77 years of memories
September 24, 2008 (Wednesday)
Today I’m 77 years old, so I’ll take a little break from reminiscing about past hurricanes and meditate a while on how the world has changed since 1931, when I was born in Houston.
The statistics we memorized in school were based upon the 1930 census, so the U.S.A. population was 122,775,046 and Houston’s population was 292,352, having grown 110% since 1920 to become the 27th largest city in the country. The city I knew as I grew up was pretty much the city that is now inside Loop 610.
The school buildings where we attended classes were old enough to have been the schools attended by our parents and maybe even our grandparents. Most of them have now been demolished and replaced. The high school I attended (San Jacinto) is now the campus of Houston Community College, its beautifully landscaped campus having become a sea of concrete, parking lots, and (to my mind) ugly additional buildings. Troy’s high school, Jeff Davis, is still going strong.
Our senior class of 1949 called itself the “forty-niners.” In the fall of ’49 we went away to college at East Texas Baptist College in Marshall, Texas. I discovered that I was allergic to the many trees there, and was ill for 9 weeks, when I withdrew, bade farewell to Troy Conner and David Foster, my roommates, and started over at Baylor University in Waco, where I did not suffer as badly from the allergies.
Looking back, I can see clearly that the move to Waco was in God’s plan. My history of church service is a chain that is anchored to those days in Waco. It was there I met Wanda, and we married in 1953. God blessed us with a wonderful family, and He opened many doors of service right up to this present day. Thank you, Lord.