OKC, Living Word, Ryan, and Mayfield

 

 

Kathie was still a prayer.  I was a doubter, but I, being a spineless dweeb, waffled and wobbled like a weeble when it came to faith.  Kathie had accepted a job in Oklahoma City, we both resigned from our jobs at Butner, but we still had a log house, house payments, no money to move, and no place in Oklahoma City to move.

Kathie prayed.

We were in Oklahoma City, looking for something we could rent that was low enough that we could pay rent and make our log house payment.  It looked hopeless to me.  I was in the with Kathie, we were both in the back, as her dad drove us all to Gibby’s [a nickname for the Store Gibsons, a store like TG&Y or an early Walmart Store], and we drove past this little brick duplex.  It looked too nice, and no way we could afford it.  Kathie, who is usually the one unwilling to take financial risks, wrote the phone number down.  

When we got back to her folk’s house, Kathie called the number and found out the cost was almost $500 a month, which was about the same as our house payment.  I thought, ‘No Way This Will Happen.’

The landlord said the couple there had to move soon and he could show us the house with permission from the tenants.

I went with Kathie to see this duplex and I knew there was absolutely no way we could afford to do this.  Once we got inside the wife-tenant said something surprising.  Her husband had just been hired as the police chief for the Wewoka Police Department.

We were living in Wewoka.

The couple needed a place to rent.

We just happened to have a place to rent.

They would have to have a washer and drier in the house.

This duplex had a washer and drier so we could leave our washer and drier there.

Quickly a deal was struck.  We would move in, the same day they moved out.  They would rent our log house, and we would take over their rental duplex.

It is hard to totally poo-poo prayer when something like this happens.  Oklahoma City is a big town.  We just happened to drive past the duplex and see the for rent sign.  The couple moving out just happened to be moving to Wewoka and they were needing a place to rent.  

Things seemed to work out in a way that does not seem possible.  If you insist you can claim that those were just coincidences, or you could at least consider that perhaps God uses coincidences to answer our prayers.

I found that whole experience jarring.

The move worked out and we were in Oklahoma City, and we had someone to pay our house payment for us, via rent.  But only Kathie had a job.

I went to the mall and started selling shoes at JC Penny’s, and I applied everywhere I could think of, including a church of Christ K through 12 Church of Christ Private School.

I was a closet doubter.  I did not know, then, that most believers are also carrying some doubts.  

“It’s funny how you can spend your entire life wondering if there’s a God until suddenly in a time of crisis, you’re begging Him for help as if you’d never doubted He existed.”  ― Penelope Ward, Stepbrother Dearest

What happened was more than praying to God out of desperation, this was answered prayer that had shocked me so.

I was confused.  I did not have much faith in prayer, although I was given to short shallow prayers when times were tough.  I did not then, nor do I now believe that prayers change God’s mind.  Most people I knew used prayer as a sort of magic incantation.  If you say the right words, the right way, you magically get what you want?  No.  

And yet, sometimes, like with the housing, the prayer seems to work exactly like a magic spell.

SELLING SHOES

I worked all summer selling shoes but by the end of Summer I was offered a position teaching English at the Living Word Academy.  There was one uncomfortable catch to taking the job.  This Church of Christ private school required that the teachers enroll their children in the school.  That meant that Ryan would have to go to kindergarten, and to stay at their daycare.  I needed the paycheck, and I agreed.  

The Living Word Academy also required that the teacher attend a church of Christ congregation, faithfully.  We placed membership with at the Quail Springs Church of Christ.

One good thing about a big church is that you can, if you want, get lost in the crowd.  If you go to a small church you are going to be asked to serve at the table, lead a prayer, lead the singing, teach a class, take over the youth group, or something, but Quail Springs had well over a thousand people every Sunday.  I had been burned by churches of Christ repeatedly, and, yes, I was part of the blame for all that, but I was tired of being upset by the church.  I was going to try to just do my job, go to church, keep my head down, and hope life got better.  Now I was still seeing a shrink.  My struggles with depression never left me.  It took me years to realize that one of the main reasons I felt unworthy of life, is that I felt unworthy of worthiness.

