Betty Smith Merritt

Most of you probably don't remember me, because I was the quite, shy one! HA! Those days are gone!! I outgrew the shyness and learned to be anything but quiet. I left Childress in November 1963 the day I married a guy in the Air Force, and haven't been back a lot. For 21 years, I lived in a military atmosphere and moved from one side of the world to the other a couple of times! After we were divorced in 1984, my 2 then teenaged daughters and I settled in Denver, CO and have been here ever since.My brother, Don Lewis, still lives in Vernon, TX so I'm there often and will actually be there in May. One of my nieces graduates from Baylor May 12th so I'm flying in for that then spending a week with Don and his wife, Jean, before I go on to Indiana to represent my company at a trade show.I've worked for Johns Manville many, many years now and just set a target date for retirement...1001 working days left to go!Would love to hear from everyone. Is there anyone else living in CO?

I got the information about the Reunion in Las Vegas and will have to let you know later whether or not I'll be there...I was a little disappointed at the location (not that it's not a great place to be for a weekend)but I'm afraid a lot of people won't come because of the expense. Hope I'm wrong. Anyway, will try to be better about checking in with you guys later. Thanks for the effort you're putting into organizing it.

Betty is a member of Classmates.com and she can be reached through that website.

Sandi Dement deVeau

I feel so 'out of touch' with the whole High School scene. However, Joe Don, while in Dallas and since moving, keeps me up-to-date and chastises me often for not remembering who is who and attending the All School Reunions all these years. I just laugh at him. So as far as we know at this point, we will be attending the reunion in October. This should please Joe Don as he has been after me forever to respond. :0 It should be great fun to play 'catch up' with everyone.

I had 35 years with Mr. E (as we all called him , Elza Miller) ... wonderful marriage and lots of fun. After he became ill and had to medically retire for a year ... I was able to move my job (marketing for a woman-owned interior design firm with studios in Lubbock and Dallas) to our home for the year prior to his death in 2000. After a number of years flying in and out of Dallas and establishing friends and professional contacts here ... I up and decided the year after he passed to move to Big D.

A year later, I was introduced to an amazing, wonderful gentleman from Washington, DC. We were an immediate 'hit' and married on a beach in FL at Sunset four months later with only our two daughters and families attending. Elza had told me and the girls the night before he died that because he was having to leave me so early ... he would bring me the person I needed in my life ... not necessarily who I thought I wanted. When I met Tony (Anthony deVeau), I knew instantly that this was his gift to me. Ever since we have done nothing but run and play. He left PRU (retired) last February and has just taken a position with Countrywide to head up a team who will be working with lenders and home owners providing options to each in the midst of this mortgage mess. I'm not sure how I feel about his returning to work, but he is excited and ready to offer his years of experience. So we'll see.

I am a slug bug since I met Tony ... my career had been as a banking officer, community mental health and then med/surg to psych administrator and lastly ... architectural interior design development for commercial space planning = the most fun job I have Ever had. It ruined me for the corporate world forever. Now, I'm not sure what I do except just be me and enjoy every minute of it.

We have our eldest daughter, Stephanie, living in VA and youngest, Nikki, here in Dallas. We have two grand girls in Virginia ages 10 and 7 and a 6 month old little grandson here in Dallas ... love having one so close at hand. As Tony is from back East ... we make many trips back there and now that Stephanie and family are in VA ... of course we are there more often.

My mother is in Lubbock in and out of the hospital. She is now on hospice care so we are there more than here in Dallas at this time.

We are off to the Hill Country and lots of wine tours. :)

Christmas with the deVeau family 2007

Sandi

Clara R.Meek: Living the Good Life in Boerne

Clara Robinson Meek

One of Clara's dreams was to have her own personal retreat or studio where she could work and be creative. Thanks to her husband, Don Meek, she now has that dream studio in her backyard and she is sharing some of her work with us.

Clara's studio in Boerne

Enjoy: Art by Clara

Clara's dog Murray made a previous debut on the blog when he and Bogart dropped by in the form of a Get Well card for Noah. (Monsters Among Us .... November 5, 2007)

Now we see the real Murray admiring himself in Clara's work.

