Moving to Tulsa was not what I wanted to do, but it is what i agreed to do. The last UniServ director had been distrusted and disliked by the TCTA Board. There were conflicts within this, the largest Teacher’s Association in the state of Oklahoma. I didn’t know anyone in Tulsa, and I didn’t know my way around Tulsa. I was afraid, but I was taking the risk because I was earning more money, and it kept me out of the classroom.
I sometimes kick my own ass thinking about the boneheaded choices I made, choices that totally disregarded the needs and wants of my wife and son. I worked hard there because I felt like I had no other choice, that this was my shot at a better life, that if I failed I would have no other path to a better life. In fact, I thought that if I failed I would lose everything. I feared my wife would leave me and take my son with her, that I would end up homeless, living under a bridge, making my coffee with creek water.
Ok, yeah, I have mental health issues. As I was growing up I was always told how stupid I was, what an idiot I am. My mother used to do something that I didn’t understand at the time, she would say things like: “You blinkin’ idiot. You blinkin’ moron.” I didn’t know what blinking meant. Now I know it was central Texas slang for blanking. She was putting a blank in her description of me. “you ____________ idiot. you ____________ moron.” My mother was leaving a blank where a cuss word would go. Church of Christers are not supposed to cuss so to comply with the Law she used blinkin’ [or a blank.] I wonder what word could have gone into the blank? Over time I learned that I was truly the stupidest excuse for a son, the most worthless human on earth. Eventually I learned the lesson well.
One my brothers is offended by the way I talk about his mother and father. I am giving the wrong impression if you think my mother didn’t love me. She put bandaids on my booboos. She cooked for me, and washed my clothing. But she did put me down. My mother got mad at me a lot. My father got mad at me a lot. The mother and father that called me a blinkin’ idiot or the stupidest kid on earth may not have been the same people that raised my youngest brothers. I am not lying when I say that my childhood prepared me to hate myself. I hated myself from an early age. I felt sorry for my parents that they were stuck with the miserable excuse of me as their first born son. I was too afraid to kill myself. I thought about killing myself all the time.
I was making my way through life faking it. I was passing as competent. I wasn’t always successful, but I learned to play the part of someone who was not stupid and worthless, while knowing the whole time I was so dumb god was wasting air on me. I was totally convinced that the only way I could take care of my wife and son was to cling to what I was doing and hope know one found out what a fuckin’ loser I am.
I started out terrified of the TCTA Board. I got all my fear of TCTA from Leila and some of the other movers and shakers at the OEA head shed. Tulsa was well known as a force to be reckoned with, and they were generally uncooperative with OEA leadership. TCTA was a gathering of independent thinkers, and they were large enough that they didn’t have to kowtow to the OEA State Organization.
I have to tell you that while I had no positive views of TCTA I found them to not be a gathering of demons. The President was a man named Charles, and the Vice President was a woman named Polly. Charles did not look like someone who would rise to become President of Oklahoma’s largest teachers association. Charles weighed then, what I weigh now, like 260+ lbs, or much more maybe. He was not a good looking guy. If he put a tie on the points of the tie stopped halfway down his enormous belly, like the big member of the Laurel and Hardy Team. Charles had moles on his face, and he was not particularly articulate.
I remember once Charles was interviewed for one of the Tulsa TV stations. Over and over Charles used the word ‘frustrated’ but he pronounced it “FLUSHstrated.” Charles was not the sort of guy that would normally rise to the top of a simi-big deal organization, but he did. I think he’d been on the TCTA board, and a popular president had died unexpectedly. Charles must have “paid his dues” and earned his right to be elected president.
Of course, he had enemies, people that disagreed with his leadership, or perhaps they were just embarrassed that he was head of the healm. Regardless, Charles had actual skills at figuring things out, and he made decisions that were not just good, they were often brilliant.
For some reason Charles and Polly liked me. We got along swimmingly. I didn’t spell very well, but I could write. I wrote articles and speeches for Charles. I prepared him for events. I advised them in the processing of grievances and it turned out I was better at that than they were accustomed to seeing.
I remember one teacher was in trouble accused of hurting a little black girl’s back. The teacher was a white, big burly female PE teacher. The children were in the gym and they were told to sit on their knees in rows facing the front. The little girl in question did not do as she was told, she turned and faced the back. The little girl was the only girl facing the back. The PE Teacher told her a couple of times to turn around and face the way the other children faced, but the little girl did not cooperate.
The PE teacher said she walked over and simply spun the little girl around so she was facing the front. Then the PE teacher offered to demonstrate. Polly got on her knees and the PE Teacher spun her around.
“See,” she said, “it was just like that.” It did seem harmless. But Tulsa was having racial issues then, and a white teacher was accused of singling out a black child, spinning her around hurting the child’s back.