I started painting again.  I painted and drew throughout my childhood.  I was doing serious art work while we were living in Milwaukee, so I was 15 years old when that painting was going on.  I painted some while we were living in Wewoka, and did several major works then. There was a drop off of painting when I went to Ada, but I did start painting again just prior to graduating from college.  In Oklahoma City I did a lot of work.  I showed my art work twice at the Paseo art show.

Kathie seemed to fit in well at Central Junior High [now called Capps Junior High School], but obviously there were adjustments.

Ryan really hated the Living Word Academy.  He would cry every single day when I left him at the daycare.  When I picked him up he voiced his complaints about what went on in his Kindergarten class.  Ryan told me about how his teacher would yell at the children, and make some of the students sit on the floor under their desk as punishment.

“Why can’t she just give them another chance?” he asked.

I thought it was a good question.  These were young children and this was their first experience with education.

One day Ryan told me he was sorry he had not cleaned his room, and then he added, “I want to go to heaven, and not to hell.”

“Why would you even think you would go to hell?” I asked.

“The Bible says it is a sin not to obey your parents.  If you sin, God sends you to hell,”  he said.

“God never sends children to hell,” I said.

I hated the way the students at the Living Word Academy were manipulated by the staff and pressured to accept a “Church of Christ Way.”

One chapel service the head of the school showed an anti-abortion film.  It may have been Silent Scream.  It is possible they showed more than one and I am remembering parts from different films.  What I want to stress is that it was shocking to me and may have been a form of child abuse forcing very young children and tweens to watch those horrible propaganda films.  In one film they showed a woman, almost totally nude from the waist down.  The woman was on an operating table and there was a fuzzy circle covering her vaginal area.  Not much was obscured by the frosted circle and it was clear something had been pushed into the woman’s vagina and they were vacuuming out a fetus in pieces.

There were pictures of dead babies in a garbage can.  There was some sort of X-ray film showing a probe grabbing a fetus and the unborn baby was about to be torn apart and removed from the womb, and on the face of this unborn child was something that looked like a scream, a silent scream.  

I remember the school showed a segment of the Phil Donahue Show about a woman, named Marian Guinn who was suspected of being involved in some sort of sin, by the Church of Christ in Collinsville, Oklahoma.  When the woman found out that the Elders were considering Withdrawal of Fellowship, she sent the Elders a letter withdrawing herself from membership in the Collinsville Church of Christ.  

The Elders felt that since no one adds themselves to the Body of Christ, that that happens through baptism, that no one has the right to withdraw themselves from the Body of Christ.  

When the Elders informed the congregation of the specific sins Ms Guinn was accused of committing, and the exact scriptures she had violated, they formally withdrew from Ms Guinn.

Marian Guinn countered the actions of the Elders by filing her lawsuit, alleging that she was abusively treated and that her privacy had been violated.  

Later I think the courts ruled that when Ms Guinn joined the church of Christ she was voluntarily submitting herself to the process of Withdrawal of Fellowship, but once she sent a letter and dropped out, her consent to the rules of the church of Christ had been removed and the Elders no longer had the right to withdraw from her.

The atmosphere at the Living Word Academy was oppressive.  They had daily chapel for the students.

Chapel for the kids was not enough.  We had a devotional every morning with the teachers.  

I remember one morning, before school started, the sky was still black, and the temperature was freezing.  Because the school was not doing well financially, the buildings were not kept warm enough.  I was huddled in a circle of desks with other women teachers [there were very few males on staff there] and we were all miserable.  One of the principles was giving a little devo-sermon when he says:

“Do you want to know what heaven is like?”  He smiles at us like he as this gotch statement to say next that is going to blow our collective and chilled minds.  Then he says, “Heaven, [dramatic pause] is like this.”

Nine frozen teachers, tired, worried if our paychecks are going to clear, ordered to come extra early to school for a devo, and heaven is like this?  I thought, “Oh, Lord I sure hope it is nothing like this.”

