Don Hoover, Superintendent
My wife was hired at Butner Schools in Cromwell, Oklahoma and started there the 1976-77 school year. I was filling in holidays at Stormy’s convenience stores and I even helped him and Jack F. put in his second store. But money was tight.
I was shocked when I got a call from Don Hoover, the Superintendent at Butner Public Schools. He had an English Teacher, Robert Sikes, who was leaving to take a job at the Post Office. I interviewed and was hired to start teaching English there in February of 1977.
I needed the job, and I knew so little that I thought I could do it. I guess I did do it, because I finished the school year and was rehired for the following year.
I felt the classes were unhappy with me the first few days. They liked their previous teacher, and if they accepted me, I imagine they felt they were being disloyal to Mr. Sikes. Over time I felt I was more and more accepted.
I remember that Mickey Long and Frankie Moore were not sure they were going to give me a chance. But they did. I remember so many of those kids I had in Senior English. Tim Russell, Terry Northrip, and Mike Davis. Kathy Moorelock was a special kid to my wife and I think she went into some science/medical field.
Mr. Hoover, the Superintendent was a scary guy to me. He was a member, maybe an elder at the Cromwell Church of Christ. I think we felt some obligation to go to church. We were not going to the Wewoka Church of Christ so we became off an on again attendees at the Cromwell Church of Christ.
Mr. Coker, the high school principal, was pretty cool.
What I didn’t get that first experience at Butner was that those underclass students we taught were kids we would keep teaching. If you taught at the school long enough you had the same kids over and over again until they graduated.
If you went to football games you sat with the parents and got to know them. Year after year you grew closer and closer to the kids. No experience in teaching ever reflected that Butner experience.
I had students later in my life that were important to me, but the Butner kids were almost like family to me.
Almost every year, or summer, one or more students died, and those losses were profound. When a kid you knew, that you joked around with, that you watched fall in and out of love, who had stresses at home, money problems at home, and kids with so much potential were killed it was very much like someone in your family had died.
There were so many kids and I hesitate to mention names because unless I get a yearbook and go through it name by name, making comments I feel I will fail to honor kids who deserve to be honored. One of the great gifts of Facebook, perhaps the greatest gift, is it reconnects you with people from your past. I don’t consult Facebook daily, and I miss a lot, fail to reply back, and it could give the impression that I do not honor these adults who once were my students, but that would not be true.
Sometimes when I am happy I will break into one of those Pep Club chants
Everywhere we go-O
People want to Know-O
Who we are
So we tell them
We are the Eagles
Mighty, mighty Eagles
Yes we are-R
Yes we are-R
The Log House
Kathie and I were often Pep Club Sponsors and often one of us would be the Senior Class Sponsor. I remember one year we chaperoned a class to the Tulsa State Fair.
While at the state fair I was wandering around by myself and I came upon a booth for this company that made log houses. The logs were milled and a slot was carved so that each log fit on to the log below it. I was inspired. I wanted a house and a log house seemed perfect for us.
I came home talking up the log house idea. The kids were expensive, so I could not figure out how we would ever afford it. Then I found out we had a family connected to Butner Schools, the Dixons, that had bought some property North of Cromwell in the River Bend area.
I went out to talk with Mr. Dixon. Sadly they had a son who had been attending Butner School before I started teaching there, and he was killed in a car accident.
The Dixon’s had a large two story log house and it was not a manufactured log house, it was closer to what the log house used to be, only better. I learned that they got their house as a kit from an Oklahoma company, McCulloch Log Homes in Red Oak, Oklahoma.
Kathie and drove down there one weekend and met with the owner. We got some primitive plans for the kits he made and sold, and some prices.
I went home and showed the plans to my friend Stormy. Stormy had a couple of lots out at Wewoka Lake and he was wanting to put a cabin out there so he was interested.
One day Stormy called me and asked if I might consider us making our own log houses and not buying kits. That seemed impossible to me. I was a weak kid with a mostly city living background. I had no carpentry skills, I’d never run a chainsaw, and it just seemed impossible to me. Stormy explained that his father-in-law had a peanut farm outside of Lamar, Oklahoma and he had this area of woods that had burned about 20 years ago. After the fire burned out the woods a thicket of Red Oak grew up in that place so that all the trees were about the same size, and all of them grew up mostly straight. The father-in-law wanted to clear those trees to expand his farmable land, and we needed logs to build log houses.
We agreed to help each other build a log house.
I bought 2.5 acres near Wewoka Lake and I got a Craftsman Chainsaw with a 20 inch bar out of the Sears catalogue. One summer after school was out Stormy and I started cutting trees. It was the hardest physical labor I had ever experienced.
One thing I learned from Stormy that I followed the rest of my life, was this: The way to get stuff done is to keep working. Never give up. When you feel you are defeated and success is impossible, sit in the shade, drink something cold, and after about 10 minutes, you get off your fat ass and start again.
