Kyle Dahlem

Governor Turner or Johnson?

Governor Turner or Johnson?

When I began this story, it was BP (Before Pandemic).  We had just returned from Oklahoma City after attending the State Basketball Tournament where the 1960 Wakita Girls State champs were honored at center court.  Who knew that there would be no more sports of any kind for months to come?

How shocking to be told that the Covid-19 virus was so virulent that no one was to leave the house, if at all possible.  Needless to say, there was a run on grocery stores and gas stations.  The funny part was the rumor that there would be a shortage of toilet paper and there were news stories and pictures of people carrying dozens of packages of toilet paper from the store.  Otherwise, all businesses were closed and we were warned not to be out–even to see family.

For ones our age, Papa John and I were not particularly bothered initially because we were used to being home.  The hardest part was not being able to see family on a regular basis unless it was outside and we stood apart quite a ways.  Jill was ill and I wanted to go to Tulsa but there was no way that was going to happen.  All travel ceased.  How odd not to be able to go to church, to a movie, to the museums which I enjoyed, to Astros baseball or Theatre Under the Stars musicals.  Communication with friends was through e-mail or telephone conversation but even that seemed unusual because the only thing to talk about was the pandemic. Fear of getting the virus was not a part of our thinking, or so I thought.

In retrospect, if the president had ordered mandatory mask wearing at the very beginning, I do believe the consequences would have been ameliorated.  He would not, however, admit that this ‘sickness’ would last long so the virus picked up steam and infected more and more.  We didn’t leave the house except to get groceries and I always wore a mask.  The first masks we wore, our neighbor, Mary, made for us.

What did we do? We watched a great deal of television to begin just to keep up with what was going on around us and the world.  We both read–lots.  I belong to three book discussion groups so reading wasn’t that unusual.  In the first month, I cleaned and reorganized quite a bit in the house because it might as well get done.

July 7, 2024–Like a Time Machine, I’m whisked several years ahead as I determine once more to write.    The pandemic was deadly as history records and most of us suffered through some form of it during this time.  Ultimately  Covid has been contained and is like a massive hurricane that has become a small rainstorm–still around but not as deadly.  The tenacious handwashing, mask wearing and healthy living have slowly melted into many of the same old habits.  But much has happened in the past 4 years and it’s time to do some catching up!

I’m amazed to think about the historical eras that I’ve lived in.  The historical events that stick in my mind are several–if I had been paying attention, there might have been more.

1953: I remember in Mt. View, going around the block to see my first television screen. –I don’t remember the exact home but I do remember it was small and black and white.  I remember the excitement (which I now know was June of 1953) of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.  My memory is that the film of the event was rushed by jet to the USA so that it could be shown within hours of the actual happening.  What excitement. I’m 10 years old and we gathered around a neighbor’s small TV to watch–obviously, not the entire ceremony but enough that I can say I remember it.

In 1956 we lived in Buffalo, Oklahoma–during a time of mini dust storms.  There was no air conditioning at this time–maybe one water cooler which filled one room with slightly less hot air.  We played outside a great deal because it was cooler than sitting in the house.  Obviously, the big news was the availability of the polio vaccine which was supplied to all children at that time.  What had once been an epidemic of major proportions, was now almost gone.  Amazing times in health discoveries and inventions  were on the horizons to the point that the those identified as Generation X and later have no real understanding of how tentative chlldhood was before vaccinations.

Karen Kyle Roberts Dahlem
2733 SW 116th Place
Oklahoma City, OK 73170
405-691-2936 (H) 405-503-3224 (C)

John and I have been married 51 years.

We have two children.

Stephanie Lynn Pounds is married to Jeffrey Pounds and they are the parents of Alex and Brian.
 Stephanie, a graduate of OU, is Learning Program Manager at Hewlett-Packard.
 Jeff, a graduate of Florida Institute of Technology and an Air Force veteran, is a captain with Continental Airlines.
 Alex has a degree in Exercise Science and trains professional athletes at one of the three Plex facilities in Houston.
 Brian lives in Austin, is a musician (check out iTunes for his latest), is studying accounting at Texas State at San Marcos and works as an intern with a booking agent.

