TCTA or How I Was Screwed by Politics

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

OKLAHOMA TEACHERS STRIKE, HIT PICKET LINE

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.”

― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

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.

PCACT

I ran unopposed and won the position of Putnam City Association of Classroom Teachers.  I did get some negative remarks handwritten on two of the ballets, something like, “Anyone but Tex.”  I was excited.  

You see, at this point, I really believed that the administration was the enemy, that they were there to keep teachers cowed down, afraid for their job, and willing to work for low wages and to put in whatever hours and extra duty the principals wanted from them.  The yahoos sitting across from the teachers at the negotiating table were arrogant, ill-mannered, insolent and contemptuous.  They treated us like we were too stupid to understand the complexities of running a school district, they acted like we were children they were forced to babysit until mother would show up and take us off to the nursery.

I was not longer the ignorant and frightened teacher facing Don Hoover and the school board.  I was more prepared.  I understood the role of contract negotiations and that we had a right to ask probing questions, to check their answers, to demand rights and protections for the membership, that we were advocates for the classroom teachers.

One of the proposals was to take Elementary Teachers off the playground.  The teacher complaint was that they did not have enough time to prepare for their classes and to grade papers.  The teachers told us that standing out in a fierce, icy Oklahoma wind drained their energies, and they returned with the children rushed to get their other duties done, hair blown, often their clothing would be wet, and they were just frayed by the outside duty.  Our suggestion was that the teacher aids do the outside duty.

The board position was no, and their reason for saying no was because they said so.  They gave us no rationale other than to say it was just not acceptable to the board.

That seemed to be the general approach the board had on every proposal coming from the teacher’s association.

***

I had numerous experiences coping with teacher problems.

One day a frail lady in her fifties showed up at the PCACT offices.  I’ll caller Bess Myerson.  Bess was about 5 feet tall and she looked like she was all bones one balanced on top of the one below.  A breeze looked like it could topple her like a Jenga tower on a card table.  

Bess explained to me that she had been forced to resign three years and one week ago.  It turns out that that Bess was not that tightly wrapped mentally, and she was an extreme germ phobe.  I later learned that at lunch Bess would come with her food in sandwich bags.  She would take a fork, stab a piece of celery, or something, and then hold the the tined piece of food under running water for a few seconds and then put the food in her mouth.  She kept the tap running throughout her lunch.  

Apparently, one day Miss Myerson came into class and one of her second graders sneezed into a tissue, wadded it up, and put it into Miss Myerson’s hand.  I am told Miss Myerson screamed dropped the tissue and when running down the hall as if she were being pursued by a contract killer.

 

Why had this troubled woman come to see me?  Under our negotiated agreement employees and former employees had a right to purge their files of anything placed in their file by administration if it was three years old, or older. Miss Meyerson wanted to purge her file of the negative stuff since she had been off work for three years and one day as of our first meeting.

I contacted one of the assistant superintendents, explained what Miss Myerson wanted and set up a meeting for the three of us.  

One the day of the meeting Miss Myerson brought with her, to the meeting, a 30 quart black plastic trash bag.

We sat down.  Mr. Bill Withers, the assistant superintendent, sat down and placed Miss Myerson’s file on the table.  He was very gracious and calm in tone.  He opened the file and slowing looked at each page, noted the date on the document, if it was three years or older, he placed that document to the side.

Slowly we made our way through Miss Myerson’s entire personnel file.  

Just when I thought the meeting was wrapping up, Miss Myerson held open her black trash  bag and said, “Just put those papers in here.”

Mr. Withers made a face like he’d just taken a swig of spoiled milk.  “I can’t do that Miss Myerson.”

“The contract says I can have these documents removed.”

“Yes,” Withers agreed, “but it does not say I can just turn the documents over to you.  I will have the documents destroyed.”

“How do I know you won’t just put them all back in my file after we leave your office today?” she asked.

“I wouldn’t do that,” said Withers, “you have my word.”

“But I don’t trust you,” Miss Myerson said.  “I don’t trust anyone in administration here in Putnam City.”

