Becoming the person I am

This does not start with the telling of my life story, but how I became the person I am. I have not thought of writing about my past experiences because of the distress I felt in my original family while growing into adulthood. However, my husband has often encouraged me to do so. He believes mine is a story, which I should share with our two daughters so that they will better understand who I am and how I got to be this way.

 

I have never seriously considered it until I was reminded of my early life after becoming a part of the 50th reunion of my social work class at the University of Texas. I had spent three days in the close and friendly association while talking to about eight other members of our group and now realize that the other members, like myself, have spent many years working in the field of social work without a lot of introspection about what made us choose our careers and what we gained from them. Each of us shared common interests, which we were able to recount as we saw our lives through the conversations with others in the group. The ones who attended the reunion were: myself, Truett, Fran, Patricia, Royanna, Gary, Evelyn, Ellen, (in a letter only), and Jan.

 

It was comforting to notice that most had aged along with me. All acknowledged that they had changed over the past 50 years, but none seemed too bothered by the changes that have taken place with themselves. It was fascinating to be reliving my past while talking to class members, as we shared similar experiences they also have encountered in their social work jobs. These memories are the motivation for my recanting a little about myself and some disappointments and joys I have found along the way.

 

My chance to attend college

Old Main at Howard Payne College. (Now called Howard Payne University)

 

I came from a family with deep Baptist beliefs, beginning with my grandparents, my mother, and most of the rest of the family members. I accepted and believed in some of the Baptist doctrines I was taught and still hold them to be true, such as a belief in the separation of church and state and believing that Jesus was a role model to use as a guide for my life.

 

It was through my church experience at First Baptist Church that I made several real friends whom I still consider to be the best friends of my life. Mildred (Millie) was the youth director at church and she was instrumental in helping me to get a scholarship to attend college. I would not have been able to attend college otherwise, as funds were not available to me from my family.  Attending college changed my life in a way that I could never have known, even though I had previously attended the local community college for some classes.

 

Howard Payne was a great experience for me, even though it was an institution that was rooted deeply in the conservative Southern Baptist doctrine which further changed me when I decided to become a Social Worker. While in college, I felt congruent with the Baptist priorities and had the experience of a very conservative Christian/Political organization that was part of a popular belief system at college. As I grew and acknowledged my true value system and how it should be carried out, I recognized my path more clearly.

 

When I graduated from College

When I graduated from college in 1961, and despite my mother’s wishes for me to stay near home, I found and accepted a job at an orphan home in Dallas. I loaded up my clothes and other belongings into my 1958 Nash Rambler and moved to Dallas, where I lived with the parents of two of my friends from Howard Payne.

 

Though I was only in Dallas for about six months, I found a place with the mother of friends. I had borrowed money from my grandfather to purchase the small Nash Rambler car which was required for the work at the orphan home. My grandfather died in 1961 and I paid the loan back to other members of the family who inherited his assets after graduation from college.

Note that—this is an “Orphan home” with the name orphan is still in it!

The Orphan Home did not drop the “Orphan” to Children’s Home from their name till much later and I have always thought of this as unfortunate for the children and their lack of sensitivity to the identity of their residents. Many of the children were not orphans but had been placed in the home by families who were not equipped to care for their children.

They also had a policy where they paid the female Social Work employees $250 per month while men were paid $400 for the same job, as they were considered being the head of their families.

 

As a result, I had to find part-time work at a department store to make enough to pay for gas and my other living expenses. This early experience gave me a much better understanding of the politics of this Baptist workplace and caused me to finally quit and look for employment that paid better. I again loaded my Rambler and headed for the unknown (to me) territory which I had never previously visited. It was in the west Texas town of El Paso where I became a Social Worker.

 

My work with the families in the poor areas and barrios of El Paso helped me tremendously to see the value of Social Work and to gain more complete respect for those in need. In retrospect, this was probably the beginning of my understanding of the needs of children and my development of greater compassion for others. My work there played a huge start in broadening my worldview.

 

When I moved to El Paso

When I first moved to El Paso, I shared an apartment with another person who was working for the same agency. Later, we moved from this apartment after we discovered that the son of the owner was a “peeping tom” and we were the objects of his interest. We found an apartment, and it was much more comfortable for us as it gave us an up-close view of the beautiful Franklin Mountains in El Paso. We also added roommates, both of whom also worked for Child Welfare.

 

It was while here in El Paso that a former friend from college set me up with a blind date with Carroll, her cousin. She had recently taken a job with the same school and was teaching first grade under the supervision of Carroll. Carroll and I continued to date while in El Paso, but I never felt a great sense of interest on his part until after I left El Paso to attend graduate school in Austin.