Murray and Murray above left and Murray and Bogart above right

5 comments:

Noah said...
I really liked seeing a picture of my friend Murray. I have the portrait card he and Bogart sent to me I after I was hurt in my box of keepsakes ... along with my squeaky chew toys and "safe" bones and old socks ... all my favorite things! Perhaps one day I'll get to meet them ... and their parents, Clara and Don ... and we can all frolic together in the hills around Boerne!
February 25, 2008 4:04 PM

Jennifer Johnston Smith said...
Clara, Yahn and I loved seeing your artwork, and your studio. I think Yahn may be a tad jealous that you have such a super place to work and think and just let the creative juices flow. I think it's giving him ideas for the future. Come to think of it, I wouldn't mind having such a space of MY own.... Oh, Yahn darling....)O(

February 25, 2008 4:11 PM
clara robinson meek said...
My first love is abstract expressionism. The three top photos are works in progress. I usually have at least 4 things going at once. My work is more about the process and elements and principles. I have only completed 2 paintings because they keep evolving. I'm having fun with it. If anyone likes any of it, that would be a bonus.I'm more proud of the studio itself than what I'm doing inside it. Don built it completely by himself. At the time he was building it, I was busy building back my own health, energy & stamina. I would normally have been hands on from bottom to top. The studio is a beautiful gift for me and I savor it.

February 26, 2008 8:36 PM
Sheila Davis Martinez said...
Clara, I love the studio! It fits in perfectly with your home and with the wonderful landscaping that Don provided. He is quite the artist too. Open house anytime soon?oh...what is the picture with all the circles?So glad you are finally painting again.

February 26, 2008 9:01 PM

Nicki Wilcoxson said...
Clara, I love the work that you have done just as I love your house and backyard and the studio. Keep sharing with us!

March 3, 2008 8:49 PM

Jennifer Johnston Smith

"Goin' to the Chapel" ... or in our case, Judge's chambers....

Hearing about how some of us met and married our spouses has been really interesting, so Yahn and I thought we would relate the details of our wedding.... I have good money here that says it is probably the strangest courtship and wedding story of anyone in the class. If yours was more bizarre ... then come sit by me and let's talk!!! BTW, if I had had good money then ... to cover all the bets I'm sure were made on how long our marriage would last ... we would be quite comfortably fixed here in our "golden" years....

I've shared various details about our life and journeys together (and one really cherished story about a date) in diverse places on the blog. (See particularly on the "main" blog, "Well, Durn ... I'm Thankful...", published November 17, 2007, "Close Encounters of the Bobcat Kind..." published September 13, 2007 and "Where in the World is the Class of '63?", published August 17, 2007. Also see the "Yahn Smith" post under "Show and Tell", published January 8, 2008.) And now in the spirit of candor evidenced so wonderfully by Joe Don and Sheila ... and because it's a really good story ... I'll share with you all the tale of how Yahn and I actually met, and the circumstances ... and others ... attending our wedding.

In February 1967 I was in Colorado Springs when I ran into a friend. Naturally we wanted to catch up a bit, but she was on her way to meet other friends for lunch. She asked me to join her group, and I assented ... and it was then that I met Yahn. (See his comment on our meeting to the post "And Then Scheherazade TOTALLY Lost Her Head...", published November 29, 2007.)

In the "Close Encounters ..." post, I alluded to Yahn attending Colorado College and living in a "residence hall" in Colorado Springs. And that was true ... he did take some classes at CC.... However, I neglected to mention that the "residence hall" was on the grounds of the private Emory John Brady psychiatric facility ... yep, a mental hospital. In the '60s it became, if not commonplace at least not terribly unusual, for affluent parents to sometimes "park" their unruly teenaged children in mental institutions (see the movie "Girl, Interrupted"). This is what had happened to Yahn after his first year at Western State College in Gunnison, where he and his friends there had sometimes taken the idea of "PAR-TAY" to an extreme level. Shortly after signing Yahn into the hospital (remember, the age of majority then was 21), his father was transferred to Randolph AFB in San Antonio, and as they would no longer be resident in the state, Tanner and Lorita (Yahn's parents) signed court commitment papers, making Yahn a ward of his psychiatrist, Dr. Gilbert O. Horn, "until further order of the Court." So, de facto and de jure, Dr. Horn had total control of Yahn's life (in loco parentis ... and don't get me started on "loco" parents) during the more than two years he was at Brady's. Some years later Dr. Horn was charged with 19 counts of gross negligence and blatant malpractice by the Colorado State board which governed psychiatrists.... But I digress....

