Went off to ENMU along with half our class!!! Went there mainly because it was close to Hobbs because at that time I was going with Martha Walstad and she was still in high school. Her dad took care of our going together as he did not approve of me and the guys I ran with!!
Met my wife of 50 years my second year at Eastern. She was a freshman from Santa Fe. She was a sorority pledge and I was a fraternity guy. We married in 1963 and when I finished my Master's degree in Jan of 1966 we moved to Evanston WY. where I worked at the state hospital. After 2 plus years there I got promoted to a position in Cheyenne. Spent 5 years there in the Dept of Health, Mental Health Division. We moved to Casper, WY in June of 1972 when I took a job as Director of Central Wyoming Counseling Center which is a community mental health/substance abuse treatment center. I retired from that position after 39 years in Oct. 2011. Built it from a staff of 6 when I came to 135 staff when I retired. My first budget was under a $ 100,00.00 per year and was over 11 million dollars the year I retired. Guess you might say I burned out and was tired of the personnel and political crap!! My wife Peggy, is still working as an accounting clerk in a CPA firm. She says she isn't ready to retire!!
We had two daughters, one lives in Utah with her family and the other one in Denver with her family.
I never really went back to Hobbs all that often. My dad died in 1972 right after we moved to Casper so I just went back a couple of times a year, usually Christmas and once in the summer to see mom and my sisters. My wife's parents lived in Farmington and Albq before he retired from the phone company and moved to Dallas. Her dad dies a few years ago and her mom is in a nursing home in Dallas.
My mom had a stroke about 7 years ago and lives with my youngest sister (Judy) and her husband (Bob Grounds--Dolores Grounds older brother) in Louisiana. My other sister Jackie lives in Vegas where she taught for probably 30 plus years in the Vegas schools.
Is there any site I could go to that has info about our classmates? I reconnected with Jim Armstrong a couple of years ago as he and Cliff Stice both live in the Denver area. We have lunch each year at Christmas when we are at our daughter's house. They are both retired and doing well. Cliff worked with my wife's father in Albq as they both were Ma Bell guys. Jim did a lot of different things and was quite successful in the business world. He is also an avid fly fisherman. Cliff and Jim play golf together.
Was good hearing from you and about your life. Guess we all made it even though there were some who thought we would never amount to anything!!
John Meekins:
I live in Columbus, Ohio where I am doing public relations for the State of Ohio after about 20 years in the newspaper business as a reporter and then doing pr in the private sector.
I've enjoyed three reunions, 1980, 2000 and 2005 and thank all of those who worked to make them work.
Funny story about my going to Hobbs for the 2005 reunion. As I waited at a gate at the Dallas/Ft. Worth airport for a plane to Lubbock, the gate area suddenly started filling up with all these Japanese people. Young, middle aged, old! I mean soon it was like shoulder to shoulder. As more of them appeared, I thought to myself: I didn't think this many Japanese in the whole world had the vaguest idea where Lubbock, Texas was--let alone wanted to go there. The more I thought about it, the more I... Well, I checked! I was at the wrong gate: B4 instead of A4. I changed gates and just in time.
Of course there was absolutely no possibility of a mixup coming back from Lubbock since all the flights for American Airlines, every single one of them, out of Lubbock had only one destination: Dallas/Ft. Worth.
Greetings from Denver where I have lived since graduating. I got the HHS web site from Jim Riveria who kept trying to send it to me via e-mail that continued to fail because he was using a typewriter. We now have that corrected. I am trying to contact William (Stubby) Stockton who also graduated HHS about 1958. He and his family were originally from Menard. TX.
Hello, Class of 1960. I've enjoyed seeing the photos of many of you at the 2000 Reunion and I wanted to post this picture of my wife, Jane, and me. Jane, who's from Philadelphia, and I have been married for 35 years, and we have two married sons, both in the military, and one grandchild.
You can see our online photo album at ememories.com called The Edwards.
Both John and Jane are United Methodist ministers in Thiells, New York (near the Hudson River about 30 miles north of New York City across from Sleepy Hollow country and just below West Point). Their son Scott is an Air Force officer in Dayton, Ohio who is a behavioral research scientist (the picture of Jane and John was taken in 1999 when Scott got his master's degree in clinical psychology at Spokane, WA). Scott and his wife, JoAnne have a son, Hunter, 16 mos. John and Jane's other son, Jonathan, is graduating in September 2000 from Officer Candidate School at Ft. Benning, GA. Later Jonathan, with his wife, Jennifer, will be assigned to Ft. Drumm, NY, where he will be an officer in the 10th Mountain Division. John and Jane are looking forward to the proud moment when Lt. Scott Edwards will pin Lt. Jonathan Edwards' bars on his shoulders.
Jane and John Edwards at son Scott's graduation. Photo courtesy of John Edwards
Just a tidbit: Nancy Weiss, Lubbock, TX, who brought George W. Bush to the podium for the Republican Convention, is a personal friend of mine. We were provisionals together in the Junior League '77.