“Well I cannot just hand these documents over to you,” Withers said.

“And I am not leaving without the documents,” Miss Myerson said.

It seemed that just like teacher contract negotiations was often at impasse that this little meeting with Miss Myerson was also at an impasse.

I came up with an idea.  I suggested that they allow me to take the documents right then, and I would tear the paper up into small pieces.  Then I would miss the torn pieces of paper up so that it was thoroughly mixed, then I would divide the paper fragments into two piles.  Withers would keep one pile, and Miss Myerson would keep the other pile.

The two parties agreed to that, and that is what we did.  I have to admit that I was thinking of King Solomon and that story where he offered to split a baby in half to give each putative mother one half of the baby they were claiming.  There is nothing new under the sun.

***

One year we went to impasse, and it was the second impasse I’d been through with the board’s negotiators.  Oklahoma was a Right to Work state.  We often called that a Right to Work for less.  The way the law was written, the board had to allow us to negotiate if we had a sufficiently large membership [51%], but if we could not come to an agreement, and if we went to impasse, the most we could hope for was for a Special Master to come in and attempt to draw the parties on to the same page.  If the Special Master could not get the two sides to voluntarily agree on salaries or other language in the contract then, well, the school board could just impose their will on the teachers and we had no recourse.

I’d already seen how the teachers just did not have the power to win in negotiations IF the school board dug its heels in.  That was when I came up with my theory of how to cope with a dictatorial school board.  I decided we had to make things so uncomfortable, and so embarrassing for the school board, the Superintendent and his administrative team that next year, if they were thinking about screwing the teachers again, maybe, just maybe, they would think, ‘do we really want to go through that mess again?  Maybe we should try to come to an agreement.’

The year of my last impasse I pulled out all the stops.  

We had the fliers with the home phone numbers of the school board members on it, and we put them out everywhere.  The Superintendent, Ralph Downes attended Bethany Nazarene Church.  One Sunday morning I took a team of teachers out to the Nazarene Church and we put those fliers under the windshields of all the cars in the church parking lot.

I leaked that we were putting out a bumper sticker that read:  Putnam City suffers from Downes Syndrome.  I never would have done anything like that, but I was OK with Ralph Downes thinking it might happen.  I made t-shirts and drew a picture of a classroom door open and children jammed into the classroom.  The words on the t-shirt read:  WE STACK THEM DEEP AND TEACH THEM CHEAP.

At the school board meeting where the Board was going to impose a contract on us, I had a jazz funeral.  I had someone make a black casket, the old fashioned kind like you’d see in the ole West.  I hired four guys from Bethany Nazarene to play music like you’d hear at a real New Orleans jazz funeral march.  The Warr Acres police were having their own contract negotiation disputes so they offered to lead our parade with police cars, “to keep us safe.”

We carried that casket around the block which required us to be on 39th Expressway for part of the trip, and we were doing this about rush hour.  One lane of 39th Expressway was blocked off.  The president of the state organization, the Oklahoma Education Association, showed up to speak to the crowd.  I spoke to the crowd.  I could see the administrators standing off a half block away watching this fiasco.  I stood on the casket to address the members who were there, and talked about how we were burying the board's respect for teachers this day when they were going to ignore us, refused to negotiate with us, and instead they were going to impose a contract on us that did not provide raises or working condition improvements.  The event was on all three television local news stations, it was covered in the Daily Oklahoman, and several radio stations covered the event.

The following school year we had very smooth negotiations, teachers got raises and the language regarding conditions improved.  The only power the teachers had was to make the experience so unpleasant for the school board  that they would not want to repeat that misery.  It seemed to work.

***

I remember once there was a sudden interest in cracking down on drugs.  The Reagan,  just say no, war on drugs was being waged across the country and Ralph Downes wanted to be apart of it.  In this same year when teachers did not even get their previously negotiated step raise, we found out that the school board had paid $46,000 to get a drug sniffing dog and handler that could sniff out drugs in the schools.