*Stephen Paul Dahlem is an Emmy award winner and Senior Creative Designer for Dallas based Corporate Magic. He was a performer at Disney World, on Broadway, in Japan and Germany before he went to the creative side of entertainment. His shows have included the Oklahoma Centennial, the Boy Scouts 100th Anniversary, and the grand opening of Opryland and the Dallas Cowboy’s Thanksgiving halftime show for national TV for the last 9 years, (among others).

• I graduated from Enid High School in 1961, Kansas State of Pittsburg with an Arts and Science degree in English in 1967 and a Masters degree in Library Science from Northwestern Oklahoma State University 1972.
I taught English or was library media specialist in Goodland, Kansas, Fairview, Geary and Seiling, OK. In 1984, I was elected as the first full-time Vice President of the Oklahoma Education Association and elected President in 1986. I called the 4 day teacher’s walk-out in 1990 that resulted in the passage of House Bill 1017, the education reform act of 1990. Upon finishing my term in office, I was an elementary library media specialist for 10 years in the Moore, OK district. In 2000, I was hired as the Director of the Teacher Education and Minority Teacher Recruitment Center for the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education. As such, I was liaison with all of the public universities in Oklahoma. I retired in 2008 but was asked to come back as the interim Associate Chancellor of Administration for the State Regents in 2009 and retired again in July of that year. I am now the Executive Director of the Oklahoma DaVinci Institute, Oklahoma’s creativity think tank. I have spent 44 years in education.
I love teaching!! I was teacher of the year in 4 different districts. I was a member of the National Education Board of Directors, the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards and was an original member of the Oklahoma Commission for Teacher Preparation. I was honored as an Outstanding Education Graduate of Northwestern OSU in 2000 and was inducted into the Oklahoma Educator’s Hall of Fame in 2010.
I teach Sunday School, give the children’s sermon nearly every Sunday and sing in the choir at Southern Hills United Methodist Church in OKC. I tutor a 3rd grade Hispanic student in reading every week.
• John retired as principal of Westmoore High School in 2003 after 39 years of coaching and teaching. He then was a realtor for 6 years before re-retiring the same year I retired—2009.
• We love to travel, Turkey, Greece, Egypt, Malta, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Japan, China. In the states, we visit our children and grandchildren, all Texans,, family in Maryland and California and points in between.

Kyle as Mystic?  Certainly my beliefs have evolved through my lifetime—as I reflect upon my lifetime of belief, I realize how much it has changed but stayed the same.
I would like to believe that I have had mystical experiences—but I can’t say that in the deepest sense of the word. I am not disciplined enough to be a mystic, but I truly believe that I have had mystical experiences.
My first mystical experience happened when I was in the first grade. On a beautiful, warm spring day in Apache, Oklahoma, I raced home (one block from the school) to change clothes and race back to school. Several friends and I had agreed to return to the playground as quickly as possible. I still remember how excited I was as I raced back to the schoolyard and how surprised to find that no one was there. I had returned before anyone else. OK, I would wait for them (I can’t remember who was suppose to return.).
I sat in the swing and began to kick off. Swinging, swinging—still no one returned. I kicked off again. Swinging, swinging. The swing went slower and slower as I watched my toe dragging in the dirt. Slowly, more slowly barely moving. I remember staring for some time at my foot in the dirt—the swing not moving. Suddenly I had the weirdest sensation of silence—no birds, no cars, no voices—it was verrrrry . eerily silent. I looked up. AsI looked around, there was a glow around the playground as if there was a halo around everything. At that moment, I felt as if I was the only person left on earth—I was totally alone—I was frozen in place but feeling like I was melting into space. I was frightened by the sensation.
Seriously. I don’t remember going home or any of others showing up that afternoon I just remember the almost out-of-body sensation.
I missed the class picnic on the last day of my 4th grade as mother took me to Hobart? (year was that?) where I was unceremoniously placed on a metal table, a rag placed over my face and ether sprinkled on the rag.  You’ve heard this story many times—under the influence of ether! Some would call these dreams—they didn’t feel that way to me. Appendectomy in 1960; anesthesia and back into the same vision as if no time had passed at all—that I had gone from one timelessly to the other.
I often went into the empty church during the week–maybe to get away from everyone. I remember sitting in the balcony room of the Buffalo church. Initially, I was imagining how I would remodel that church to make it a big home. I was there for a very long time in complete stillness when I felt myself weightless and no longer alone. It was so surreal that I jumped up in fright and looked around for anyone else who was there. No one. That certainly broke the spell.
I have been to heaven—in my dreams–it was so real–I believe that there was reality in those dreams.