The paycheck thing was an issue.  When payday came around the Superintendent would call a teacher’s meeting and tell us, as soon as school was out, we should go to the bank and deposit our check, that if we wait the checks might bounce.

I made up my mind early on that I was not going to stay there another year.

It worked out well because I think the school went defunct the following year, or no later than the year after that.

I was not going to have Ryan go to a place that made him so miserable.

I started interviewing as soon as the school year closed.

I eventually got a call to interview with Bubba Hellzeal [yeah, I made the name up] the principal of Mayfield Junior High School.  Bubba was a former CHIPS officer from California, a big barrel chested  guy.

I wish I’d had more imagination.  I wish I’d looked for work outside of teaching, but at the time I figured I had to teach, that I was too much of a loser to do anything else.  I was also too much of a loser to teach, but I still tried hard to get the job.  I sent Mr. Hellzeal a thank you card after our interview.

Later he told me that of all the people he interviewed for the job, I was the only one who sent a him a thank you card.

MAYFIELD

My first faculty meeting at Mayfield let me know that there was something seriously wrong at that school.  The teachers sort of huddled together and made snide remarks about the principal.  Now I felt the guy was intimidating, but he’d just hired me, and that saved me from the Living Word Academy, so I had no grudge against the guy.

After the faculty meeting it was clear to me that Bubba was similar in style to Don Hoover.  Several of the teachers started passing around that they were going to a bar for drinks as soon as they were released for the day.

I found certain things off putting.  Bubba acted like I was one of his close confidants.  There was a teacher there who had been teaching drama, and she had been moved to a straight English teaching load, AND she was forced to float, meaning she had to move all her stuff every time the bell rang. I was given her drama class.  I took it, because I was needing a job and that was part of the job, but I’d not only not ever had a drama class, and I’d never been in a play, I also had zero experience with drama.

Another duty I was given at Mayfield was to be the Cheerleader Sponsor.  

Cheerleader sponsor is not a job that should go to a 32 year old man teacher, but again, I’d been a pep club sponsor at Butner, and I was needing work, so, yeah, I’ll be a Cheerleader Sponsor.  

My first problem happened before school even started.  The “head” Cheerleader came to me to complain about one of the other cheerleaders who had been caught drinking over the summer, and she had missed several of their practices.  According to their bylaws, or rules, or this stupid piece of paper with Cheerleader Rules on it.  According to the rules the girl needed to be suspended from performing for the first two performances for the year.

I read the rules, called the girl at home and told her she was suspended from performing for two performances.

The following day I’m called down to the Teacher’s Lounge to meet with that girl and her mother.  The mother was one of those born again fundamentalist women who lets you know she is a Christian in every other breath.  

Immediately the mother started pressuring me to change my decision.

Here was my thinking:

1. If I cave on my very first action as the Sponsor then every decision I make from that point forward would be subject to attack by anyone who didn’t like my decision.
2. The rules were printed and clear and I was not doing anything but following the guidelines.  This girl and her mother had signed a document saying they understood the rules and they agreed to follow them.

I’d just read something in a book about how to handle difficult people, and one of the suggestions was to use THE BROKEN RECORD TECHNIQUE.  The Broken Record Technique was to say what your decision was and then pause.  Let the other party vent, scream, cuss threaten, et cetera.  Then you were to say what you had just said, using virtually the exact same words, as if you were a broken record.  [Those who have no history that included vinyl LPs may not know but sometimes a needle would get stuck on a vinyl record and a segment of the record would play and repeat and repeat and repeat.]  That was what I did with this mother.  At one point the mother told me she hated me, that I was so unfair.  I just kept repeating that the guidelines she and her daughter had signed off on, were violated, and the consequences of that violation was also part of the guidelines.

The mother eventually ran out of steam and my suspension remained in place.

I found out that Cheerleader sponsor was nothing like a Pep Club Sponsor.  My responsibility as a Pep Club sponsor was to chaperone the Pep Club as they went to football games.  I rode the bus.  I sat in the stands.  Sometimes I was asked to watch purses.