After the PE teacher left our offices Polly turned to me and said, “Tex, when she spun me around -- she hurt my back.
TCTA was happier with me than with the UniServ Director that had preceded me. TCTA was giving me positive feedback to the leadership at OEA. The job was not as good as being President, because I was actually a lacky, a gofer, an employee that took orders. I could give input, and make suggestions, but the decisions belonged to the President and the TCTA board, and that is the way it should be. It just wasn’t as good as me being President of PCACT.
CHURCH -- Fellowship Congregational Church
We were living in Tulsa and coping. Ryan liked his new school, Barnard Elementary, and for the first few months Kathie did not work. I was happy with how things were going. Now while I was angry at the church of Christ and fundamentalism in general, I still thought that perhaps Ryan should be exposed to church. The Judeo-Christian tradition was an American tradition and I just felt Ryan might do well if he knew the basic Bible Stories. Kathie was not as skeptical as I was, and she felt a loss at having no church home.
I took it upon myself to find some sort of church we could go to that would meet the needs of my family without driving me crazy with their narrow-minded I approach to everything. I thought we would check out the Fellowship Congregationalist Church. I almost backed out when I found out that it was affiliated with the United Church of Christ. We went anyway.
The sermon was by a very articulate man named Russ Bennett. The sermon was pro-gun control. Since I was politically liberal I was surprised and pleased that the sermon was on a political topic. Kathie was impressed with the preaching and the people were friendly.
We started going to Sunday school, and I was, as I often am, vocal, mouthy, seeking attention, needy for the approval of others. I tried to feel my pitiful yearning by being very active. I started getting involved in the church, was elected to their governance council. Eventually I was elected the Moderator of the congregation, the equivalent to being the congregational president.
I found myself drawn to the way they worshiped. They only had communion twice a month, but the way they had the communion was very moving. You went to an altar rail and knelt. You held your hand out palms up, and bread was placed into your hands. The person putting bread in your hands would say, “This is the body of Christ, the bread of heaven.” The wine, and yes, they used actual wine, was in a big cup, or chalice, would bring the cup to you, you would sip from the chalice, and the person holding the chalice would say, “This is the Blood of Christ, the cup of salvation.” It just felt more, well, holy, somehow.
In the UCC church they had some written prayers and they were well written and moving. What I remember from the church of Christ was a lot of babbling prayer. There were stock phrases in the church of Christ prayers:
- guard, guide, and direct us *** [I would wonder, “isn’t guide a synonym for direct?”]
- help the sick and afflicted *** [the sick and the afflicted sound a lot like synonyms too.]
There were a lot of “we just” prayers. You know, “Lord, we just proud to be here. We just want you to bless us, to guard, guide and direct us. We just want you to forgive us because we just want to be your people, yadah, yadah, yadah.
I enjoyed my time at Fellowship Congregational UCC Church. My ties there were broken when I was forced to leave Tulsa.
THE 1990 TEACHER’S STRIKE
I wish I could take credit for the idea, but it belonged to someone on the TCTA board. The problem all teacher unions in Oklahoma were having is this: effort after effort was going to impasse because there was just not enough money in the pot to negotiate over.
In almost all cases a little more could have been done in the area of teacher pay, but it would have been taken from somewhere else in the budget. If teachers unions wanted more, perhaps it was not the size of the slice that was the problem. Perhaps the size of the pie was the real problem. The schools just did not have enough money to run the schools properly.
Someone at TCTA pointed out that while state law made it illegal for teachers to strike against the school board, there was nothing in state law that said teachers could not strike against the State Legislature. Efforts were started at TCTA and people in Tulsa started talking up the idea of a strike against the State Legislature.
In 1990 this showed up in the newspapers:
OKLAHOMA TEACHERS STRIKE, HIT PICKET LINE
Monday, April 16, 1990 8:00 pm
Thousands of teachers went on strike Monday to show their anger over a failed $230 million education improvement package, and many picketed at the state Capitol.
Teachers say their pay ranks 48th in the nation. The minimum beginning salary for a teacher with a bachelor's degree is $15,060.
TCTA actually contacted superintendents of schools urging them to support a teacher strike because it would get more money for the schools, not just for the teaches. Slowly people started to consider the idea, until it happened.
Only a few schools went on strike, at first, but over a couple of days more and more schools joined this strike and the majority of the schools in Oklahoma were closed down. Thousands of teachers walked a picket line around the state capitol building.
I learned a lot as the UniServ Director for TCTA. One event that I remember specifically happened during that 1990 teacher strike.
