February 12, 2015 (Thursday)
Abraham Lincoln was born on this date. Not that it matters, but did you know he was the first president with a beard? He was already in office when he grew it at the suggestion of a little girl. I read that in an article entitled, “20 things you did not know about Abraham Lincoln.” I knew some of them. Others I must have forgotten, like the fact that he had only 18 months of formal education.
(Segway)
Which brings me to more reminiscing, this time about my education. I started school in 1937 and graduated for the final time in 1959 — 22 years. Of course, I have never stopped learning; no one ever stops. I think we all learn something almost every day.
I was three weeks shy of my 6th birthday when I started school. The teacher lined us up and asked each of us, “How old are you?” I said, “six,” because that’s what I was told to say if asked by the teacher. That was it. No birth certificate, no witnesses, nothing like that. I’m not proud of lying, but at least I obeyed my parents, which is a virtue, right? Anyway, I got started.
For three years, I went to Theodore Roosevelt Elementary School, located near the present intersection of Interstate 45 and Loop 610 on the north side of Houston. In those days none of that existed. I walked to school. On my first day, I decided I had had enough education, and started toward home, but the teacher saw me leaving and called me back into the classroom. After two years, my parents must have separated, I guess, because I started Third grade in a different school, near my grandparents’ home, where I was living temporarily. After three weeks, I was back at my old school. I know that, because I have a class photo with the information written on a slate for the camera. We moved a couple of houses down the street from another school, Looscan, and I attended 4th grade there. My parents divorced, and when I started 5th grade, my sisters and I were living with our grandparents and attending Sherman Elementary. I was still living with them when I was in the 7th grade, but when I completed that, my father remarried and my sisters and I moved to his home where I lived when attending the 8th grade, at the same Junior High School as the 7th. Transportation was via chartered city buses. My mother remarried and I moved to her home across town when I was in the 9th grade, still at the same school (special permission was given me to remain at my school). When I entered the 10th grade, the rules were enforced and I went to San Jacinto High School, near my mother’s home, and I knew no one there. So it was farewell to the old friends and hello to the new. I was there until graduation 3 years later, in 1949.
Facebook kept asking me, “Charles, where did you attend high school?” so I tried to answer yesterday, and they would not accept it, said the name was invalid (even though the school has its own entry in Wikipedia). Bill Keyworth and Fred Beeler both went there, and some famous people like Walter Cronkite, Dr. Denton Cooley and Gale Storm (“My little Margie in 1950’s TV), along with Richard Johnson, publisher of the Houston Chronicle. But Facebook would not accept my last name, either, so it’s par for the course. Facebook is great, but evidently not perfect.
After graduation from high school in 1949 I went with my friends Troy Conner and David Foster to East Texas Baptist College where I was given a music scholarship, but I left after 9 weeks because I was sick with allergies and asthma and missed too many classes. So I started the winter quarter at Baylor, and stayed there until graduation in 1953. (Wanda started at the same time but completed all the requirements and graduated in 2 years 9 months).
So the following fall I started attending Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, got married in October, completed one semester and then we moved to pastor a church in Lampasas, Texas. While there, I commuted to the seminary in Fort Worth one semester two days per week with Gene McCombs who pastored nearby. In 1955, we moved back to Fort Worth and I started to work at General Motors in Arlington, intending to attend Seminary classes during the day and work at night. I found that too difficult, and dropped out of school.
Then GM did away with its night shift and I continued to work days. In the fall of 1956, Wanda went back to teaching at Azle, Texas and I continued to work at GM in Arlington. I resigned my job at mid-term, went to work part-time in a granary-feed store and went back to Seminary classes in 1957. Wanda continued to teach, a church in our community called me as pastor, and I stayed with the Seminary classes until graduation in 1959, when we moved to Kosse, Texas and resumed our full-time ministry, with only memories of classrooms–lots of ’em.
So, that’s my reminiscing of education. Lincoln had only 18 months of formal classes. If he had attended longer maybe he could have been a pastor. Reminds me of a song I used to hear when I was a kid growing up, “You think you’ll be a preacher, think you’ll go to school, man, you ain’t no preacher, you’re an educated fool.” Hope not.