Grand Marshall of the 1998 homecoming parade, then, together with Patti
Clawson Berry (her sister, also an HP graduate) and composer/pianist/singer
Bruce Greer, presented a concert on Sunday evening at the First Baptist
Church. Their music was the most
enjoyable event of the weekend.