November 5, 2020
After four days of delightful play Wallis is on her way home to Hutto!  Missing her already but I do want to take a few moments to respond to the question “Do I believe that Jesus was the Son of God?”  Yes!
Jim Robert sent this to me this morning.

And he wrote this:

“. . .So my inspiration today is this pic took on my last night in Yangon Myanmar at the Shwedagon pagoda. Sun was near setting and this boy caught my eye.  I nodded at his mom with my camera and pointed to her son and she nodded and smiled back.  I sat down on the floor and he without any verbal communication stuck his pose.  i could tell I made his night… he has absolutely no idea how healing my memory of that 5 minute relationship calms my soul tonight and many nights b4”
This picture speaks to me as well.
MY ASSUMPTIONS:
1.  GOD is too great to be understood by any one person or religion.
2.  John 10: 22-39 (this are the only verses from the NT that I will reference although there are many more that instruct me) and Psalm 82:1-8 (particularly verse 6 and 8 from the OT).
From the beginning of recorded history and archeological evidence, humans have experienced GOD.  The oldest know sacred writings (2500 BC) acknowledged creation and creator of all the world they knew).  Psalm 82: 8(written a 1000 years later) acknowledges the GOD of ALL nations. Jesus references this Psalm in his rebuttal to the Jews in John 10.
As human understanding of the universe has changed and as culture and geography shaped individuals,  GOD can only be named as the great “I AM.”  For all humankind, “HE IS.”
3.  GOD is love. and the great religions all express that “I AM” love.

DeCarte life is a dream?
Everything is connected—everything—connected with a spirit that many called God—but this spirit is indescribable.
The Mystical Body of Christ
Friday, May 3, 2019

A cosmic notion of Christ takes mysticism beyond the mere individual level to the transpersonal, social, and collective levels. Cynthia Bourgeault, another of our core faculty members and an Episcopal priest, explores Jesus’ resurrection from a universal, mystical perspective:
What Jesus so profoundly demonstrates to us in his passage from death to life is that the walls between the realms are paper thin. Along the entire ray of creation, the “mansions” are interpenetrating and mutually permeable by love. The death of our physical form is not the death of our individual personhood. Our personhood remains alive and well, “hidden with Christ in God” (to use Paul’s beautiful phrase in Colossians 3:3) and here and now we can draw strength from it (and [Christ]) to live our temporal lives with all the fullness of eternity. If we can simply keep our hearts wrapped around this core point, the rest of the Christian path begins to fall into place.
Yes, [Jesus’] physical form no longer walks the planet. But if we take him at his word, that poses no disruption to intimacy if we merely learn to recognize him at that other level, just as he has modeled for his disciples during those first forty days of Eastertide.
Nor has that intimacy subsided in two thousand years—at least according to the testimony of a long lineage of Christian mystics, who in a single voice proclaim that our whole universe is profoundly permeated with the presence of Christ. He surrounds, fills, holds together from top to bottom this human sphere in which we dwell. The entire cosmos has become his body, so to speak, and the blood flowing through it is his love. These are not statements that can be scientifically corroborated, but they do seem to ring true to the mystically attuned heart. . . .
Without in any way denying or overriding the conditions of this earth plane, he has interpenetrated them fully, infused them with his own interior spaciousness, and invited us all into this invisible but profoundly coherent energetic field so that we may live as one body—the “Mystical Body of Christ,” as it’s known in Christian tradition—manifesting the Kingdom of Heaven here and now. Jesus in his ascended state is not farther removed from human beings but more intimately connected with them. He is the integral ground, the ambient wholeness within which our contingent human lives are always rooted and from which we are always receiving the help we need to keep moving ahead on the difficult walk we have to walk here. When the eye of our own heart is open and aligned within this field of perception, we recognize whom we’re walking with.