I drafted a document and sent it to Ralph Downes.  I asked in my letter if teachers personal property, their purses or cars were going to be a part of the dog’s duties?  I asked what would happen to students or teachers if the dog found drugs?

I got no reply.  

A week later I was at the school board meeting and I stood and voiced PCACT’s concerns about the drug sniffing dog.  I could not believe, in a year when teachers not no pay increases at all, that the school district was going to pay $46,000 for a drug dog.

In my newsletter I drew Mr. Downes with a box of puppies and a little boy asked how much were the puppies, and Mr. Downes say, “They’re $46,000 a piece.”

Again this was me, trying to make the school district leadership squirm because they had so completely disregarded the interests of the teachers.

In one school one of the science teachers thought they would “test” the system.  The teacher had some pure grain alcohol that was used in the chemistry labs.  The teacher put the grain alcohol in a locker, put a combination lock on the locker and left a note that said something like, “Just checking to see if the dog has any sniffing skills.”  

The dog did alert on the locker, the alcohol and the note were found.  The administration was steamed about this stunt.  I am not sure why, since the dog did what they were asking the dog to do.  At this stage in my life I prefer dogs to most people.  There was some talk of disciplining the teacher.  I told Mr. Downes that we would grieve such action.  Nothing happened.  This was just like many administrators, they started something complex and had not considered the ramifications nor had they prepared any policies to address matters that might pop up.

I went to one training where I was told about a district where the administration wanted to drug test bus drivers.  I had no objection to this since bus drivers are carting children about and it does not seem unreasonable to expect the bus drivers to be sober.  The school board in that district wanted to start with a voluntary program, and then make it mandatory the following year.

In the voluntary drug test, nine bus drivers tested positive for drugs, alcohol, or both drugs and alcohol.  When the drug positive drivers were interviewed they were, of course, asked why they volunteer for a drug test when they knew they would fail the test. The answers were varied, of course, but the general answer was that they knew they had a drug problem and thought being caught might get them the help they needed to stop using drugs, or getting drunk.  

The drug problem was off the lease during the 1960s, and alcohol has been the number one drug problem for the world for a long, long time, perhaps for all time.  It was under the Reagan Administration that there was a cultural and governmental war declared on drugs.  The results were that a lot of drug users were given stiff prison sentences, and the money makers of the illicit drug business were rarely held accountable.  Many CEOs of the drug business were not even known to those who declared war on their product.

***

I was contacted one day by a company that did mobile mammograms.  They wanted to provide their services for a fixed sum of money, and they took our health insurance.  I talked to the Head Shed people at the Administrative Offices and got their OK.

I started promoting this with our membership through my newsletter, and I put a funny declarative sentence on all the posters and newsletter blurbs that I wrote:

LET PCACT BE YOUR BOSOM BUDDY.

It turns out, when I was elected President, I really liked contract negotiations, grievance processing, writing the newsletter, and visiting the schools and talking with members.  It was the first job I felt I did well.  If you knew me at all you would know that for me to suggest I did something well is, well, HUGE for me.  

I was elected for a second term, but I found myself with a clash of emotions.  I was terrified to go back into the classroom, but I was term limited as the Association President, and, to be honest, as much as I liked the job, I believed it was better for the Association for new people to take on the leadership.

My second emotion was about my family.  I had a little boy and a wife that I loved, and we were living in a dump.  I saw an opportunity for me to stay out of the classroom and earn more money.  I applied for an opening with the Oklahoma Education Association, which would also make me a UniServ Director paid in part by the National Education Association.

I thought I could earn more money, I would be in a better position to provide good things for my wife and son, and I would continue to do some of the same stuff I did as a teacher union president.

I applied.  My previous OEA organizer was Laila Odom and she had been promoted to the position that hired union organizers, which did not hurt my chances.

Long story, short, I was hired.  There were several positions close to PCACT including the position that would have made me the UniServ Director for the district where I’d served as President for the past two years.