Anyhoo, Yahn and I began dating, with the usual scenario being that I would drive down from Denver on Saturday, pick him up at the hospital, go to lunch, to a movie, dancing, (cheap) dinner, (cheap) whatever ... as long as I checked him back into the hospital no later than midnight. I would then find a quiet street, park my Mustang and sleep in the back seat ... the memory of those contortions still hurts), then visit with him at the hospital until late afternoon on Sunday before returning to Denver.

After more than a year of this, one day in mid-May 1968, during his regular weekly session with Yahn, Dr. Horn remarked that we seemed to be quite serious about each other ... and did we want to go ahead and get married? Well, duh!!! We had sooooo been looking forward to the day Yahn would be released and we could do just that ... and now Dr. Horn just casually dropped this opportunity into our laps! (I would be remiss if I did not say that one reason we rushed to take up Dr. Horn's offer instead of just waiting for Yahn's release is that at that time we had no intimation or real hope that Yahn would be released anytime soon ... he had really good insurance. which the hospital just loved to milk... and I had no legal standing to try to help him secure his release ... could in fact have been prosecuted for even trying.... But the marriage would give me legal standing as a spouse.)

We sprang into action to bring this miracle about before the end of May ... sorry, notwithstanding the urgency of the circumstances, I just absolutely refused to be a June bride ... and we only had about two weeks left in May to get the blood tests (remember those?), license, arrange for the ceremony to be performed, etc. Our next hurdle was to find a judge who would marry us in his chambers, since neither of us wanted a religious ceremony. And wonder of wonders, we did find a judge who agreed to marry us after court on Friday, May 31 ... the start of a long Memorial Day weekend (that was before they officially made "Memorial Day" the last Monday in May). But somehow we managed to put it all together.

And so, we were married ... with my father and his wife and six mental patients in attendance at our wedding!!!! Because the (other) mental patients weren't allowed to have any significant sums of money (they might buy a bus ticket and escape, you understand), our wedding gifts ran to beer can cigarette lighters, ashtrays and coasters made in occupational therapy (OT) at the hospital, things like that....

Our "honeymoon" consisted of one night at the Denver Hilton ... the most we could afford ... and when we arrived to check in, all we had was one suitcase that clanked because there was nothing in it but two bottles of cheap champagne. Yahn had never checked into a hotel before, and he has never been any good at filling out forms (as he will attest), so when he went to register at the hotel, his mind "blanked". After a loooooong pause, he turned to me and said in front of the desk clerk and manager: "Should I put 'Mr. and Mrs.', or what?" I almost died of embarrassment as the hotel personnel exchanged smirks. I told him to do that ... then Yahn wrote down what looked, in his handwriting, like Mr. and Mrs. JOHN SMITH. Raised eyebrows to go with the smirks. He blanked again on the next line ... and after another looooong pause, he said "What's our address?" The smirks were almost ear to ear ... and the eyebrows hit the hairline.... I said "Give me the card" and filled it out ... I was an interesting shade of fuscia by then, I'm sure. (You must remember that in those days it was illegal in many states for unmarried people of the opposite sex to share a hotel room together. We were actually expecting a visit by the house detective all night ... but it never happened.)

In honor of our nuptials, Dr. Horn actually let Yahn be away from the hospital from Friday noon through the weekend, but I had to return him (sort of like a library book) promptly at the stroke of noon on Monday!!! O bliss!!!! This pattern continued for the next few weeks, until Yahn was duly released from the hospital just over two months later ... without our having to take legal action ... and we were really able to begin our life as husband and wife. Conventional wisdom about marrying a mental patient (or me ... grin) to the contrary, we'll celebrate our 40th anniversary this year.

And amid all the beer can cigarette lighters, etc. ... I have one "gift" ... souvenir ... whatever ... that I still treasure ... and that I'll bet no one else in the class has. I have a letter from Dr. Horn (subsequent charges notwithstanding), stating unequivocally that my husband was sane enough to make the decision to marry me!!!!

Yahn and Jennifer at their wedding, May 31, 1968. Jennifer's father Keith is behind them.

)O(

Sheila Davis Martinez

At some point in January 1963, a gypsy drifted through town and sprinkled wanderlust dust into the air. I took a deep breath and was hooked! I couldn't get out of Childress fast enough. Of course, I graduated, but showing up for the ceremony took a lot of curiosity...was I really going to graduate?? Mentally, I was gone from my life in Childress months before we graduated.