 

The opportunity to attend graduate school came as I continued to work at Child Welfare and was helped by my supervisor, Fred, who encouraged me to go back for my Master’s in Social Work at the University of Texas. The state had offered a “stipend” for employees to attend to add to their supervisory staff, which was another windfall for me, as I did not have the money to attend on my own. I finally did so and was involved in several field placements around the State before gaining my degree.

 

You would take a class and then serve a semester in field placement to see what the social work occupation offered. I spent my time in all the classes and served in two field placements around the State. I did not know until the end of the semester whether I would graduate or not, and it was very frustrating for me. Carroll had visited with me while I was on several of the placements and had asked me to marry him. I had agreed and had accepted his ring.

 

My frustrations grew before my last year and I wanted to drop out and move back to El Paso and work at Child Welfare. Carroll, however, strongly encouraged me to return and finish my degree. He felt that I would have seen myself as a quitter and would have regretted it later. He told me to take off my ring so that I could do whatever I needed to do to be sure that marriage to him was what I wanted.

 

Despite all the frustrations of writing and rewriting my thesis, I did make it to graduation. I returned to El Paso and got a job at Child Welfare. Carroll was completing his Master’s in Education at Texas Western College (UTEP) at the same time as I was at the University of Texas, so we decided to get married in August 1964. We called up my mother to ask her to set up the wedding, and she did so and invited a large group of my family members to attend.

 

April 15, 1967

On April 15, 1967, we were on driving on Interstate I-10 near Hawkins Avenue when a soldier who was home from Vietnam flew his car over the fence on the freeway and hit our car almost head-on. A second later would have put his car through our windshield but instead, his car hit the front of ours and spun both cars around. We were traveling at about 60 miles per hour and he was going much faster as he had just passed an ambulance that had its siren on and was on its way to the hospital.

 

Seat belts were not required at the time, and neither Carroll nor I were wearing them. I was thrown through the windshield where my foot caught in the window frame and brought my face down on the now crumbled metal which had formerly been our hood. Carroll was thrown about 30 feet to one side of the road and suffered a broken ulna and radius of his right arm and other minor cuts and bruises.

1964 Ford, we were driving when we were hit on I-10

Fortunately, we were close to the hospital and were taken quickly to the emergency room. Thankfully, Dr. Adrian Grass was on duty as he was one of the best orthopedic surgeons in town. He and other emergency personnel spent several hours removing glass and sewing up my face, repairing a broken arm and foot, rebuilding my shattered left leg with a metal rod the length of my femur, using several screws and wire ties to hold everything in place until recovery and healing could repair the bones.

 

I had lost lots of blood and was given several pints during the operation. I was in Intensive Care for two weeks and in a full-body cast for the next six months. Fortunately, did not remember much of what had happened to me, initially.

 

During the first two weeks of my recovery, the doctors wanted to know if we wished to move me from the county hospital to the more affluent Providence Memorial on the other side of El Paso. We declined that offer since our neighbor was on the Board at Thomason General Hospital and because he was loud enough and influential enough to get his way; we saw no need to move me. Our neighbor asked that they give me the very best care possible. Later, the nurses would laugh and tell us they had orders to treat me like a VIP.

 

With all my injuries, I don’t know what any other hospital could have done to accommodate my injuries better. We were very pleased to use the County Hospital and do not believe that the newer and fancy facilities on the other side of town could have treated me more effectively.

 

Six months in a full-body cast

After two weeks or so, the doctors and Insurance Company allowed Carroll to rent a hospital bed, side table, tray, and other necessities and take me to our new house as I was to wear a full-body cast for three months.

 

For about a month or so, we hired a nurse to help us at home. At the end of the school year in 1967, Carroll was out for the Summer months and this gave him time to be my caregiver and cook (curried shrimp—ask him for the recipe)!

 

Later in the Summer, we got my sister, Nancy, to come and stay and care for me. Later, after Nancy returned to college in New Orleans, Carroll’s mother came out and spent a month doing the same until the cast was removed. We did all this, as Carroll had to finish school with his broken arm and wearing a cast. Carroll wore his cast for six weeks or more and he had to learn to write with his left hand and became pretty proficient at it.

 

After I had come home and was recuperating in my full body cast lying in my hospital bed, Carroll noticed that my eyes had turned yellow and jaundiced. He called our family physician, who sent his nurse over to check and take blood from me. We then learned that I had developed Type B hepatitis from the blood given to me during surgery. This was before they began to test all blood donations.