We cut dozens and dozens of trees, and trimmed the branches. The logs were too heavy for two guys to lift, especially if one of those guys was me. Stormy bought an old Farmall Tractor and hauled it to Lamar on a trailer.
I would wrap a chain around a log and Stormy would drag it out of the woods. After a few hours we had what resembled dirt roads throughout the woods.
One of my jobs was to figure out how many logs we would need. I spent hours reading books about how to build a log house. I needed to know the height of the walls. I followed the design of one of the log house kits I’d picked up from that McCulloch Log Homes guy. I modified the plans, but I kept the way he did the corners. All the corners were spans of logs at a 45 degree angle which allowed you to create more floor space using shorter logs.
We hired a flatbed 18 wheeler from Romy Lively, and Romy actually came with us to get the logs. We had a winch truck and we used a log to allow the winch to jack up the logs high. The flatbed was backed under a dangling load of logs and lowered on to the flatbed. It took us 4 trips to get enough logs back to Wewoka. We piled half the logs on Stormy’s lake lot, and half the logs on my property.
I spent the winter trying to figure out how we would deBark the logs.
It turned out not to be that hard. After a winter laying out in the open air the bark came loose. I bought two draw knives and we were able to debark the logs fairly easily.
Stormy ran into some guy who’d been doing concrete work and he was in need of fast cash so he bought all the guys concrete finishing equipment. We had concrete ordered after we’d built the forms and dug a footing.
I used some Indians who were taking a course in plumbing. The teacher and the Indians came out and did all the under the concrete plumbing for me.
David Phillips, someone I knew from the church of Christ and a friend of Stormy’s had a backhoe and he put in my septic system.
The Summer of 1978 we started laying the logs.
Ryan Norman
While we were teaching and I was building two log houses with my “kicked out of the church of Christ” friend Stormy, I was also talking with Kathie about maybe adopting.
Kathie’s diabetes was a serious chronic condition, and her doctor did not want her to have a baby.
I’d tried to have a vasectomy before we were married. I was able to have one soon after we were married. One of the doctors in Wewoka did not have the misgivings about giving me the “ole snip snip.” I remember going through the operation OK, but one thing I found off putting was that the doctor smoked a cigar while performing surgery. He would cut on me a little while and then step away and take a puff or two on his cigar.
A couple of days later I was oozing pus through the incision.
I was resolved after this vasectomy to being a childless couple, but we ran into some people we’d known in college who had adopted through Colorado Christian Services and that was not only a church of Christ affiliated service, but they took donations rather than charging a fee. I think that policy did not last, but that was the way it was then.
Kathie was reluctant to adopt but I was pushy and she agreed for us to “look into it.”
We were attending the church of Christ, enough, I guess, to call ourselves church of Christ people. I was doing what I have done throughout my life, I was compartmentalizing my beliefs. I could put my doubts in a room in my mind castle and I could shut the door. That allowed me to pretend to be a good church of Christ person.
Now, of course, I find that both spinless and abhorrent, but at the time it served me well. Remember, I am not the hero of my own story, I am a flawed person who did the wrong thing about as often as I did the right thing.
I was able to apply to adopt. I could write out the background stuff and stress my time in Preacher School and Oklahoma Christian, and I left out the Withdrawal of Fellowship stuff that happened in Wewoka.
We were approved to go to the next level that included a weekend “training session” in Oklahoma City. It turned out we were not only being given information, but we were being evaluated ourselves. It was January 1979 that we went to the training session. At the end of that session we were told that in about 30 days we would get a letter telling us if we were approved to adopt a child. We were told that after we got that approval letter we could expect to wait about 3 years before we were given a child.
We were excited.
Kathie kept wanting us to go out and buy a baby bed, or a changing table.
I was against it. We hadn’t even gotten our approval letter yet. I figured if we got the approval letter that we could start buying stuff gradually. We had plenty of time to finish our log house, and buy the stuff you need when you adopt a baby.
I was wrong.
I remember it was about two weeks after we’d attended that training session and a heavy February snow had blanketed Seminole County.we were off from school for a snow day. We were just puttering around the house, drinking coffee and watching it snow when the phone rang.
It was Mr. Hoover, a guy who was not a common caller to my house.
“Have you heard anything?” he asked.
“Anything about what?” I asked.
“Well, that man from Colorado Christian Services called and wanted to know if you would be available to miss school tomorrow, so you could go pick up your baby.”
No one had called. I was stunned. We hadn’t even gotten our letter of approval.
We were sick the rest of the day. We kept wondering why no one had called, or if something had happened and we were not going to be called.
About 5 pm that day we got the call. When I was told on the phone that we were adopting I said I was thrilled, but he thought I didn’t seem thrilled enough. I told him Mr. Hoover had called us earlier in the day, so we knew we were approved but we’d just been waiting for the official phone call. I assume the big payoff for people in the adoption business is the reaction of the people when they learn they are going to have a baby.
“I can’t believe that guy spoiled my surprise.”