Lela didn’t think it was a good idea for me to be the union guy for the same district where I’d been President.  Lela had just pushed out a UniServ Director who’d been working with the Tulsa Classroom Teachers Association, and she felt I would be the best choice to go there.

This is the place where I started making very selfish and foolish choices for myself and my family.  

I took the job.  That meant that Ryan had to change schools.  He’d just started first grade and I was making him move to Tulsa and change schools.  Why did I do that?  If I could point to one thing I hated about my childhood was how frequently we moved.  We moved a crazy number of times.  I never had friends that I knew longer than a year.  I was always the new kid.  I never knew what to expect and there was confusion, and danger, and pain that followed me from house to school to new house to new school.  

Now why was I doing the same thing to Ryan.  When we moved out of the log house, in Wewoka, the last thing Ryan did before leaving the house was go over, kiss on of the logs and he said in his sweet fiver year old’s voice, “Goodbye house.”

The thing is, I was so selfish, I didn’t even think about what I was doing.  I didn’t hurt Ryan on purpose, I hurt him without thinking about it, and it was a sin that I should have thought about.

And I was doing something similar to my wife Kathie.  I did not realize at this point in our lives that Kathie was such a frightened person.  Kathie had been protected to an extreme degree.  Kathie had lived in two houses when I met her.  At this point in our married life I had already moved her eight times.  For a person who is super sensitive to stress eight moves was way too many moves.  Now I was insisting that we move a 9th time, and this time it was to Tulsa.  Tulsa is a long drive to her mother and father’s house.  

The old saying, “Happy Wife/Happy Life” was not what I was doing.

I was so afraid that IF I returned to the classroom the Putnam City people would target me, hassle me, and eventually fire me.  I had a crisis of imagination.  I could not imagine what else I could do to earn money.  I thought I had two choices only:  teaching, or the Executive Director of the Tulsa Classroom Teacher’s Association.

I wonder how our life would have been different had I not drug my family off to Tulsa.  It is what 65 year old guys do:  they rehearse their regrets.  

Wewoka Means Barking Waters

Our first home as a married couple was in Wewoka, Oklahoma.  Wewoka was settled in January of 1849 by John Horse, and a band of his followers.  The first settlers of Wewoka were seeking safety and autonomy from the Creek Nation.  The story is that when they first found a location to set up this community it was located at the falls of a small stream, lying in the fertile lands between the North and South Canadian Rivers.  I’m guessing it was on Wewoka Creek, but I lived there a long time and I never saw any waterfall, not even a very tiny one.  It is said that there was a steady rush of water over the falls and the sound they heard gave rise to the name We-Wo-Ka – meaning “Barking Water” in the Mvskoke (Seminole) language. The word Wewoka, was a Seminole word meaning “Barking Waters.”  The meaning of the name should have been a warning to me.

One reason a dog barks is to warn off strangers. “Arph, arph, means ‘stay the hell away from here or my teeth will tear off your flesh.’  Arph, arph means, ‘you are going to be hurt.’

I should have heeded the warning.  

When I “tried out” for the associate minister/song director job at the Wewoka Church of Christ I was still in school, but we were in Summer and I was eager to be married.  I just had to have some sort of income, and I was hopeful that the Wewoka Church of Christ would make everything possible for us.

The elders there had me lead the singing and teach the adult Bible Class.  I was assigned to teach on Acts Chapter 2.  It turns out the class was not studying Acts Chapter 2, but the elders wanted to make sure I was solid on the baptism by immersion dogma. Apparently I was.

I was hired and a date was set for me to be there.

The elders found a little house right across the street from the church.  The structure had originally been a garage.  Some one had remodeled the place putting in two bedrooms, a living room, kitchen and bathroom.  It was a tiny place, but it was our first home together.

KATHIE

As I am writing this now Kathie and I have been married over 43 years.  I have always thought that Kathie was the most interesting, beautiful woman I’ve ever known.  I may have endowed her with more perfection that she actually possessed, but I felt like I’d married UP.  She was out of my league.  I had this smart, fun, beautiful woman willing to be married to me.  I felt honored just to share the same air with her.