Cheerleaders dress in skimpy clothes and their practice resembles what I imagine is identical to stripper pole dancer practice.  I was very uncomfortable to be sitting in the gym watching prepubescent girls to dance and perform in as sexy a manner as they could get away with.  

I felt open to allegations of inappropriate behavior.  I wasn’t going to be inappropriate, but that had nothing to do with it.  That girl I suspended could easily have destroyed me by waiting a little while and then telling her mother I had tried to touch her boobies.  That is all it would have taken.  How could I prove I was innocent?

I endured the duty that first year but I told Mr. Hellzeal I did not want to continue with that duty for the following year.

I got an excellent evaluation when Mr. Hellzeal himself did my evaluation.

Hellzeal’s behavior with the teachers was odd and upsetting to everyone.  He would do things like require the teachers to go to the office to get a ditto master and when the request was made the teacher was given ONE.  They may have had 3 or 4 preparations, but they were given one ditto at a time.  

I guess teachers were dragging in slow some days, so Hellzeal made a rule that you had to come by the front office, get the attention of one of the secretaries, and sign in with the time you arrived.  At exactly the second you were officially late, they secretaries changed to a LATE sign in sheet.

There were dozens and dozens of micromanager, I’m the boss and you’re a turd, actions by the principal, and at one point in the Spring of the school year, someone said they wanted to file a grievance against Mr. Hellzeal.  After this was talked it around a second decision was made to have a “group grievance.”

By the Spring I was convinced that Bubba was mentally ill and sometimes he got so angry I wondered if he might go berserk, and hurt somebody.  Really.

I signed the group grievance.  

Hellzeal’s way of dealing with a grievance was to demand the first hearing immediately.  I think he didn’t want the grievant to have a chance to prepare.

After school the same day he got the grievance, all the grievants were called to the vocal music room after school.  When Hellzeal came by my room he said,

“Well, Mr. Norman, it seems you have accused me of a crime.”

“Crime?” I said, “there’s just some treatment that needs to be worked out,” I said.

“No!” he said with a raised voice.  “You signed the grievance, and you have accused me of a crime.”

Then Bubba told me to show up in the vocal music room as soon as school was out.

We all gathered in the room and sat in student desks.  Bubba was there, and eventually, Mike Medford showed up from Putnam City High School.  Mike was the grievance chairman for the Putnam City Association of Classroom Teachers.

As I watched Bubba and Mike debated the negotiated agreement I was inspired.  The PCACT guy was trying to convince Bubba that he had violated the negotiated agreement.  Bubba was trying to convince Mike that he had not violated the negotiated agreement, that this was all bellyaching by a bunch of spineless teachers who were too yellow to come to him directly and instead were hiding behind the negotiated agreement.

Obviously no one agreed with anyone, but for me, the whole thing seemed a little like church of Christ arguments with those sinner Baptists and Methodists.  I could actually see myself being the grievance chairman for the district.  It seemed like teacher union stuff was something I was perfectly prepared to do.

We lost that grievance, of course, but I was going to meetings and suddenly I found myself on the teacher negotiation team for PCACT.  I expected to have trouble with Bubba the following year, because I’d been part of the group grievance, but I figured, being on the negotiation team that that was such a high profile position that Bubba would not single me out for retaliation.  I was so fuckin’ wrong about that.  

Later, when the teachers and school board were at impasse regarding negotiations I was put on the team of folk who started trying to get the Board to move on their impasse position.

That Fall, Mayfield had this Oktoberfest night where some of the clubs had booths and the choir performed.  I was not a sponsor for a club, so I decided to use this opportunity to advocate for the teachers.  I had a flier run off at the PCACT office.  On the flier it explained what issues were involved in the impasse.  The flier also provided all the phone numbers for the school board members and asked the parents to call their school board members and urge them to return to the negotiating table.

The following day I was sitting in the In School Detention Room, where I monitored the room one class period each day.  

Bubba comes in and chuckles.  “Well,” he says, “it looks like those union marauders hit our cars last night.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Were you involved in putting those fliers on the cars last night?” he asked me.

I told him I was involved.

“I was just wondering,” he said, and chuckled, and left the room.