Good Monday morning,
Since I’ve sent two wild idea e-mails, I do want to send you ideas that have more immediacy! Although these are not directly related to selecting AA students, they will impact selection. When we changed to electronic submission we discussed these issues so there may seem to be nothing new. For example, the pandemic has changed the way technology is being used in education and some of the usage will continue from this time forth.
There is much discussion right now about even going back to college in the fall—even if it is opened virtually. Health issues, cost of education and reevaluating potential career and education requirements seem to be the main topics about which I read and listen to on podcasts—even one TED talk.
Teachers are talking about several things—relationships—human contact seems to head the list.
What’s not being talked about enough is how to teach effectively with technology. But, of course, effective teachers has have always been the crux of good schools. (That’s one of the reasons I think good teaching, as through Khan academy and ultimately the Holodeck, will evolve.). For years, businesses have used technology successfully. International teaching and learning and sharing information have been ongoing for so many of the large companies.
Assessment will be a major development. Should I mention that there will be/is major push-back from the current anti-intellectualism populist movement?
SAT. ACT testing will resume in June according to their Website. So, there will be 2021 grads who could be eligible to apply.
Broadband for all! Until all schools, homes, individuals have access to broadband connection, all the computers and other tools that are being handed to students to learn from home won’t be helpful; the learning gap will continue to expand.

For the near future, I’m thinking that the current selection process can be used with a few modifications.
For the long term, technology gurus, which include game developers, computer program/apps developers, business technology practicioners (not CEOs but those who use distance technology for doing work), on-line college/high school teachers, should be assembled to envision technology in the next 10, 15, 25 years.
In fact, getting them together might be too cumbersome—have one-on-one ZOOM interviews or surveys or ??? Get a sense from each one and synthesize to know how OFE should use it to renew itself and how soon should it happen.
Once you get a sense of how education is going to be delivered, then will be a better time to decide what OFE will be going forward.
President Boren often tells the story of going to the Oklahoma Teacher of the Year presentation and noting how pathetic it was. Taking that motivation, he created a recognition using the current education system and improved it by recognizing its best parts. OFE challenge will be to take what comes in the next few years and develop a way to recognize students/teachers/ professors who may be using what we might call non-traditional ways to teach and learn. If it’s still called public education, It’s in the playing field of the OFE.
I don’t know if this is helpful to the Foundation but I know these are ideas that are being discussed in many education venues.—AND it must be noted that with DeVos dismantleing of so many education programs, there probably will be quite a bit of restructuring when that administration is gone.
KD
Rachel and Teresa,
What an interesting invitation!—And I’m not being cynical. Conference Call?? How passé 🤣 Sure you don’t want to ZOOM? I would be able to visit with you all next Thursday—my calendar is sooo busy!!🤓😂 I’m going to preface our conversation with the following so you get a sense of what I’ve been thinking about and talking with others. There are pros and cons for all of this but mostly it comes down to accepting a drastic change that is difficult to wrap one’s mind around. It’s not going to be there when schools reopen but it’s evolving more quickly than I imagined.

The first thing that came to my mind was to show a scene of the Holodeck from Star Trek, the Second Generation. I’ve been a science fiction fan since Buck Rogers so it’s no surprise that I was one of the original trekkies (I actually went to conventions to see the cast!!Did you ever watch the 2014 concert—there’s more than one—that featured Michael Jackson (after his death) that was a hologram? I watched it on YouTube.
I first used the holodeck in a speech in 2005 after reading an article in Popular Mechanics about the prototype of the holodeck that was being designed. During those first speeches I gave to student teachers, I told them that if education changed as drastically in the 40 years that they might be in education as it did in the 40 years that I was in education, the holodeck would be a reality. At that time, I first said in 75 years and then it was down to 50 years—ahh, but now????
and the question I had for them was: “Would students choose to come to your classroom?”
In March when schools didn’t reopen after spring break, I began a conversation with ‘furloughed’ teachers, asking them this: “When schools are reopened, what should education look like?? Let’s don’t go back to the “same old same old.”
What I learned is that the conversation is already underway in various parts of the education world. As stated in my first e-mail, although schools will eventually reopen, change is happening—technology (ZOOMING—who knew that word 3 months ago?) has already changed the culture and schools/education will follow.
Many if not most Texas universities are going to be on-line this fall—discussion is still underway for how high school and elementary will look. The suggestions are fascinating.
Ok, there’s my preface. I’ll give it more thought and I’d welcome your questions before we visit next week.
Live long and prosper.
🖖 😃.
KD