That summer, I went to school at Amarillo Jr College, then came back home for a few days before heading out to fulfill my dream of becoming a doctor at the University of Texas in Austin. There were probably a thousand schools that would have been a better pick for me, but my heart was set on UT ever since the 3rd grade when I heard Jimmy Wilcoxson talking about their great football team. Like a football team was going to make or break me! LOL! Jimmy, this is all your fault! I thought he was the smartest boy in school until I realized it was really JoeDon.

I wish I could say that I went to school, made good grades, graduated and went to Medical school. The real story is that I went to UT, got real stupid, got pregnant, then got married.

Life has a way of kicking you in the butt to get your attention. The marriage lasted long enough for me to have 2 children to raise. Barry and his family have been a strong part of my life and I am eternally grateful for their open arms and generosity. Sandra and Robin came from that marriage.

Before we divorced in 69, Barry and I moved to San Antonio which is where I met Webb Wilcox a couple of years later. The kids and I moved to Port Aransas to run a hotel on the beach in the summer of 72. Webb followed, asking me to marry him. We married in 73.

Good times. We lived on the beach for several years, then eventually put our shoes back on and moved back to civilization. I have to tell you, it was hard to learn to wear shoes again. I loved living on the beach.

While Webb and I were trying to raise my two older children to be decent citizens, we started with our second family...Jessica, Ben and Kayte....all born within 2 years of each other. Talk about insanity! LOL...It has been a fun ride and I wouldn't trade one second of it for any other choice that I might have had.

Webb and I divorced after 15 years of marital bliss. Since then, I have lived in Wimberley, TX, San Marcos TX and Austin..with a very brief stint in Dallas working for a fashion designer. At some point in this time frame, I went back to school to study fashion design/entreprenurial business management. One year and I was done with school...forever. Not done with learning, but done with that mode of education.

I would like to say that I own my own business, but to be honest, it owns me. For the last 10 years I have worked as a seamstress/fashion designer doing bridal designs and alterations, exotic dancewear, costuming, anything I could draw, cut and get under that sewing machine needle. Since I have a difficulty with idle time, I generally pair my sewing business with other types of income. I have been a barmaid, bartender, house mom for strip clubs, lingerie retail, and the school district lets me drive a school bus! Whoa..what is up with that!!?

Right now, I am delivering pizza...fun job, working in a boutique in one of the clubs, and also driving a school bus for Lake Travis ISD. I also have a little business making/selling soaps, lotions and candles.

My wonderful children are Sandra Foglia who lives in San Marcos with her 3 boys, Andrew, Luke and Francis, ages 11, 16, 20. Sandra works for Texas State University in the Dance Department. All of the boys are in school. Andrew at TX STate, Luke is in HS and Fran in in MS.

Robin Knight lives in Phoenix, is married to Lili. Robin is in his last 5 months of Internal Medicine/Pediatrics residency. Lili is a med transcriptionist. They do lots of things like marathons, Boston Terrier rescue shelter adoptive parents, and are trying to adopt a child from China.

Jessica Wilcox has 2 boys, Caleb 12, Aaron 4, lives out here in Lakeway. She is in her last rotation of nursing school. She is a great kid.

Ben lives out here in Lakeway, too. He works as a cook for one of the Irish Sport Pubs in town.

Kayte, my youngest is in school at Texas State studying nutrition. She worked for Continental Airlines as a flight attendant before 9-11, then decided that college was a better path.

Well, that's all folks. Some more of the good, bad and not so ugly. For the record, I love Childress and am very thankful that it was my home for so many years. Great place to learn about life. Great friends.

Raenell Wynn Smith

Proud graduate of Childress High School Class of 1963....

Just a little bit about me and my family. Jim Smith and I married in 1964; April 5th we will have been married 44 years. We still live in Childress and raised our children here, after a few journeys to Houston, Amarillo and California.

We have three children, none of whom reside in Childress. Our oldest is our daughter Kelley; she and her husband Bobby live in Katy, Texas. She has one son, Tyler, who is now age 22. Our second child, Todd, lives in Richmond, Texas. He has two sons, Mark (age 23) and Janson (age 16), who live in a suburb of Denver. Our youngest son, Jeff, and his wife Lauri live in Amarillo. They have given us two beautiful granddaughters, ages 14 and 15, and a grandson, age 12. Jim and I have been blessed with wonderful grandchildren and enjoy them so much whenever possible.

