School Story:
After graduation from DC (no one in my profession can believe that I got the English award for my class!) I went to Southern Methodist University in Dallas as a PE and history major - kind of following in the footsteps of my Mom and Dad. I also played football for two years before I learned the hard way that a 180 pound defensive tackle is not in great demand. If you saw the movie Rudy, that is kind of my story except that I never got into a game. After collegiate football, I had a chance to be a part time coach in the junior high system at Highland Park. It was a good opportunity for me to get experience working with kids and later led to my first job. Trying to help pay for SMU, I came back to DC working in the oil fields for a couple of summers then my junior and senior years, I went up into Ohio and Indiana selling Bibles door to door for a company called the Southwestern Company (If you get any of those kids come to your door, be nice to them...)
My senior year at SMU, I met my future wife Jan, from Kansas City and we got married two years after we graduated in 1975.
After SMU, I taught history and coached at the eighth grade then ninth grade levels at Highland Park fin Dallas for six years. During that time I worked on my masters degree from Univ. of North Texas in education. During that time, Jan taught in Arlington, I was at HP and we lived in Irving.
In 1979, after the birth of our first child Paige, we moved to a town called Whitesboro, up by Lake Texoma. My teammates will gasp but I became the head basketball at that AAA school. We made good friends and had our second child, Tyler while there. During this time, my wife was developing a business in teaching children to swim. At first it was just a seasonal thing as you can imagine but to my pleasant surprise, it became a year around business and today she has indoor pools throughout the Dallas, Austin, Houston, and San Antonio areas. If you see a SUV with an Emler fish and phone numbers on it, give it a salute! My wife is not a small town girls and the basketball thing did not work out too well so after three years, we left Whitesboro and moved to Fort Worth where I taught and coached for 14 years at Castleberry High School. While there we had our third child Katie. With the influence of Tim and Lindsay Lambert, we were homeschooling our children up to junior high. Like many coaches, I found myself spending more time with other people's kids while my own were growing up away from me. We had moved to Arlington where my wife put an indoor pool in an old electrical storage building behind our house. Right next door was Pantego Christian Academy (just down the road from UT-Arlington) so that is where we decided to send our kids. I had the chance to teach and coach there even though it involved a serious drop in salary. I was going to stay there until my kids graduated but have ended up there for 16 years. The last eight, I was the high school principal maybe in the mold of V. V. Vaughn! I retired from PCA in 2012 and since that time, I work for a company called Marketplace Chaplains. I am assigned businesses in my area that I serve as their chaplain. It is like a chaplain in the military only I go to different businesses as their chaplain and interact with them, visit their family members in the hospital, etc.
Though Jan and I both graduated from SMU, our three children opted to be Baylor Bears.
Eleven years ago we moved to Colleyville and would love to host any of you that visit our area. We are very involved in our church and our grandchildren.
My mom is still doing well at 94, living near us in Bedford; my Dad passed away in 2003.
I survived a health challenge in the summer of 2018 when I suffered a heart attack while on a hike in Colorado. The Lord really protected me as my heart stopped three times before being careflighted to Durango. I have had a full recovery.
The Lord has blessed us with good memories and friends, my main regret is not staying in contact with those of you that I shared a great experience in DC.