I think one of the most puzzling things, to me, about my personality is my obsession to being an actress. Where did that come from? Was it part of a past life? a childhood influence? a parent’s repressed dream?
I do know from one of mother’s keepsakes that she was in an Oklahoma College for Women (OCW) play–no evidence of anything in high school. I do know she spoke with great feeling about Ta-Ata, Chickasha story-teller and actress who was associated with OCW. I do have a picture of me as a 3 year-old, dressed in mother’s hat and shoes and standing on a platform as if I’m in a make-believe world.
There is a picture of me with 3 other divas at a 5 year-old birthday party in Lawton partaking of an imaginary tea-time which my mother had prepared.
And then there is Apache, Oklahoma. I attended first and second grade there. As part of an all school play, I was cast as a–what was it??–a war orphan who is finding a new family? I don’t remember but I do remember as the maroon velvet stage curtain opened, I was sitting on a park bench. For whatever reason, I sat there for quite a while (In my childhood memory) and nothing was happening. Later when I told mother that I felt very strange sitting there, swinging my legs, and nothing was happening, she said that was fine as I looked the part of an abandoned child. LOL
It was also in Apache that I had a Flash Gordon themed birthday party. Mother made a variety of crepe-paper hats for each of the invitees (how many and who were they? I don’t remember). I remember the excitement as she created hats for each of us to wear and mine was Flash Gordon.
Had I seen him at the movies? I think so because one of my memories from Apache is a half-moon shaped cut from a broken piece of Coke bottle on the inside arch of my right foot–a scar that I had for years and years. I think I was walking barefoot (who wore shoes in summer??) to the movie theatre with Darryl and maybe Kaye when that happened.
I just know I went regularly to the movies–particularly on a Saturday afternoon–from a very early age. That must have been so mother could iron THAT white shirt which daddy required on Sunday and to type the church bulletin.
I just remember watching movies–mostly westerns on Saturday but there was always a Flash Gordon serial. Each week we had to go back to see what was going to happen next.
Since the church and the parsonage were separated by a narrow driveway, access to the sanctuary was easy and that sanctuary became one of my first dramatic stages. Often during the week, I would stand on a chair, that I placed at the pulpit, and I would preach! Yes, preach! I can’t remember my text but I remember preaching to the empty balcony and lower floor with great verve. In fact, I was preaching away to an imaginary congregation standing in the pulpit of the Apache church when I looked out of the open window next to me and noticed my precious cat lying dead in the backyard. (Oh my, that’s another story)

In Cheyenne, Oklahoma, we watched Gene Autry and Roy Rogers. It was the influence of these westerns that motivated Darryl and me to hang Kaye one Sunday afternoon. (Don’t think for a minute that the media doesn’t influence young minds!). I wish I could remember which movie it was because I can’t believe that either of these cowboy heroes would have had a hanging scene. How did we know, however, the process of a western hanging? I don’t remember. 🙁

My 4th and 5th grade years were spent in Mt. View, Oklahoma. I have many memories of living there–so much to tell. As to drama, well, there are several experiences which continue my evolution to drama queen.