I would be lying if I said we have not had our problems over the years, but we got along so well up front that I’d been married 25 years before I realized we didn’t communicate all that well.  I would be truthing if I said that most of the problems between us were problems that germinated within me.  We both had our own mental labyrinths to journey through, and as we got lost and struggled to find our way, we were both carrying our own burdensome bundles of anxieties, worries, fears, depression, selfishness, and unproductive habits.  I would be truthier if I added that there has always been a commitment, a bond of love that has sustained us even in the more difficult periods of our relationship.  

One thing I did not know about Kathie was how fearful, and innocent she was.  Now I know that Kathie was raised to be afraid of everything.  She dated very little before meeting me, in part because she was afraid. When we dated, let me just say, we did not do, what most engaged couples do together.  In almost every area I can think of Kathie was afraid.  Kathie never even  learned to ride a bike because she, and her parents were just too afraid she would be injured.

Kathie was 12 years old when she fainted in class.  She was a student at Western Oaks Junior High and she just passed out.  He teacher carried her to the office where her mother was called.  Kathie was eventually diagnosed with Type One diabetes.  This was a time when diabetes was a much more difficult chronic condition to treat.

Kathie’s mother had to measure and weigh her food.  Kathie had to take insulin injections.  The insulin then was made from the pancreases of slaughtered cows.  Her body reacted to this beef insulin by eating away at the fat in her thighs, giving her deep drops in her thighs.

When we first got married, I had to learn about the diabetic problems Kathie was dealing with every day of her life, beginning when she was diagnosed with diabetes at age 12.  This disease contributed to the fear factor, or course, how could it not.  

I sometimes think about what it must have been like at the Eavenson house.  If you take people who are already inclined to be afraid of everything, and toss in a child with brittle diabetes, well, you have a prescription for living breathing anxiety.

I do not know why this anxious, fearful person was willing to drop out of college, leave her parents that she was so dependent on, and go with me to Wewoka, Oklahoma?  I was not handsome, or smart, and I had no assets.  I was and continue to be odd.  Eccentric sounds better but weirdo fits fairly well too.  What was her attraction to me?

I too had my own fears and worries, but, they took a backseat to my low self-esteem and self hatred. I guess I have felt I had so little to lose that I was always willing to take risks.  I have always been someone who made their mind up fast.  I was and still am a little reckless.  Kathie is someone who likes to think things over, and sometimes her thinking will go on and on and it seems like she will never land on a decision.  Why would a person like that marry someone like me?

I still don’t understand it.

What you need to know is that what happened to me, at the Wewoka Church of Christ, happened to both of us.  The first phase of our married life was filled with horror.  I am amazed that Kathie did not run screaming back to her parents.  Why was she loyal to me?  Why did she love me?

THE JOB

I was hired as the associate minister and song leader of Wewoka Church of Christ and it was, for Wewoka, a large church with several hundred members.  I was hired to work under an older experienced minister named John Stewart.  

Being the minister in a town like Wewoka attracts two kinds of ministers:  new ministers just starting off their careers and attempting to gain the experience that will prepare them to minister to a larger congregation, OR old guys, coasting into retirement [or the grave].  I was not good enough to be the main minister.  John Stewart was definitely coasting into retirement.

John Stewart preached OK, but he tended to do corny stuff.  I remember once, I was picking out songs for the worship service and Brother Stewart told me the title of his sermon was THE FAMILY.  I worked hard to pick out hymns that had something to do with the family.  Before each hymn I made some comment about the family.

When it was time for the sermon Brother Stewart comes out and says he is preaching about the Tatter Family:  The agitators, the instigators, et cetera, et cetera.  I felt stupid.  

I was learning my job as I went along.  I got no direction.  No one told me what to do with my day.  I could sit in the office the church provided for me, but to do what?  I could sit by myself and sing hymns, pretending I was leading the singing.  

