Reflections from a Teacher

Mr. Darryl Morris has given me permission to share with everyone his wonderful letter in which he reflects on his life up to this point including memories of CHS and his family and their horrifying experience and on 9/11.

Dear Nicki,

I seem to remember that you spelled your name Nikki when you were in high school, but I’m probably wrong since I find all too often that my memories differ considerably from those of my contemporaries since we’re all now entering our seventies (I’ll be 70 this coming November 3rd). Regardless of the spelling (and my questionable memory), I do remember you and Jim and various other members of the CHS Class of ’63. Your class was the first group that had to contend with my pedagogical stumblings and bumblings as I first entered into the teaching profession after graduation from West Texas State College (now West Texas A & M) in 1961. I think I was 24 or 25 years old when I began teaching (having spent time and training in the Marine Corps Reserve between my sophomore and junior years in college); and I can only hope that I didn’t scar any of you too badly as I struggled to gain my particular foothold in the workaday world.

You’re correct about my being related (by marriage) to Mrs. Dottie Bettis. Dottie is the widow of Jim Bettis (of the former Bettis Electric in Childress) who is my wife’s oldest brother. Dottie and I are also “almost related” in the sense that her brother Dewey “Potty” Sisk married my Aunt Viola, my dad’s youngest sister. Dottie’s children, Lynn, Larry, and Terry Bettis are my wife’s niece and nephews.

Like you, I remember Mr. Jones, the history teacher, along with Mr. A.B. Shaw, Ms. Nellie Agnes Kennedy, the school custodian Mr. Luke Lanier, the principal Mr. Garland Terrell, Mr. Harmon, and another long-time lady teacher whose name I cannot now recall—all of whom were very kind to me and who offered invaluable guidance and assistance as entered the education profession. I also seem to remember a lady named Loretta Kaplan who came there during my last year, although I can’t remember what course she taught. I also think that one of my own former classmates from Quail High School, Mary Jo Johnson, was joining the CHS faculty on the year that I left. I can’t remember what Mary Jo taught (home economics, perhaps?), but I do remember that she married one of the Gage brothers who had the Gage Grocery in Childress.

With a mother who spent 40 years in the education profession—as a classroom teacher, elementary school principal, high school principal, and, finally, Superintendent of Schools in Collingsworth County (Wellington), with numerous cousins and uncles who served in World War II, and with my previous experience in the Marine Corps Reserve, I was always somewhat torn between a career as a teacher and a career in the military service. Finally, in November of 1963, the military career won out, and I left CHS to enter the Army at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. During my Army career I served at Fort Sill, OK (three tours), Vietnam, Korea, Germany, Fort Leavenworth, KS, and, finally, Fort Hood, TX. I was also selected by the Army to attend graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania where I received a Masters Degree in English, followed by a three-year tour as an Assistant Professor of English at the United States Military Academy at West Point, NY. This was one Army assignment, at least, during which my affinities for teaching and for the military life were gratified simultaneously.

In 1984, I retired from the Army as a Lieutenant Colonel and then went to work at Central Texas College, near Fort Hood, as an Instructional Design Specialist on a government-sponsored project which required overseas travel for two 45-to-60-day periods each year. I liked the work and the pay, but I wearied of the travel and was glad when the project ended after eight years. Following that, I taught Freshman Composition and Rhetoric I and II and Sophomore Technical Writing for two more years at Central Texas College, at which time I was vested in the Employee Retirement System of Texas. So, I retired once again in 1995. Sharon, my wife of 48 years, retired from the Federal Civil Service three years later; and, since then, we have devoted our so-called Golden Years to doing the things we’ve always wanted to do but never had time for when we were gainfully employed. Sharon makes machine embroidered quilts, and I spend my time reading, writing, doing art, and trying to keep the grass mowed around the rural homesteads we’ve occupied for the past two decades.

After retiring from the Army at Fort Hood, we lived in rural Lampasas County, TX, for 10 years before health considerations (mine and my mother’s) necessitated our move to a rural home near Fort Sill, Oklahoma. At some point after retiring from the Army, I had a “silent” heart attack and also contracted asthma which was severely aggravated by an allergy to mountain cedar which grew profusely in Lampasas County. I was in such bad shape that we decided we needed to find another place to live; and when my mother entered her 90s and needed some assistance, we moved in 2003 to our present location where we could remain near military and VA hospital facilities and, at the same time, be near enough to my mother’s home in Wellington, TX, that we could travel there easily as needs arose. We also moved to our current location to be nearer the family farming operation which we still have in Collingsworth County. The move was therapeutic for all of us, and I am now regaining my health, which is a blessing since my poor health had formerly forced me to withdraw into a rather reclusive lifestyle.

Sharon and I have three daughters and one granddaughter. Our oldest daughter Debra (and mother of our granddaughter Louisa) received her Bachelors Degree in government from the University of Texas and went on to Yale University to get two Masters Degrees and a PhD in political science (which I tell her is an oxymoron, much to her chagrin). She taught at the University of Virginia for 5 years before quitting to become a mother before her biological clock chimed for the last time. She now works for Pearson, Inc., in Austin. Pearson is involved in the achievement testing that is done with high school students throughout the state. Her daughter Louisa is a second-grader in an elementary school near Austin.

Middle daughter Nicole (whom we’ve always called “Nicki”) graduated with a Bachelors Degree in English from Texas A & M and also taught for five years in Spring High School near Houston. Now, however, she works for Triand, Inc., an Austin-based company which subcontracts to Pearson, Inc.

Youngest daughter Sharyl also graduated from Texas A & M with a Bachelors Degree in English. Sharyl never taught English in high school. Instead, she worked as an assistant librarian at Tufts University in Boston before she and her husband moved to Seattle, where she is employed with the Department of Pharmacy of the University of Washington.

I’ve mentioned that my mother is in her 90s. In fact, she will be 94 on September 11, which is a holiday we view with mixed emotions in our household. In 2001, my mother was at our house in Texas, and when I arose on the morning of September 11 to wish her a happy birthday, I saw the awful picture of the burning World Trade Center towers on TV. My daughter Debra was working for the Morgan-Stanley investment company at that time, and we knew she was in New York undergoing some training with the company. What we didn’t know until we called her husband was that she was doing her training in the World Trade Center. She was on the 61st floor of the south tower, the second tower hit but the first to fall; and as we watched the towers crumble, we feared that we had lost our oldest daughter in the conflagration following that terrible terrorist attack. We plunged into a deep pit of grief until four hours later when Debra’s husband called to tell us that she had miraculously gotten out of the building via the stairway and had run for approximately four blocks before the tower collapsed. It was a harrowing experience for all of us; but, as my mother remarked later that day, what started out as the worst birthday of her long life turned out to be the best when we found out that Debra had survived. Needless to say, with something like this striking so close to home, I have definite opinions regarding our participation in the worldwide war on terror.

Well, Nicki, I’m sure I’ve told you more that you ever really wanted (or needed) to know about the travels of Clan Morris since we left the hallowed halls of dear old CHS to seek our fortunes in other climes. If you wish to post this information on your blogspot, please feel free to do so. Or, if you prefer, you might edit this material to get rid of my verbose ramblings and post only what you consider to be essential items of information. Finally, you might decide not to post any of this, which I assure you will not offend me at all. I just wanted to check in with you and let you know that I have not forgotten my short stint as a teacher in Childress High School and that I have thought of the place and the people I met there very often in my life since I left in 1963.

I send you and Jim my very best wishes for a long life and good health and hope you will convey the same to any other of my former students who might remember me.

Sincerely,
Darryl Morris