We had teachers carrying picket signs at the schools just to remind the public in Tulsa that the teachers were on strike and the schools were closed, but the real action was in Oklahoma City. We weren’t on strike against our schools, we were on strike against the lawmakers in Oklahoma City and that was where we needed to picket.
TCTA decided they would charter some buses and ship teachers to Oklahoma City to join the picketing there. How do you do that? The logistics of that had to be considered and worked out before we even invited the teachers to do this.
- What did we need? Buses. I contacted bus companies and got some prices.
- The teachers will need a place to meet to get on the bus and that place needed to have parking. I located a sporting facility that was closed and got permission for us to use their property to load our buses and park people’s cars.
- People might be concerned about their cars. I contacted an agency that could provide a couple of guards to patrol the teacher’s cars.
- We could use this event to gain additional publicity for our strike. I contacted a funeral home just to ask how they get motorcycle policemen to lead a funeral procession and block intersections so the cars can move smoothly through the streets without regard to the traffic lights. The people who do that for the funeral home were not the police, but an agency that provided this service for a price. I hired them.
- Would the picketers need to eat. Working with the charter bus company we found a place halfway back from Oklahoma City where the buses would stop to allow people to get some food and relieve themselves, if you know what I mean.
- We had to get the word out to get as many people as possible to participate in the picketing. We used building representatives who all had phone trees. We also got a news story on TV and on the radio. We needed the people planning to go to call by a date certain so we could know how many buses to order for this trip.
- AND I had to make sure we were going to have news coverage of the departure of these buses.
The event went off without a hitch. We were on TV in both Tulsa and Oklahoma City. The pictures of the motorcycle guys leading those buses out of Tulsa was impressive. The motorcycle guys stayed in the front of those buses until the buses reached the turnpike.
Later it turned out to be wise that I hired these funeral motorcycle people. Someone accused TCTA of getting the police to lead those buses out of and that would be taxpayer paid employees helping out a union during what some were still calling an illegal strike.
Being able to provide a receipt showing a private company had been hired and the tab was paid out of TCTA’s bank account.
By the end of the week the pressure on the lawmakers were heavy enough to get them to pass what was the largest increase in Oklahoma funding to that date. The teachers had won. The strike was over. This Spring, when the negotiated agreement was being bargained, there would be, for the first time, significant money on the table.
OEA was thrilled that this risky stunt worked. We had a new Executive Director and she felt that this was the perfect time for OEA to get a dues increase. Her rationale was that OEA had called the strike, and the strike was successful, so why not give the OEA a dues increase.
TCTA opposed the dues increase. TCTA had the ability to gather enough support to kill the OEA’s efforts at getting a dues increase. The new Executive Director told Charles, the TCTA president, that if TCTA blocked the dues increase, OEA would have to make some cut backs. TCTA said they didn’t care that they would not stand for a dues increase.
So guess who was laid off?
Suddenly I found myself out of a job. I had a month to get my ducks in a row and then I would be unemployed. I started looking for other UniServ Director Jobs around the country. I interviewed in Kansas, Nevada, and Florida.
Florida flew me out to Tampa and I was picked up by JJ, the Assistant Executive Director of the Polk Education Association. I interviewed with a former PEA President who was on the PEA board, and things went well I thought. I was sent back to my room at a local Bartow, FL motel. I called my wife to tell her how the interview went. A second after I hung up with Kathie the phone rang. I was asked to return to the PEA office. JJ picked me back up and brought me back. Suddenly I was negotiating my own salary and conditions. I asked for what I thought, in 1990, was a good salary: $35000. I also was to have an expense account [$3000], a company car, a gas card, and moving from Tulsa to Polk County was to be paid for, in full by PEA.
I accepted the job, signed a contract, and alcohol was served.
I returned to my room in a daze. I was just about to call Kathie and give her the news when my room phone rang again. This time it was the new Executive Director of OEA. She told me I didn’t have to leave TCTA, that they had found enough money to keep me on the job there.
Well, I’d just accepted the job. And I felt like I’d just been used as a poker chip in a game between TCTA and OEA, and I was pissed off about that. So I just said I had accepted the Florida job and I was going to move to Florida.
“There was a long hard time when I kept far from me the remembrance of what I had thrown away when I was quite ignorant of its worth.”
I was again uprooting Ryan. Why did I do that? What was wrong with me? Ryan had been informed that due to his grades and IQ he was to be moved to a science magnet school and he was going with several friends.
Kathie had been working at a USAA MasterCard call center and she was about to be promoted.
Instead of letting my family put down roots, I made them move. It sort of makes me sick now, thinking of this. Later, when Kathie’s father died she was in Florida. She could have lived closer and seen her father more often had we stayed in Oklahoma, but that is not what we did. Because of me.
See My PEA pickin’ Past which may not be next but it is part of what followed my leaving Tulsa.
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