Comments:
I attended West Texas State, majored in music, and stayed in the Panhandle after graduation. My first job teaching Band was at Tucumcari, NM for one year. Then I spent 9 years at Perryton JH, 3years at White Deer HS, both in the Panhandle. I moved to Amarillo in 1978 to teach Band at River Road HS. While at River Road, I married and had a daughter. I was an active bowler since I was sixteen and continued that into my adult life. In 1983 I changed to Caprock HS in Amarillo. After a divorce I moved to Garland for a year to teach at Coyle MS in Rowlett. After one year we remarried and I moved back to Amarillo to Fannin MS. I taught at Fannin with two WFSH grads, Don Allen and Marcia McCormick. I divorced again, and married again. Isobel and I dated in college, but I was a senior and she was a freshman. I graduated and moved on while she stayed and finished school. We were both Band Directors and had kept in touch, but we were both busy with our own careers, but when I moved back to Amarillo, Isobel was teaching at another school in Amarillo. After the second divorce, we started dating again and eventually married. We both retired in 2003. I started coaching high school bowlers in 2003 and became the district coordinator for the Panhandle. My Amarillo High teams have been very successful at the state tournament. River Road asked me to teach as a part time assistant in 2005, and I did that for a year. The little town of Nazereth lost their Band Director after school started in 2006 and they asked Isobel and I to teach part time, which we did for two years, but it was 60 miles to Nazereth and we got tired of the daily commute. In 2008 Happy ISD ( Yes, there is a Happy, Texas) asked us to teach there and we are still doing that. My daughter lives in Austin and works in the arson lab. She is expecting her first child in March. We just started our eighth high school bowling season, but I am recovering from hip replacement surgery. I hope to be back teaching and coaching in about two weeks and return to bowling in about three months. Well, that's been my life story right up to today. Update - I still live in Amarillo with Isobel but as I approach 80, I'm not as active as I once was. I'm the district coordinator for high school bowling in Amarillo and I still bowl three leagues a week, but my average has dropped about fifty pins a game. We used to travel in the summer, but if we drive to Austin to visit our daughter and her family, we feel like we traveled across the country, so we don't do that as often as we would like.