I joined 4-H. This was a club that all 4th grader joined, I presume. As a member, I was required to make an apron and learn a timely topic or ?? (What were the dual speeches called? Ummm). Anyway, I was given a timely topic to learn. It had to do with sewing–these were typed speeches that were handed to us.The one and only phrase that I remember from that speech was “dress maker pins.” I can still see myself standing in front of mother as I practiced that speech. Believe it or not, I can still remember the ride on that old school bus to Hobart, Oklahoma for the Kiowa County 4-H contest. I’m standing in front of a panel–three, as I remember–as I say ‘dress-maker pins.” :-). Lo, and behold! I win the purple grand champion champion ribbon for Timely Topic. I don’t remember being particularly proud, just that it was over–I didn’t have to remember that speech any more.
The second thing that I remember is a friend (I’ve got to find her name) whose father owned the hamburger joint.
I was so envious that she could walk in and order a hamburger and not have to pay and that as a 4th grader she had a full page in the school annual in her miniature drum major suit.
But here’s the real deal! She let me take a movie magazine home–I think it was “Photoplay”. I read it from cover to cover. I had my own bedroom, although there were four kids. With that magazine, I carefully cut out the pictures of the stars and made a pin-up board in my bedroom. How I worked on that board.–it was a collage of pictures which I had cut so carefully around the head of each actress/actor now held by straight pins on some kind of board. From time to time, I would carefully remove the pins and rearrange the pictures. Oh, how I loved that pin-up board.
And then there’s this memory. I won some kind of classroom contest in Mt. View. –can’t remember–but the prize was movie tickets. There were two movie theatres in town. At the time there was a comedy playing at one and a melodrama at the other starring Bing Crosby. As the teacher handed me the tickets, I distinctly remember her saying that if it were she, she would go to the “melodrama “. Which I did! (Oh, how teachers can influence.). 1953–Bing Crosby in Little Boy Lost a very heavy drama which I barely understood if at all.
From Mt. View, we moved to Buffalo, OK. Yes, the Saturday afternoon movies continued. BUT with a twist. I fell in love with my idol–James Dean!!
In that big old two-story house, I still had my own attic room, as small as it was, with a single bed. Above that bed, pinned to the ceiling, was a poster of James Dean. Every night, I went to bed as I looked as his gorgeous face, and surly pose. He had  already died tragically when I saw him in  Rebel without a Cause.  Didn’t make a difference to me–it probably increased his mystic.
In that same time period on an overnight camp at Boiling Springs Park (I can’t remember what the camp was but I don’t think it was church related), I remember being in the great room with the adults and hearing one of them say that someone who was suppose to give an inspirational speech was not attending. Can you believe–of course you can–I popped in and said that I could give the speech? One of them said, it’s too much to memorize. “Oh, no,” I said. “I can do it.” I think they gave it to me with a bemused look on their faces, I took the speech back to my cabin. I climbed into the top bunk that I had been assigned and spent the rest of the afternoon memorizing that speech. That evening, I presented it, flawlessly. How? Why? I don’t know, I just wanted to be in front of an audience, I guess.
As I entered high school in Wakita, OK, the “drama lessons” continued. We didn’t have a TV but the divorced woman who lived in a small trailer in the alley behind is did. (The story of my relationship with her is another story to tell.) After school, I would go visit her and watch Mickey Mouse Club. I don’t think I missed many episodes–since it was only 30 minutes long,I could disappear for that length of time before I had ‘stuff’ to do.
My new love was Spin, aka Tim Considine, and my screen idol was Annette. Oh, how I wanted to be Annette–so beautiful, so talented and performing on TV. If my Wakita classmates had known of my drama dreams, I would have been the laughing stock. I can still sing all of the Mouseketeer songs and shout out the introductions of each Mouseketeer. Ask me to sing the closing song–still can do. 🙂
Annette was still my secret idol, along with ….., well into my old age. I still wanted to be Annette, the star.
AND then in August of 1957 (I looked that one up.), Dick Clark premiered on American Bandstand every afternoon.

Ohmigosh. From Mickey Mouse to American Bandstand. I knew the names of those Philadelphia teens but, more importantly, I learned to dance. Oh, I had occasion to learn to dance before (Buffalo teentown –another story). Now, I lived in a town that loved to dance–adults, teens and children. Oops, I’m getting sidetracked–but only to say–now I took center stage because I could dance as well or better than others, I think because I watched bandstand and could imitate. I still have classmates who remember that I was the best dancer.

I could ramble on–showing the evolution of my dramatic side–but now it’s too much redundancy.
Yes, I was in class sketches–some of which I’m not too proud. I was in the junior play. In college, I took a drama class or two–at one point as a student at NWOSU, I was asked–out of the blue–to audition for Hedda Gabbler. (Wasn’t called back–LOL)

Would it surprise you to know, that even today, the first news I check in the morning is the entertainment section. I still love to read about the stars–now movie and television. I still have this urge to be on the stage–to perform. I’m always thrilled by a good performance–who am I kidding. I am amazed by them even when they’re lackluster.