My life got a lot more difficult after that.

While my last evaluation had been perfect, this time, when I was evaluated, I was deficient in everything.  I want to say that I can’t dispute that I had poor classroom control.  My experience is that you can suck in every other area as a teacher, but if you have strong classroom management skills you are seen as a great teacher.

I was not a great teacher.  I also was not worse at my job in year two than I’d been in year one.

It was clear to me that I was being punished because I was active in the teacher union.  There was actually something in our negotiated agreement that said you could not be harassed or intimidated or threatened because you exercised your right to be involved in the teacher union.

I was afraid to do this, but I filed a grievance against Bubba Hellzeal.

The grievance process required that I meet with the principal, orally tell him what issues I was wanting relief from, and give him an opportunity to try to resolve the grievance at the first step before there was anything reduced to writing.

I did the informal step.  My hands were shaking.  I was afraid.  Remember how often I’ve mentioned I had debts, and needed a paycheck.  I was afraid, but I did it anyway.

Bubba mentioned that I didn’t look good, that my face and ears were red, and maybe I should look into doing something else.  Maybe I wasn’t cut out to be a school teacher.

I agreed with him, but I wasn’t about to say so.

I started the formal steps of the grievance procedure.

By the end of the school year I was still going through the steps of my grievance against my principal, and I was running for PCACT President.  I was elected, replacing Candy Chavez, but it was not that big a deal, because I was running unopposed.  I had some fear that someone might seek to be a write in candidate and I would run unopposed and still lose.

One of my happiest periods of employment was while serving as the PCACT President.

 

Ryan, School, Hoover, and Depression

Early on, it was clear to me that Ryan was not an average little boy.  My pride might be ignored as the ravings of a proud daddy, and perhaps there is some of that, but really, we started to realize Ryan was smart.  Ryan was crazy smart.  I wish I could say he got that from me and his mother, but Ryan was adopted.  It is possible Ryan’s smartness is genetic.  The debate about nature and nurture is not going to be settled by me.

I wanted Ryan to be smart.  As soon as we needed a babysitter we used the wife of one of the school’s custodians.  Jim Grant, and his wife and home daycare owner, Barbara Grant.  The house was painted green and as soon as Ryan started talking he called the house Green Barbara’s.

One of our peers, Mr. Sanders, had a little girl, Shasta, who was very close in age to Ryan.  I remember once when Shasta spilled her drink.  Shasta said, “I spilled this all over my dress!”

I was shocked.  Ryan wasn’t talking beyond saying a word or two.  Here was his female contemporary speaking in complete sentences.

So yes, I was interested in Ryan being outstanding.  He seemed outstanding to me, but I knew I was seeing him through the eyes of love.

The summer arrived and my wife, Kathie started going to OU with Ms. Butner to take a class.  I was home alone all day with Ryan.  I would put him on my lap when I was reading something.  I started pointing to a word and I would say, “Ryan, this is the word ‘the.’  Find all the ‘the’s’ on the page.”

Ryan was just a tiny little guy, but he would find all the ‘the’s’ easily.  I would move on to other words and repeat the game.

Kathie would also give Ryan little challenges.  

Kathie would teach Ryan to say some big words like, zygomaticus, or orbicularis oris and pointing out where those muscles were in the face.

Once we were at a football game at Butner and we were sitting near Mrs. Factor.  Kathie prompted Ryan to say his big anatomy words and point to where the muscles were in his face.

Mrs. Factor said, “Oh, I could never say such big words.”

“Yes you can,” said Ryan.  “Just say it real slow: zi-go-matacus.”  Everyone thought that was cute and hilarious, but it just seemed to go way beyond what I would expect from a very young little boy.

By the time Ryan was five years old he was starting to correct my spelling, and he was reading age appropriate books.

I remember another time when we were driving from Wewoka to the gynecologist in Shawnee.  Kathie had developed endometriosis and was preparing to have a hysterectomy.  The trip took us past the drive-in movie theater that had a big marquee outside the gate.  One day as we were driving past Ryan looked up and said, “They’re showing POLTERGEIST.  Ryan was not recognizing the logo for the movie.  The sign was in all caps and it was just standard sign block printing.  How could a preschooler read the word POLTERGEIST?