We were to pay for a plane ticket when they handed off the baby. We were asked to drive up to the Wichita Kansas Airport by 11 am the following day. I had to drive into the IGA to cash a check so I could give them cash when the baby was delivered. We had nothing for a baby. We drove over to our friends Mary and Mugs Hage, and they gave us a baby blanket.
I don’t think either of us slept that night. We were getting up at 3 am to drive to Wichita, but this was all so sudden, all such a shock that we just couldn’t adjust to it.
The weather was horrible. We drove a Datsun B-210, and the snow was constant. The Interstate was mostly clear so we made good time and arrived early at the Wichita Airport. I was excited and terrified.
We’d learned the night before that we were adopting a boy. We’d been told that two out of three children they adopted out were girls so we had settled on a girl’s name, Tiffany, but we had not firm name for a boy. The urge would naturally be to name the child after me, so that he would be Richard Lee Norman the IIIed, but I wasn’t that crazy about my legal name. I had not gone by my legal name since age 4, so why would I saddle him with that name. I was never crazy about a name that has as its accepted nickname, the nickname of Dick. I’d taught school long enough to know that kids tease mean, and they don’t need any ammunition like the name Dick.
On the drive to the Wichita we settled on the name Ryan. I liked it having an Irish sound to it. The soap opera popular then was a show entitled Ryan’s Hope. Still when I say my son’s name, Ryan, a voice in my mind adds the word HOPE. I had so much hope for Ryan.
Standing in the airport my terror was that the plane he was on would have a crash landing. Doubter that I was I was praying that the plane would arrive carefully. I started sending out my own personal rays of care as I guided each plan to a safe landing. I felt my telepathic powers shoot out from my heart and mind and to cradle the incoming plane and carefully I guided each plane to a safe landing. It was grueling work, but, for me, necessary work.
Finally, the right plane landed. When people came out the first few people were Flight Attendants and people I didn’t know, and all of them were carrying babies. There may have been 6 or 8 babies in all.
There in the airport the staff from Colorado Christian Services started handing out babies. When Ryan was brought to us it was a surreal experience. I could not believe it. Ryan was three weeks old when he was placed in Kathie’s arms.
We learned that Ryan’s biological mother was a Japanese American, who had been working as a Juvenile Probation Officer. She’d had a serious relationship with someone who was of mixed heritage [Eastern European and hispanic]. We were told that the mother found out her significant other was not being faithful to her and they broke up. As her due date neared she was allowed to go through the file of people approved to be adoptive parents, and she picked up out of that file. That is why we only waited two weeks when we expected the wait to be three years. The birth mother wanted her child to be raised by parents who both had college degrees.
That is yet another reason I am grateful we both did what we did to get our degrees.
The drive home was treacherous. The snow and ice had continued to fall, and we crept home so very slowly. We’d planned to stop in Oklahoma City to show off Ryan to Kathie’s folks, the new grandparents, but road conditions urged us to keep going toward Wewoka.
We got home about 10:30 pm. We were exhausted. The adoption folk had given us enough diapers and formula to get us home, but we were out of both by 10:30 pm.
As soon as we got in the house I told Kathie I was going to make a quick trip to Stormy’s store to buy formula and diapers.
“Oh, wait and do that tomorrow,” Kathie said.
“I can’t,” I said. “They told us Ryan eats every four hours.”
“But not at night,” she said.
I’d been the oldest of six children and I had been fully involved in the baby care of my youngest twin brothers. I was involved in that baby stuff back when diapers were cloth, with a plastic snap-on covers were used. Back then you had to hand dunk the diapers in the toilet and wring out the toilet water. This was also before latex gloves were commonly available to the public. I had some idea about babies, and Kathie had none.
We had no baby bed that first night. I took a blanket and put it in a drawer that I removed from our chest of drawers. I put socks around the sides and placed Ryan in the drawer. That was his first baby bed.
The students of Butner seemed like family to me. The kids seemed thrilled for us.
Because Ryan came into our lives so quickly, we were just not ready for him. We were still in our gray rent house. The summer after Ryan came into our lives I worked very hard to get the log walls up in my house. We’d finished the log walls on Stormy’s lake house. Stormy and I hired the same guy to help us finish off the houses. We used one of the parents of one of my Butner students: Bud Davis and his son Mike Davis, who later married another of my students, Cindy Cheatwood. Mike married up. Cindy Cheatwood was a short, and cute young lady. I’ve seen her photos on Facebook and she continues to be a very beautiful lady.
Bud and Mike Davis made it possible for use to finish the log house by the end of 1979 and we moved into the log house on Ryan’s birthday. We had his cake in the Gray House as Stormy and I moved stuff out to the log house.
At the time I imagined that Kathie and I would teach in Cromwell, and live in that log house the rest of our career, and that Ryan would go through Butner Schools much like Nolan Coker’s son, Lee did.
Soon after Ryan came to live with us, my view of Ryan changed dramatically, and that lead us, eventually, to major changes in our future as a family.
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