 

My physician arranged for his nurse to come by weekly and check on me and give me shots of hemoglobin to help with my hepatitis. I had to suck on lots of hard candy, as this helped in working the poison out of my liver. At the end of three months after living in the hot plaster cast in the middle of summer, I was anxiously waiting for my ability to get back to a regular bed but my Surgeon, Dr. Grass wanted an x-ray to confirm that my bones were mending sufficiently before allowing this.

 

About this time, two of my best friends from college came to see us and were driving their station wagon. Using their best innovative skills, the three of them lifted my mattress onto a dolly we had and rolled me to our carport, and loaded me laying flat on my back into the rear end of their station wagon. They took me to our family doctor’s clinic in Ysleta, where they put me on a stretcher, rolled me into the clinic, and took X-Rays of my bones. They then put me back into the station wagon and while I was there flat on my back, they gave me a tour of El Paso. It also gave us a chance to show my friends many of the city’s most famous sites. Being this was the first time that I had gotten out of the house in three months, I enjoyed it thoroughly.

 

It was good that this was positive because the news concerning the x-rays was not. Dr. Grass found the information he needed, and it hurt Carroll to have to tell me that Dr. Grass had told him that the bones needed three more months in the cast to fully recover.

 

I first took it hard but, after crying, I recovered and accepted the news very well. I spent six months in the full-body cast and lost so much weight that I almost fell out of my cast by the time they cut it off in six months. During this time, I had learned to knit, crochet, watch soap operas, and was able to continue to do much of my work with Child Welfare from my bed at home. I was very happy when I was able to return to work, although it required me to use crutches and canes for weeks.

 

My Life in El Paso and After Retirement

Years before this and soon after the car wreck in 1967, I had worked as a case manager for the Salvation Army and we spent much of our time helping girls who were pregnant to give up their babies so they could be adopted out. This practice was dropped years later as the girls began wanting to keep their babies and raise them as parents.

 

After a few years, I went to work for the Lee and Beulah Moore Home for unwed mothers, and while there; I supervised three other Social Workers. Later, when Carroll was Superintendent, he was instrumental in seeing that Clint ISD hired all three as Special Education Counselors since they were better trained and they could make more money working for the school district than they could in Social Work jobs.

 

Barbara and Trini

It was in this work that I met and worked with one of my dear friends -Trini, as we were traveling together to the small towns in which we provided services to the students. I believe that in Trini; I found one of the most selfless and generous people I have known and I have missed her long after she passed away.

 

I continued to work for Region XIX Educational Service Center and their programs until Carroll and I both took retirement in 1995 and moved to San Antonio, where we purchased a home.

 

In 1998, I was missing my work in Special Education counseling when I got a call from friends telling me that the Clint District was looking for another Special Education Counselor and wanted to know if I wanted the job. I jumped for joy and headed for the border—again.

 

We moved back to another one of the condos in the same townhouse area where we had lived before on the Horizon Golf Course. It had now changed its name to Emerald Springs, as it had new owners. Instead of renting, we purchased a two-bedroom townhouse and paid it out like a car—over the next four years.

 

I worked with five of the outlying school districts but all within the Bi-County Cooperative District and loved every minute, especially with the counseling of boys at the middle school level. I always felt that they were more open to counseling than the girls and respectful of the advice they received from an older female figure. I also loved the nice salary that the district was now paying its Special Education Counselors. I would have preferred to spend another year with the district before we made the move back to San Antonio.

 

After moving back to San Antonio, I worked for Air Force Village I and II as a Social Worker and was responsible for helping to set up the developmental living plans, (similar to what we did in the ARD meetings at the schools in which I worked) for every person in the villages. Unfortunately, a change in command brought in a person who wanted to get rid of me and hire one of his friends.

 

I then went to work as Geriatric Mental Health Care Specialist for a year or so. My friend and I worked for a company and traveled to interview people for the March of Dimes in evaluating the success of their programs Since moving back, I had found work with Avalon Counseling Services and got all the referrals I wanted which wasn’t a large number. I now have the time to get more involved with other activities which I enjoy, such as being part of a book club and being more involved in my activities at our Central Presbyterian Church, which we love.

 

Carroll’s addendum; I have always seen Barbara as a great fighter in our family.

 

I, have always admired Barbara and respected her for her work and her passion for wildlife and the protection of the great outdoors in our nation. It intensified my respect after we watched the six-part series of ‘The National Parks’, by Ken Burns, and realized just how great of a treasure we have in America. Fortunately, Barbara and I have been lucky enough to have visited so many of the places which are depicted in the films. Barbara’s opinions and fights for these places, along with an occasional small check, only add to my appreciation for her convictions about loving the wild country of our nation. ~ With much LOVE, Carroll