MORE CHURCH OF CHRIST TROUBLE

One day Mr. Hoover, the Superintendent of Butner Public Schools, called me into his office.  He got pretty parental, or bossy with me.  

“Tex,” he said, “you and Kathie have been coming to church here [meaning Cromwell Church of Christ] but your attendance is not good.”

What was I supposed to say?

“And you have never placed membership.”

I was still waiting for a question or something.

“I think it is time for you to place your membership, and start being apart of the church.”

I told him I would talk to Kathie about that.

I talked to Kathie.  I was not wild about placing membership, but Kathie thought it was a good idea.  

We decided to go to church the following Sunday and place membership.

We did that.  We came forward to the sound of Just As I Am, filled out the little card, and we had done what we were asked to do.

After church we drove home, and we were changing out of our church clothes when the phone rang.  It was Mr. Hoover.  He and his wife were in town and he wanted to come to my home immediately.

Within a few minutes Mr. Hoover and his wife were sitting in my livingroom.  [This was before our move to the log house.]  

The conversation went something like this:

“There is a problem with your placing membership at Cromwell,” he said.  “I guess as soon as church was over someone called one of the Wewoka Church Elders and told them you’d placed membership.  The Wewoka Church is not going to let you place membership in Cromwell unless you repent at the Wewoka church for your part in the withdrawal of fellowship that happened back in 1972.”

“Then let’s just not be members of the Cromwell Church,” I told him.  “You asked us to place membership.  I didn’t want to place membership.  I placed membership because you asked me to.”

“But all will be OK if you just repent with the Wewoka Church.”

“No,” I said. “How can they tell the Cromwell Church what to do?” I asked.  “We were never withdrawn from,” I added.

“I’ve talked to the Elders,” Mr. Hoover said, “and all you have to do is write a statement and they will read it in the Sunday night service.”

“I won’t say that I was wrong about objecting to what they did to Stormy Winters.”

“You don’t have to say you were wrong,” Mr. Hoover, my boss, told me.  “All you have to say is if anyone was offended by my refusal to comply with the Elder’s action, that you are sorry for that.”

Kathie thought I should be able to say at least that.  I was feeling pressured to do what Mr. Hoover wanted because he was an elder and my boss.  

I caved.  I agreed to say that if anyone was offended by my actions during that withdrawal of fellowship that I am sorry.  It sounded to me like I was sorry I’d not agreed with the Elder’s action when the actual wording was that I was sorry if other people were offended.

I did this.  I did not go forward, but Mr. Hoover and his wife picked me and Kathie and Ryan up and drove us to the Wewoka Church of Christ building.  I sat through their Sunday night worship service.  Charlie Butler stood up and read my statement aloud and then lead a prayer thanking God for my willingness to comply with the leadership of the Elders and the healing of our relationship with the Body of Christ.

I was pretty steamed about this whole thing.  

I was not sorry I didn’t comply with the Elders.  I did not give a flying fuck if my actions offended anyone.  I was mostly mad at myself for not having enough spin to stand up to Mr. Hoover and telling him to leave my house and not to talk to me about church matters ever again.

I was, and still am, ashamed of myself when I cave in to intimidation and fear.  

I did what I was pressured into doing, but I again fell into a long period where I was not going to church.

THE HOOVER PROBLEMS

In my view, Mr. Hoover was an arrogant, dictator, who ruled the teachers like a teacher of a coach might try to cow down and control students.  But the teachers were adults.  Mr. Hoover was often sarcastic.  He had a way of dropping his head and giving you a death stare that he would hold until the target of this treatment would drop their head, look away, and, almost always, they would cave to whatever it was he was wanting.

Over time the majority of the teachers had a list of grievances against Mr. Hoover.  I remember driving down the road Harold Rowe would flash his headlights and I would pull over to the side of the road.  He would get out of his car and tell me about some complain or mistreatment he had against Mr. Hoover.

