Diana Allford Mullinix

Went to Boise State after high school for about 3 1/2 years but never graduated. Always wanted to be an elementary school teacher but Harvey convinced me to change majors to chemistry. Got the outstanding freshman chemistry student award but did not think I would have had control over a high school class of students. Did not know what I would do if I caught another Roger Byerly kissing a girl on floor of chem lab. Or was that just a rumor? (This was not really a bad thing, Roger. Alot of us wished we had been the girl!)

Harvey and I married on August 23, 1969 after he graduated from Boise State. My older sister Linda & I had a double wedding. We married brothers and thus both went from Allford to Mullinix.
I did not work for pay (just alot of volunteer work} until the boys were grown. I did fill-in for our church secretary when she was on vacation. She died suddenly and they asked me to take the job until they could find someone. It took them 5 yrs.

Then I had uterine cancer.

Have worked for Directv in technical dept. as a customer service rep for the last 4 yrs and just quit (retired) on 08/22/08. Harvey and I celebrated 39 yrs on the 23rd.

I didn’t think I had anything to say until I read some of your profiles & the memories came flooding in. Vickee Larson’s inclusion of all that music in her wonderful video clips reminded me of how much she was into pop rock music. Vickee had a huge (6 ft?) poster of this really ugly guy on her bedroom wall. I think Vickee was shocked that I did not know who Mick Jagger was.

Vickee did try to get me out a few times. She talked me into driving us to Boise one evening in my old green Packard car. I do not remember why but it must have had something to do with boys. Vickee was so wild! Vickee’s parent’s told us to be home by midnight. We got back at 12:05 am after driving that old, old car 80 mph all the way home. That was back when there was no traffic between Boise and Meridian. I thought we were going to get into trouble because we were late. Vickee’s mom only commented that it was the first time Vickee had come home on time! Wow, Vickee, when did you & Kay Partridge usually get back?

I did get into trouble a couple of times at school. Dottie Coltrin discovered that we both sat in the same seat in a classroom during different class periods. She sat there during 2nd period & I was in the same seat during 5th period. Dottie began writing me notes … but not on paper! She wrote them in pencil on the desktop. I was able to erase them and nothing seemed to happen. She kept asking me to write a note back to her. So I did. Something did happen then. Mr. Thomas called us in after school and had us wash all the desktops. I was too dumb to realize that if I left a note written on the desktop in 5th period for Dottie to read the next day in 2nd period it would be noticed by the teacher after school! We, of course, signed our names.

The 2nd time I got into trouble was also for defacing school property. I took Typing I from Mrs. Muller and sometimes we needed to center a text on the page as part of the assignment. I would write the total number of letters/characters in a line right into our text book. I reasoned that it was dumb for everyone to have to count the characters and this would save someone time. We all knew how to count, right? Apparently she was trying to figure out who was writing in the text book for a while and never suspected it was me. I was caught because I printed my name in the book & counted the letters. Don’t think that could have helped anyone but Mrs. Muller finally knew who the culprit was. I was surprised she was unhappy about it. I was allowed to make amends by erasing all marks in my typing book.

My favorite teachers were Mr. Thomas and Mr. Wikstrom. I saw Mr. Wikstrom a few years after we graduated when Harvey & I were voluntarily taking football tickets at Boise State University stadium. He said he was no longer teaching but was a realtor. Teaching just did not pay enough. What a shame for all the students he could have inspired to read Shakespeare. He must have been quite a sports fan. Remember when he brought in a TV and we could all watch major league baseball?

I did have a great time in band. Set by Randy Sedlacek in junior high playing trumpet but Randy never would talk much. Mr. Cherry asked me to switch to French horn in high school. I did like it better because I never had to play solos. I remember that Bill Patterson was very good on his French horn. There were some songs in marching band that no music was written for the French horn and he could play by ear something that would match the music. I could transpose music into our key if we had music but I could not just make up something that actually made sense with no music at all.

Always had fun with Cherry Britton, Elaine Ellis, Phyllis Stanger, Rick Waitley and Mickey Meyer on the band bus. Elaine was always who everyone wanted to be with. Both Rick and Mickey sat by Elaine in band regularly so they usually hung with us. Only long trip I can remember was going to Cambridge, Idaho to visit the school that Mr. Van Order’s brother taught at. I’m not sure how he got the school to approve that trip. Dottie Coltrin was also in band but usually had a boyfriend and was passing the time in the back of the bus with no entertainment help needed from us giggly girls.

Mr. Van Order began teaching music at our school in our junior year. I saw Mr. Van Order again in 1990 when Harvey & I traveled with Jason’s high school marching band as chaperones. We went to a multi-state marching band competition in Utah and Mr. Van Order was there with his school band from another Idaho school. His student teacher was the pastor’s son from a church we had attended in Boise, so also knew him. I’m very positive that Mr. Van Order did not remember me.

Both our boys play instruments. Quentin plays piano and cello. Jason played tenor sax. They both played in Jazz band together. Quentin played piano for one of the church services at our church for a while. He is currently a pastor in Marseilles,IL so can’t preach & play piano. He is also still taking graduate classes. His two sons are not interested in the piano. They want to play the guitar.

Grandkids are great but they are a little too honest. This past Christmas when Andrew was leaving he said, "Nana, I love your Star Wars toys." Michael has told me he wanted to live with us. But I have no illusions as to why. I have well over $5,000 in Star Wars toys. Did anyone else go a little crazy over that series? I made Harvey stop at every Fred Meyer, Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Target or KB toys from Pocatello to Astoria, Oregon on one vacation.

A bad memory of high school was when Cherry talked me into playing powder-puff football, the juniors against the seniors. Imagine my surprise when we got to the game and were playing against Ilene Austin and Sherry Rupp. Traitors! I soon learned the reason…. They wanted to play WITH Linn Tonks and not against her. I happened to catch the football each of the first 4 kickoffs and got totally creamed by Linn each time. Thankfully the coach pulled me out (before I decided to just not catch the ball anymore). Then Cherry was hit by Linn & didn’t get up for awhile. It did bother me that Linn came at us with a big grin and knew no one was going to stop her. I have no idea if we ever made any yardage. Do you know, Coralee?


UPDATE: Just edited my comment about spelling of my last name 'cause I seemed to have confused some. My last name does have 2 "l's" = Allford.