In my professional career, I’ve had opportunities to speak to thousands, be on television, be interviewed at the National Press Club to enter a classroom everyday “to perform,” et al.

What’s the point? I don’t know. I just know that I’ve always enjoyed being “in front of an audience”–from a very early age. How does that happen? What event was so pleasurable that I wanted to repeat it? Was it selfishness? Was it insecurity?
I don’t know. I just know it’s me!!

When we moved to Fairview, Oklahoma in 1969, our Oklahoma House of Representative member was Art F. Bower, a Republican, and president of the Farmer and Merchants National Bank of Fairview. His wife Mary was the UMC organist.
Mary was 57, silver-haired beauty who had a musical touch at that old organ. So why am I describing Mary when it is Art that influenced me so much?
By way of background, in 197o, “ecology’ was a hot-button subject. “In spring 1970, Senator Gaylord Nelson, Wisconsin Democrat, created Earth Day as a way to force this issue onto the national agenda. Twenty million Americans demonstrated in different U.S. cities, and it worked!” www.epa.gov

In the Oklahoma legislature, on March 1, 1971, a concurrent resolution of the House of Representatives was passed expressing legislative intent that East Central State College be designated as the Oklahoma State Environmental Center. Needless to say, I was aware of the congressional actions,  but oblivious to the Oklahoma resolution until Mr. Bower, Art, stopped me in church one Sunday and handed me a little, green plastic pin in the shape of Oklahoma. In white letters was the word ECOLOGY. As he gave it to me, he said something to the effect, “this is a subject I think you would be interested in.”

That’s all it took for me to follow up on the suggestion. At that time, the only source of information was the library, so I checked out the few books available but mostly read magazines since that’s where the latest information was at that time. The magazine that made the biggest impact was LIFE.
January 30, 1970 issue of LIFE pictures a Snow Monkey on the cover with the headline, “”ECOLOGY BECOMES EVERYBODY’S ISSUE.” This magazine and the accompanying pictures became my “powerpoint.”
Fairview Mothers’ Club was the social club of the local social elite. The wives of bankers, prominent farmers, business leaders, etc. were members. I was never asked to join as I was “only” a teacher, but I was asked to give a lesson. Using the pictures and telling the story of the necessity of caring for the environment, I must have made an impression, because I was asked to give the same lesson again–to another group. I think I probably gave at least 5 presentations, maybe more about environment but it was giving the lesson to fellow teacher groups/organizations that led me to the next phase of my “speakings.”

The Oldest of Five–well, that says quite a bit. I could be boss, babysitter, playmate, soloist.
Darryl and Kaye were best buds and played together all the time. I usually was a loner or babysitter from as early as I remember. I always wanted to play dolls, or play house, or with pets but Kaye and Darryl were always playing sports, rough-house games.
Kaye was born with solid intestines–that was the diagnosis is in 1946 in Sherman, TX.  When she was 10 days old, according to mother, she was tied down to a board and quite a bit of her intestines were removed.  She suffered with a horizontal scar her entire life.  The percentage of her survival was almost nil.  Darryl was sent to Gem and Dad in El Reno when Kaye was born while mother stayed with Kaye in the hospital. Daddy and I stayed together .That’s what I remember about Kaye’s birth.
When mother came home with Laura when we lived in Apache. There was a bedroom right off of the living room and mother came in and went straight to bed and when I got home from school she was holding Laura. When we moved to Cheyenne, I remember carrying Laura on my hip as we played outside.   and I remember playing outside, but I do not remember much of the town–just playing outside all the time.
In retrospect, although I didn’t know at the time, mother wasn’t well (she had been cautioned not to have children–which of course, she ignored.)
In Mt. View, we played outside all the time. There was a big tree in our backyard with snarling roots above ground. I would smooth out the dirt between the roots and name each one a room–dining room, living room, kitchen, etc. I would spend hours playing house there–by myself.