My mother's brother, Coleman (Sonny), married a beautiful petite black haired pixie of a woman by the name of Joy. She had been a stewardess and Sonny had played football for Vanderbilt. Joy looked like the actress, Suzanne Pleshette, and Sonny looked like Paul Newman. Sonny farmed and Joy got a job teaching Spanish and art in Sikeston, Mo. Their bedroom at the back of Granny's house was filled with her artwork. I adored her and she generously gave me drawing lessons during my summer visits. She showed me how to draw portraits. When I was in 9th grade, we had a state required Civics class and the teacher had us do a career booklet. We had to interview someone who had the job we wanted in the future and research the job itself. I selected art teacher, just like Joy. She generously answered all of my questions. Eleven years later I taught English and art at my alma mater, Sterlington High School, for a year for my former English teacher's sabbatical for her doctorate. My old Civics teacher, Cleo Jordan, still had my career booklet and showed it off proudly. In all her years of assigning the project, I was the only student who had actually gotten the job I had researched.

My art room was an old home ec room in the ancient, unair conditioned two story school building. It had huge windows and 12 foot ceilings. There was a hole in the floor and I could see down into a first grade class on the first floor. One day, I was using the pulley to open one of the windows and the whole window, casement and all, fell out of the second story and onto the ground below. Thankfully no one was outside. I was paid $6800 a year and $6900 the second year. The third year, I took the job at Sterlington High School and made the big jump to $7200 a year.

Mom and Dad kindly offered me a room at home in St. Louis so I could go to Fontbonne College and finish the art degree. A year later, I got a job teaching art at C-6 School District Fox Jr. High in Arnold, Mo. for $11K and taught there until 1980. I bought a home 3 miles from Mom and Dad. They had both had heart attacks and I could be there for them. After Roger and I married, they decided to move to Little Rock to be near Amy and David. I taught at Fox for 6 years and was making $25K when I moved to Rolla to be with Roger who was making $25K at U of M, Rolla. I found a job teaching at R-1 S.Dist. in Dixon, Mo. For $12K. I tried to get Roger to get an engineering job in St. Louis, but he wanted to be near his family. It was painful taking a 50% pay cut.

I had Haden in 1984 and Roger had a heart attack a week after he was born. U of M, Rolla wouldn't tenure him, so he got a job at U of M, St. Louis 3 months later, which he hated. We bought a house in suburban St. Louis, and I got my favorite teaching job ever at the St. Louis Art Museum. I taught there for a year and Roger wanted to move to Memphis to work with two of his former teachers at U of Memphis. We moved to Memphis and I got a job teaching elementary art for Shelby Co. School District for $25K. I taught art for 30 years until I retired in 2016. All of that was 42 years of teaching.

I think it was my 4th year at Chimneyrock because both Sam and Haden were at Pisgah. I think Haden was in 4th grade. I decided to do papermaking with the students. I made deckels (screens to hold the pulp) and had two work stations at the back of the room. The idea was to work with 2 kids at a time while the rest of the class worked on an assigned paper project. Earlier I had decided I needed some organic stuff mixed in with the paper pulp and decided that fall leaves would be a nice touch. There was some gorgeous foliage in the small circle, hickory, oak, sweet gum. I started pulling leaves off the trees and noticed some pretty orange ones. But they were coming off a hickory, which has yellow leaves. I look closer and notice that the leaves were growing from a hairy vine! OMG! I had a handful of poison ivy! I threw them down and went to the maintenance room and washed my hands with clorox which neutralizes the oil. I didn't break out. But just think! What if I had 20 or 30 kids that day dipping their hands and arms into poison pulp! What a disaster diverted.

Anyway. Shortly after noon, I started having some pain and felt like I was going to throw up. I had a third-grade class and yelled for Cody Black (one of my little man boys) to get me a bucket because I thought I was going to throw up. He didn't seem thrilled to do that. Then I told him to go to the office and tell Mrs. Lane, the principal, to call an ambulance because I thought I was having a heart attack. I knew I was about to faint and the pain was horrible. I told the kids to keep working on their drawings and I was going to lie down at the back of the room behind my desk on my rug. I passed out and then the next thing I know, Nelzy Knight, second grade teacher and former nurse was pressing on me. The fire dept. got me on a gurney and as we were going down the hall we passed a classroom of kindergarteners waiting for eye tests. I started feeling better and asked not to go to the hospital, but the rule is, if the ambulance comes, you're going no matter what. So Pat Ashcraft, the asst. principal got in and off we went. I found out later that Cody had gone screaming into the principal's office "She's dead! She's dead!" When Liz Lane got to my room, the kids were quiet and hard at work. She thought I must be pranking her. She asked the kids where I was. They all calmly pointed to the back of the room and said "She's back there. She's dead." See. The only teacher who has died and the kids stayed on task. I found out later that I had an ovarian cyst rupture, my blood pressure rapidly dropped causing me to pass out.

The next morning I got back in school, wanted to reassure the students that I hadn't died, but one of my kindergarten mothers stopped me, concerned. She said that her daughter said I had given birth to Mrs. Lester's baby. Mrs. Lester was definitely 8 mos. pregnant. I was heavy. I could have been pregnant. I saw Vernessa (Mrs. Lester) come shuffling down the hallway and I said "Guess what!? I just had your baby." She never broke stride and said "Well, was it pretty?" I said, "of course, it looks just like us!"

Rex and I got to choose one nice gift for Christmas when we were in high school. I chose an oil painting set one Christmas. Junior year, I think. I painted a still life of fruit. It is framed in my hallway. I was 15. I also got a portable typewriter sophomore year and a book club membership my senior year. I majored in English. My test scores were so high that I "CLEP-ed" out of freshman English and a couple of other classes and went right into advanced classes. I needed a minor, so I started taking art classes. To major in art, you had to have a portfolio. I started by taking clay classes. I took handbuilding and wheel throwing, clay and glaze making. I loved clay and still do.

A major in English is 36 hours or 12 classes, each an hour and a half long. A minor in art was 30 hours or 10 classes that were 4 hours long because there are 3 hours of studio time. A major in art is 70 hours, 36 for English. So I graduated in 5 years with a BS in English and Art. I had 130 hours before I graduated (a lot more than I needed to graduate) and was teaching without the degree. I needed 2 art history classes that were not scheduled until the spring and summer, so I graduated the summer of 1972. Even though I had to wait to graduate, having the art minor made me more hirable. The school could get an extra English teacher and an art class, too. I went on to finish the art major at Fontbonne College near Forest Park in St. Louis. I became a fiber artist. Until I married, I had a large floor loom and studio in my basement. When we moved to Rolla, I contributed my huge collection of books to the Rolla and Dixon High School's libraries. I sold the floor loom and used the yarn with my Dixon art students. I was fine with the loss of the books and art supplies. I then had room for my two new babies instead.