Jim works for the City of Childress and manages the airport here. He loves to sing and play base guitar for the "Red River Boys", in First Baptist Church, fish and work in the yard. I am employed at the hospital here in Childress and have been for 30 years in June. I am the Medical Records and Transcription Department Coordinator/Supervisor. I started out as a transcriptionist, then moved to being a pharmacy tech, then took the position of Transcription Supervisor, and for the past five years have been over the entire Medical Records Department. My hobbies are reading, working alongside Jim in the yard, and traveling to see my kids and grandkids as often as we can.

Jim and I love to go to Branson, our favorite getaway place, and go there at least one week out of every year. Sometimes we try to work in an extra long weekend here and there. We like to travel by car as Jim doesn't like to fly, but we see some beautiful country and just enjoy what God has for us to see in this beautiful country we live in.

We're both looking toward retirement within the year (we hope) and look forward to doing more traveling and enjoying our grandkids as much as possible.

I wrote these two poems when Paula passed away (May 13, 2002) and thought you all might enjoy them. The first one reflects my feelings for "The Nine". I can hardly wait until March 16th so Jennifer, Linda Kay, JoAnn and I can make more memories in Paris and London that we can recall and share with each other in the future.

Like Sisters

We were like sisters, you and I.
We shared so much, we laughed, we cried.
We talked about our dreams, our hurts, our fears -
Our children, grandchildren and high school years.

Oh! What special times we had.
Some were good and some were bad;
But in the midst of all we shared,
We always knew how much we cared.

The Journey

My friend....

Today you've taken a journey, one on which I cannot go.
But Heaven is sweeter today. I know this to be so.
We talked about this journey, though some things we did not know
We spoke of expectations; of seeing loved ones we missed so.

We spoke of how you'd get there, the road on which you'd go.
You knew someone was waiting; the way for you he'd show.
Today you took that journey on which I could not go.
But Heaven is sweeter today; this I truly know.

Nicki Sooter Wilcoxson and Jim Wilcoxson

Jim and I would have a hard time telling our stories separately. For the most part our stories have intertwined since we were 15 years old, and now we have been married for 43 years. Jim says we are enmeshed and, yes, that is true so here we tell our story rather than our stories. We, too, will focus on the good and save the bad and the ugly for another day, but we will say that in part it probably has taken all of the good, some of that bad, and a little of the ugly, to give us a true appreciation for the really good we have today.

Jim and I left Lubbock in 1968 after graduating from Tech. We have been in Amarillo ever since except for a one year move to Booker, Texas where Jim enjoyed his first year of coaching. After many years in the golf business, Jim “found” himself, returned to WTAMU, finished his degree and got his teacher's certificate so he could pursue his goal of coaching girl’s basketball which he did for the next 20 years. He enjoyed a very successful career, winning two state titles with the Lady Raiders of Randall High School in 1992 and 1998. In 2004 he became the 135th member of the Panhandle Sports Hall of Fame. I took a more straight forward path and spent 33 years in the school system here in Amarillo first as a classroom teacher, then as a school librarian, and finally retiring as an instructional technology specialist where I worked with teachers and staff development. We have two great daughters, Kim and Jami. Kim and her husband, Vince, and our grandson, Cole who is 8, live in Flower Mound. Jami along with her husband Dorsey, stepson, Hart who is 14, and her son, Jordie who is 12, live here in Amarillo. Our grandsons continue to serve as a constant source of joy to us and we could spend hours telling you how cute, smart, and talented they are, but we will restrain ourselves unless you ask. We don't travel very much except around Texas mostly watching grandsons play baseball, but we are open to some new adventures so we have been to New York City and St. Thomas among other great places and have thoroughly enjoyed it. Both sets of our parents have died over the past 5 years. We do still have ties to Childress as we still have the Wilcoxson home there.

The story of how we first met has been a source of amusement in our family for years. Stepping back to that time in 1960, when my parents dragged me kicking and screaming from our home in Muleshoe to our new home in Childress, they stopped in at the Highway Cafe that very first night in town for dinner. Sitting in the booth across from my family was a man who sold insurance that my dad had previously met on a trip to Childress . Sitting with this insurance man was his son. Introductions were made and I was grossed out that my parents had introduced me to a BOY FROM CHILDRESS! Would the horror of that day never end! I suppose I was a bit dramatic. That was the night I met Jim Wilcoxson and the rest is history. My mother loved to tell that story until the day she died. That was how I met my "BFF". By the way, Jim has never told his side of the story about that night—Ummm….

Our story was previously published as a part of two posts on our blog:

Best Friends Forever (BFF) August 16, 2007

Where in the World is......The Class of '63 August 17, 2007