I started changing the marquee and putting some of the usual stupid stuff that churches put on marquees:

• It is summer, but if you think it is hot now . . .
• You aren’t too bad to stay out, you aren’t too good to come in.
• History is His story
• Coincidence is when God chooses to remain anonymous
• We don’t change the message, the message changes us
• ‘Coming ready or not!’ – Jesus
• There are no atheists in hell
• The best vitamin for a Christian is B1

I had no idea what I was supposed to do, and I am certain now, that I was doing a pretty piss poor job.

Withdrawal of Fellowship

Things changed one day when I was invited to attend the Elder’s meeting, along with Brother Stewart.  In that meeting the Elders said they were considering starting an active Church Discipline Program.

How fortuitous for me, I thought.  

1 Corinthians 10:12 King James Version (KJV)

. . . let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.

Withdrawal of Fellowship was exactly the topic I had reached for my 75 page paper that earning me 3 Independent Study college credit hours just prior to my dropping out of OCC.

I provided the Elders with a copy of my paper.

Church Discipline, in the church of Christ, was supposed to follow what might be called a CHAIN of Discipline.  There were steps.  There was an order to what was to be done.

Now most churches of Christ do not use this church discipline/withdrawal of fellowship stuff.  In fact, what happened in Wewoka was the ONLY time I attended a church of Christ congregation that opted to follow the withdrawal of fellowship process.  In the New Testament relates in plain terms from whom the Christian should withdraw his fellowship.

• We are to withdraw from "Every brother who walks disorderly" (2 Thes. 3:6-14).  Some in the church of Christ will claim that they are not a body of people who judge, but you clearly cannot withdraw fellowship without some degree of judging.  The word  "disorderly" means "deviating from the prescribed rule" (Thayer's Greek-English Lexicon). You can’t withdraw from someone unless you believe there are prescribed rules and violation of the rules must then be punished.  Most folk in the church of Christ, including me, at that time, believed someone was walking disorderly when their manner of life deviates from the word of God, when a member of the True Church sins and will not repent (see 1 John 1:6 - 2:2).
• Withdrawal of Fellowship would then apply to "Those who cause divisions and offenses, When Withdrawing Fellowship occurs those folk must be "noted" (KJV: "marked") and "avoided." What did it mean to MARK someone?  To mark is to "observe attentively, cautiously and faithfully, be on your guard against them" (Albert Barnes). When we Withdraw from a member of the True Church we are expected to avoid, "to turn away from, to keep aloof from..., to shun one" (Thayer). These actions are to be taken for the conduct of such individuals is contrary to the "unity of the Spirit" (Eph. 4:3) and causes others to sin.
• The scriptures expect Christians to withdraw from "A divisive man" (KJV: "heretick," ASV: "factious") (Titus 3:10-11). The word translated "factious" or "divisive" means "causing division by a party spirit" (W.E. Vine, Vine's Expository Dictionary of NT Words). Factions are a work "of the flesh" (Gal. 5:19-21).
• The True Church is to withdraw from the sinner (1 Cor. 5:1-11). This would include fornicators, covetous ones, idolaters, revilers, drunkards, and extortioners.  The church of Christ Elders at Wewoka included people who were not attending worship services regularly, and they considered withdrawing from people who were not tithing their income to the church.
• Withdrawal of Fellowship should be applied to a brother who refuses to repent (Matt. 18:15-17).
• Obviously the True Church must withdraw fellowship from those who go beyond the doctrine of Christ (2 John 9-11).

The actual process included these actions by the Elders and  members the church:

1. First, the church should try to solve the matter on a one-to-one basis - Matthew 18:15
2. Next, if that one-on-one meeting did not resolve the concerns of the church it would be important to have witnesses to what is being said and done - Matthew 18:16 so two or three members of The True Church drive on out to confront the member/sinner again.

                 Here is the point of this second step:

1. you have a witness to the shun candidates refusal to repent from their evil ways.
2. while it is one thing when a single person says you are wrong, but it is another matter when several unbiased people show you that you are in error.

       3.  If a resolution is still not achieved, the matter goes before the church - Matthew 18:17

In a sense, the entire congregation acts as the jury.

