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CONTENTS
Summer, 2002, updated 06/29/02Spring, 2002, updated 05/12/02Winter, 2001, updated 01/19/02Summer 2001, updated 07/10/01April, May, 2001March, 2001February, 2001January, 2001December, 2000From the Editor's Desktop, updated 05/26/02OF OTHER INTERESTGuestbook thru 10/20/01Guestbook thru 04/30/01Guestbook thru 12/20/00The Mystery of Texon Hill
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The events since September 11, 2001, have certainly made it difficult to want to do anything, and in an attempt to push forward, this issue will be posted. For the first week after 9/11, my litany was a passage from Genesis 50:20, paraphrased it says "Out of the evil, God made good", and we must ALL BELIEVE that good WILL overcome evil. If there are any alumni that will be sent out as part of the Enduring Freedom campaign, please share them and we will post them on a separate page as a reminder to pray for their safe return. Vaya con Dios
Our Sympathy extended to Dan Loftin, ' 63, for loss of his mother, Iva Loftin and to Jay Foster, ' 65, for loss of his mother, Nelle Foster E BYTES RECEIVED: Received from Boyd Roberts, ' 64 ~ I was born in McCamey...my dad worked the oil fields and we eventually wound up in Powell field. I went to first, second, and third grades in Big Lake before my Dad took us to Northwest Indiana. But I never forgot my roots in Big Lake. After graduating from HS in '64 I joined the Army. Spent 3 years there and then attended college and obtained a BA in Biology from Indiana University. Then went back into the military where I obtained an MS in Business while in Germany from the U of Maryland, and then another BS in electrical engineering from Purdue. I finally married in 1980 and we have a daughter that was born in 1987. I retired from the Army as a colonel and now live in San Antonio and do consulting internet and control system engineering work.Received from Patricia Busby Tomanavich ' 58 ~ An update for me is that I will be retiring effective September 1, 2001, so my work e-mail will no longer be valid after that time. Also, I have a new e-mail address at home: pdt831@hotmail.com Received from David Stewart, ' 58 (in copy of note to Pershing Hicks) ~ Pershing... So good to see your name and email address show up in the Owl Spirit website and that I'm finally able to contact you. I had a alumni website for a while called The Old Owls Toot. But, then I retired from Lockheed Martin, have been running around over the country (including your and , the late, Curtis Newcombs, stomping grounds out at Powell Field), had no time to maintain it, and had to give it up. Hence, Diane Massey Secord created the new one, Owl Spirit '64. Anyway, I understand you have retired from the Air Force Congratulations!!! I currently live here in San Angelo. But believe it or not, am trying to get back to Big Lake. If things go right, I may be opening a Antique, Arts & Crafts shop there and will move there. Big Lake is weird in that there seem to be fewer people there, but the annual graduation classes are around 70 to 80 kids!?! I dont know where they all come from... I guess it is because the town is mostly Hispanic now and they have large famalies. I still maintain contact with Jim Nossent, James Matlock, Arnold Gillaspy, Tom Reese, Tom Link, Kay Weatherby, Roy Holmes, Jim Whitehead, OW Parker, Herb Taylor, Carol Cauble, Pat Busby, etc. They would love to hear from you. I will include several of them on CC: of this to let them know that we have, at last, made contact again. Please let us hear from you... Received from Charles Stevenson, ' 39 ~ It has been so many years since I left out there. I lived in Texon but we moved to Galveston in 1941 and I lost all contact with anyone out there. E. J. Martin was a good friend of mine. His father drove the School Bus for many years and was the school mechanic. Do you have any information about him? Hope to hear from you. Steve Received from Gary Miller, ' 62 ~ We're all doing fine. We lost a couple of friends at the Pentagon. Received from Mr and Mrs David Seals (Reba Theus Cross) ~ August 28, 2001 Dearest Family and Friends, This newsletter will be to all of you who have asked us for details about our glorious wedding trip, and probably even to some who haven't, but we will also get personal notes to each of you soon. We also have dozens of pictures of the three wonderful cities that we visited, but please don't let that stop you from coming back to see us! First, let us thank you for taking the time to come to our wedding! It was so unbelievable and heart-moving to us to think that you would come all this way, and we were so thrilled. We had a wonderful time visiting with everyone on Friday night, and hope you did too. During the wedding itself we were in sort of a happy haze, so we don't remember too many details. Our photographs are great and we enjoy looking at each of you during the fiesta. Please share with us your thoughts, emotions, memories, and impressions of the weekend for us to read and enjoy Received from Jim McCoy, ' 71 ~ I'm also enclosing a pic of my Class of 71's 30th year reunion which was in Midland in July. I hope you can get some pics up on the site. I met your "predecessor" David Stewart. He is running an "antique mall" in the old Papa Joe's convenience store building here (Hwy67 at 137).