Eventually the teachers started to meet as a large group, and they met in my room.  I was asked to contact the Oklahoma Education Association and to see if they could send someone out to talk with us about our complaints.

Mr. Hoover saw us meeting in the room and he started picking off teachers and grilling them about why were were meeting.  OEA sent a Uniserv Director out to talk with us.  We were told we could form an association by filling out cards.  Once we had the majority of the teachers who had joined, we could actually bargain a contract with the School Board.

When Mr. Hoover had word of what was going on he called a faculty meeting and he yelled at us for over an hour about the problems we were causing for the school and how it was unprofessional for us to air our dirty laundry in public.

I started gathering information and letters from the Superintendent and I would slip them to a reporter at the Wewoka Daily Times.

This resulted in another faculty meeting.  Now we were not just airing our dirty laundry in public, but we were putting that stuff in the newspaper.  Mr. Hoover wanted to know who had given information to the newspaper.

Eventually the faculty signed membership cards and we had 100% signed up.  I was elected as the first president.

Now I had no idea what I was doing.

There was a heated school board meeting and a number of parents showed up.  Negative things were said.  It seemed that this parochial attitude Mr. Hoover had towards the teachers he had with at least some of the parents, and the lid boiled off that school board meeting.  

I was asked if we, the teachers had concerns we wanted to turn over to the School Board.  We had such a list.  I said we would like to go over our list with the school board, but we did not want Mr. Hoover in the meeting.

Again my lack of courage showed up.  The president of the school board said they needed someone to take notes, and he wanted Mrs. Hoover to sit in on these quzi negotiations and to take notes.  I offered to have Mrs. Scott to take the notes, but the president of the school board said they wanted someone impartial to take the notes.  I caved.

But clearly Mrs. Hoover was not impartial.  Mrs. Hoover was going home that same night and telling Mr. Hoover every single complaint we voiced to the school board.  The other teachers were really taking huge risks.  Teachers like Mrs. Scott and Mr. Rowe lived in houses that belonged to the school board.  If they needed repairs they had to go to Mr. Hoover to get those repairs.  They were risking their homes to stand up to Mr. Hoover.

I honestly do not remember everything that happened then, but my memory is that there were lots of hard feelings then.  I can remember the look on the faces of Mr. Hoovers two daughters and I felt like a turd on a stick.  

Mr. Coker moved up to be the new Superintendent.  Slowly feelings calmed down.  As Association President I had no clue what I was supposed to do.  One of the things I thought was a good idea was to write letters to our elected readers on topics that might advantage or disadvantage teachers and students.  When I say letter writing, I don’t mean just me.  I would call all the teachers together and have them all write letters to the elected leaders.  I thought a lot of letters would get more attention that just a few letters.

I remember several years after I left Butner Schools I ran into Enoch Kelly Haney.   He remembered me.  Mr. Haney said that he never got the volume of letters he got when I was at Butner Schools.

Did those efforts make any difference?  I don’t think so.

DEPRESSION

In 1980 it was clear I was seriously depressed.  I sometimes would be at home and just start crying.  I felt trapped.  I felt homeless.

I started seeing a psychiatrist in Oklahoma City and took my first antidepressant medication that year.  Here it is 2015, as of this writing, and I am still taking antidepressants.

Early on I figured we would retire from Butner Schools.  I thought Ryan would go through Butner School and end up at OU or OSU.  But I was not making enough money.  Ryan was about to start school and I wasn’t sure I wanted  him to go through Butner Schools.

I don’t mean to imply there was anything wrong with Butner Schools, but I do mean to imply that all schools are NOT equal.  The electives were limited.  I thought Ryan was above average in intelligence and he needed as many advantages as I could prove him.

To me it felt like we would never have enough money if we stayed at Butner Schools.  

We applied for teaching jobs at Putnam City Schools, the school system Kathie had graduated from, and that would put us closer to her parents.  Moving your wife closer to her parents is rarely bad for the wife.

One day Kathie was called and she was hired to teach Junior High Science at Putnam City.  I didn’t have a job but we followed the old saying, “Leap, and a net will appear.”

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.