After some consideration the Elders developed a  list of potential candidates for being withdrawn from.  I don’t remember the exact number, it was at least a dozen, perhaps two dozen names.

I was excited. I was, at least in my own mind, a consultant expert to the Elders in their Church Discipline program.  I believed that if the New Testament directed us to withdraw fellowship from folk, then we should do what it says, and I had never been in a church that had ever done anything like that.

I was a foolish, stupid young guy swimming in waters way too deep and wide for me, being a weak swimmer.

BEER

The next part of this story involves me, a friend, and the selling of beer.

I’ll call my friend, Stormy Winters.  Stormy was a deacon in the Wewoka Church of Christ.  He had a beautiful wife, three young boys, and he had this urge to tuck me under his wing and help me out.  Stormy was a Wonderful Bread Salesman who got up in the wee hours of the morning, and drove a truck to stores all around the area, stocking the grocery shelves with his bread, collecting his money, and the expired product.

But Stormy had ambition.  He was making a good living as a bread guy, but he wanted to go into business.  Stormy had his eye on the Texaco station located directly across from the Wewoka Church of Christ building.

Prior to Stormy buying the property, the Texaco station closed on Sundays and they allowed members of the church of Christ to park on their property during our worship services.

Stormy bought the property, and started converting the Texaco station into a Texaco Convenience Store.  The Elders were unhappy to learn that Stormy’s Store would be open 7 days a week, 365 days a year.  The church was losing parking space.

The elders tried to pressure Stormy to close his store on Sundays.  He explained that he had a big loan at the bank and he was risking everything he had to start this business, and he just could not afford to close the store ever.

This was, I thought, the end of the matter.  But one day Stormy is visiting with me and he says the income he is getting from the store is not enough, that unless he does something else he will go bankrupt.

“What else are you thinking of doing?” I asked him.

“The bank wants me to sell beer.  Every convenience store sells beer, and they want me to sell beer,” he told me.

While it seems silly to me now, I was shocked.  How could a member of the church of Christ, and a deacon in the church, dare to sell beer?  

I made a very human mistake.  I made a friend.  Stormy was my friend.  I was feeling myself torn between the dogma of the church of Christ, and the problems of my friend.  

The next thing Stormy said shocked me even more.

“I went to a store and bought a can of beer,” Stormy said.  “I came home and drank that beer.”

“Oh.”  What was I supposed to say?  

“You know,” Stormy said, “that beer didn’t make me feel funny.  That beer didn’t seem like sin in a pop top can.  It was just something to drink.”

Stormy didn’t take action quickly, and he mulled over what he was doing, but he felt he had everything at stake.  He felt like he was putting his children’s welfare at risk.  If this store failed he would lose his house.  He would have no job, no place to live, and a wife and three children.  He put his family on one side of the scales and disappointing the elders on the other side of the scales and the family carried the majority of weight in his heart and in his mind.

I remember one day, a week or so later, I stepped out of my garage apartment and I saws the main minister, John Stewart, standing in the middle of the street.  In the parking lot of Stormy’s Store were three beer trucks.

There was an emergency Elder’s meeting after the Wednesday night services and I attended.  The list of people to be withdrawn from had dropped from a lot [one or two dozen names] to one name:  Stormy Winters.

They went over the process the Biblically structured how this withdrawal/shunning was supposed to go:

1. Send one person.  They directed John Stewart to go out to Stormy’s house and talk with him.  If Stormy refuses to remove the beer from his store and repent his sin before the whole church then,
2. the full Eldership, all five of them, would go visit with Stormy.

I spent some time trying to resolve this.  I urged Stormy to back down.  He wouldn’t.  I went to one of the Elders I got along with well, Herman Zealot.  Brother Herman was a farmer and I went out where he was bailing hay.

Hermon got off his tractor and gave me a fair listen.

I used the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares found in Matthew 13:24-30.  