MEMORIES.....: Halloweenby Rick Roche, ' 72 Halloween has changed in the last thirty or forty years. In Big Lake in the 1960s, few families decorated their houses more than putting out a Halloween candy bowl. Only the younger kids went trick or treating. I believe I last went in third grade and then only around the block and to my Grandmother’s house. The candy given was also different. There were no name brand candy bars. I mostly got candy corn, hard candies, and paper wrapped toffees. Only once while trick or treating did I find an adult in anything like a costume, as Mr. Duesing came to the door wearing a werewolf mask. During my elementary school years, the big event was the PTA Halloween Carnival which was held partly in classrooms and partly on the tennis courts between the junior high gym and the fourth grade classrooms. The haunted house was always indoors. In a darkened classroom were lots of curtains, glowing objects, and a bowl of grapes posing as eyeballs. Game booths were indoors or outdoors according to the weather. I remember fishing for prizes, playing bingo, and throwing balls. My favorite activity was the cakewalk. The walk had been painted on the street next to the tennis court. A PTA parent ran a record player while we walked around anxious to win a cake or pie. I remember doing this many times, but I don’t remember ever winning. The highlight of the PTA Carnival was the crowning of the king and queen. Each class first through fifth grades voted for a boy and a girl to represent it in the contest. I was voted class king in both first and second grades and got to stand on the elementary school auditorium stage in my costume as the judges decided the overall king and queen. In first grade, Brenda Reese and I won. I don’t remember what costumes we wore, but I do remember we paraded down the hall and around the tennis court wearing foil crowns. In second grade I had my Civil War Union soldier costume ordered from the Sears catalog and a mascara mustache. I had great hopes of winning again. I must have been out of touch with local feelings, thinking I could win wearing a Union uniform in a Confederate state. It had only been 97 years since the war. I do not remember anything about Halloween again until high school. I probably just studied and watched the Peanuts Halloween special. I didn’t go out on Halloween night until my senior year. For some of the older kids Halloween night was a time of mischief that adults for some reason tolerated. Roving bands of delinquents threw eggs and water balloons at each other in a running battle that was fiercer than I ever knew until I ventured out that last Halloween I spent in Big Lake. My group of friends (Don, Jeff, Jack, and Pete) somehow decided that before we went off to college we should take part in the Halloween traditions. I know it wasn’t my idea, but I went along. Someone supplied us with balloons which we filled as full of water as we could throw. We may also have had a few eggs. We got into the back of someone’s pickup and road around the dark streets of town looking for someone to soak. I don’t think we struck many blows. We did, however, get trapped between two rival pickups armed with balloons filled with wet sheep manure. We were drenched in dung. After a few moments of shock, we laughed it off, as we realized we were out of our league We went home to showers. (Don Richmond doesn’t remember the incident, though he says it may be true. He says that we toilet papered a teacher’s house, which I don’t remember, though it may be true.)
Another Memory from Jim McCoy, ' 71 ~ I can't remember which year I was elected to represent my classroom in the King and Queen contest (4th or 5th grade?), or even who my "Queen" was (Mickey Hallmark?? I remember I had a crush on her.) All I remember is that we didn't win… and the costume I wore: a billowy clown outfit sewn together of gaudy red and black satin by Mrs. Proffitt (Sheriff James Proffitt's mother, who was a noted local seamstress). My trick-or-treat days were behind me, and I really thought I was "too old" to go around in such a get-up. (If anything, I'd have rather gone as Sgt. Rock, cigar clinched in teeth.) The clown costume was forgotten until years later when it found a second life… worn by classmate Warren Wilburn in a high school play put on by Mr. RA Wallace. It fit Warren perfectly then, which should give you an idea of my size in grade school. Haha! As for Rick's statement that his pal Don Richmond says he didn't remember some "event"… I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out that DON was the perpetuator. He is a tricky guy. I recall one summer in high school when many of the Owl Band members were at West Texas State (now West Texas A&M) band camp in Canyon. The boy campers were housed in the men's dorms, with college guys as the dorm "dicks". Our dorm dick was a buzz-cut ROTC-type who didn't take any lip from "those high school kids", and was known for his daily room inspections while we were all away in class. Almost daily, my roommate Billy Morgette and I would find a threatening note taped to our door from the dorm dick to CLEAN UP THIS PIG STY OR ELSE… "I don't want to have to call you out of class in the middle of the day to clean this rat hole up", etc. After nearly two weeks of this harassment (and meticulous dusting and sweeping!), we found out that it was not the dorm dick, but DON RICHMOND who had been leaving the notes. We nearly killed him. HAHA! When Mr. Michael R. Barry was RCHS band director, nearly half the band would go to WTSU band camp each summer. The summer before my senior year, we got to see RCHS alumnus Rodney Miller '70 perform on the stage in the musical "Texas" in Palo Duro Canyon. And I remember the summer before (1969), one night we were all roused from our dorm rooms at 2am to go down to the TV lounge and watch Neil Armstrong hop off the steps of the Lunar Landing Module and say "That's one small step for a man…" … LIVE from the moon. I'll never forget that. | ||