“The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field; 25 but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way. 26 But when the grain had sprouted and produced a crop, then the tares also appeared. 27 So the servants of the owner came and said to him, ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?’ 28 He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The servants said to him, ‘Do you want us then to go and gather them up?’ 29 But he said, ‘No, lest while you gather up the tares you also uproot the wheat with them. 30 Let both grow together until the harvest, and at the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, “First gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn.”’”

I said that perhaps you could look at Stormy as a weed seed growing in God’s Kingdom, but I reminded   Herman that I had baptized all three of Stormy’s boys.  

“If you withdraw from Stormy, you are going to uproot his three boys, and his wife,” I said.  “If you were a teenage boy and the church kicked your dad out of the church, would you want to keep on going to that church?  If the church kicked you out, would your wife keep going to the church that kicked you out?”

I have to say that I thought I’d gotten through to him.  

I was leading the singing on Easter Sunday and Charlie Butler told me that they would not need a closing song, that the Elders had something else they were doing in that slot.

So I lead the Invitation [known in Pentecostal Churches as The Altar Call] and then I sat down on the front row.

All the Elders filed in, and stood in a line facing the congregation.

Charlie Butler explained to the church about the Bible’s admonition that if there is sin in the church then the church had a scriptural obligation to follow the chain of church discipline, by going to see the sinner one-on-one, then two or three are to go see the sinner.   

It was clear what I thought I had stopped was still on.  The reason I had not heard anything in a couple of weeks time is because the Elders could see I was a friend to Stormy and they just stopped telling me anything.

I looked back to where Stormy was sitting with his wife and three boys.  Stormy quietly got up and walked out of the auditorium.

Then Charlie asked for the church to stand to show their approval of the Elder’s actions “as we close with prayer.”

I know some people stood, because you always stood for the closing prayer in that congregation.  I did not stand.

I couldn’t believe what had happened, and I couldn’t believe they did this on Easter Sunday.  

Before I left the building I was stopped by Charlie Butler and told that they were having another Elder’s meeting after church and I was to be there as soon as possible.

I knew what this was about.  I had refused to stand up.  I had not supported the actions of the Elders.

I have to admit that I was afraid.  I was dependent upon the church for my salary.  My hands trembled as I arrived at the room and took my seat.  

I was told I needed to repent and tell the church that I was wrong in now showing my support for the Elder’s actions and I was to ask for God’s forgiveness.

I just sat there.  I was twenty two years old.  I had no guts, no courage.  Charlie asked me what I was going to do.

I should have said, “I am quitting.”

I should have said, “Screw you.”

I should have said, “If I go to hell over this, I won’t be sitting next to you.”

If I were making myself out to be a hero I would have claimed to have done something brave, or even better, I would have actually done the right, honest, bravest thing.

I finally said, “I’m going to do what you want me to do.”

I never intended to ask for forgiveness for not supporting this withdrawal of fellowship, but I was thinking, What they want me to do is resign, and that is what I’m going to do, only I need a little time to make a plan.

I went home and talked with Kathie.  She cried of course.  

Remember Kathie was dominated by her fears, and she was afraid about a lot of things that night.

I went to see Stormy, and he was the angriest man I’d ever seen in my life.  He talked loud and waved his arms around and when he pointed his finger at me, his hand was trembling.  Stormy told me to do what the Elder’s asked that this was his problem and he didn’t want to pull me down.

I ran into Carl Karr in town and Carl was supportive.

“I thought you had pretty big balls, not standing up today,” said Carl.  Carl was a member of the church of Christ, but he also cussed, drank whiskey, and may not have always been honest in business.  But Carl was a nice guy.  I told Carl I did not know what I would do to get by, if I resigned from the church.  

Carl had a friend down at the Wewoka Daily Times and he made a call.  By Monday I had a job at the Wewoka Daily Times selling advertising space in the paper.  I accepted the job, walked down to Security State Bank, met with the head elder T E Burch, and I resigned from the church.  By the end of the week, The Wewoka Daily Times had hired Kathie to be the Society Editor.  We were suddenly out of the church business, into the newspaper business, and while I was never withdrawn from the church officially, I was withdrawn from in every other sense.