One of Oklahoma's Finest Hours

     Twenty years ago on April 19, 1995, Oklahoma’s serene, easy-going life of innocence collapsed as the Alfred P. Murrah building crumbled, the result of the senseless detonation of a homemade truck bomb. As with any cataclysmic event, most people living at the time, especially in the Sooner state, can describe the moment the horrible news broke.
     That Wednesday, I was teaching third graders at Woodland Elementary School in Fairfax, Oklahoma, and had taken the class to their physical education class. A colleague and friend, Virginia Williams, who taught second graders, pulled me aside and discreetly, in a hushed tone, asked if I had heard about the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City. Of course, the news of this tragedy shocked me and questions filled my mind. But I had to teach third graders. Frightening them would have exacerbated an already horrific event that soon their little minds would be forced to absorbed. They were old enough to understand the impact of a bombing of this magnitude but young enough to realize their reliance on others for their safety and security. If this could happen to Oklahoma City kids’ parents, could it happen to their parents?
     The following morning in an effort to ensure correct information, I bought the morning copy of The Oklahoman for the latest news with maps and photographs. This practice of having the day’s newspaper available for the students’ perusing allowed the impetus for students who needed to discuss or question the carnage that had occurred in their state’s capital city. Each morning, for about a week, the latest copy of the newspaper could be found in the classroom.
     The resiliency of third graders always amazed me. Frequently, they moved to a point of acceptance and understanding in a quicker manner than I did. I think that is one reason I never tired of teaching them and drew courage and strength from their ability to reach closure and resolution in the midst of calamity. The argument can be made that their age negated their cognizance of the disaster’s enormity. I agree to an extent, but third graders’ attitudes of compassion and concern, coupled with the desire to reach out to those in adversity, provided a conduit for healing.
     Oklahoma City seemed so far from Osage County. Yet when the victims’ names were revealed, my father’s heart was saddened to see the name of the granddaughter of a couple he knew. Dad had done a home renovation for them. A couple who had been in the building that ill-fated morning was neighbors of my aunt. These personal connections to the manmade catastrophe deepened the pain, anguish, and anger due to the irrational, yet premeditated action that had unleashed overwhelming sorrow over the state and the nation.
     As we have approached the 20th year since the state-shattering explosion in Oklahoma City, I have heard repeatedly the phrase “Oklahoma Standard” mentioned in commemorative tributes. About six weeks after the bombing in 1995, I participated in a teaching trip to Russia. Since I was the only Oklahoman on the trip, I frequently heard admiration for how our state handled the devastating tragedy. Even some of the Russian educators expressed heartfelt sympathy and marveled at the courage of the Oklahoma people in the bombing's aftermath. Without exception, the Americans commented on the moving memorial service held on the Sunday following the bombing, always reflecting on the strength and faith of the citizens of Oklahoma. Oklahomans’ responses in their toughest, but finest hour became known worldwide as “the Oklahoma Standard.”

Third Graders of 1994-1995 Who Were in Our Classroom
Front Row: Karalea Corley, Jason Dilbeck, Josh Alexander, Cassi Koch, Jackie Kennedy, William
Fosnight. Middle Row: Amber Phillips, Tyler Hillsberg, Rhonda Brandt, Travis Sawyers, Cassidi
Pease, Bernadean Gates. Back Row: Brady Goad, William Gates, Aaron Cheves, Leslie Williams,
Lauren Goad, Scott Brown. I proudly displayed this photograph on the cover of my teacher's manual
 as I taught the Russian teachers.  (Photograph by Blunck's)

     A myriad of the postings of this blog have dealt with our ancestors experiencing tragedies, coping with pain and loss, and rising up with renewed strength and the will to go on. No matter where we find ourselves, may we vow to conduct our lives exemplifying the Oklahoma Standard and in turn, honor the legacy of the fellow Oklahomans lost on April 19, 1995.

Maybe It Was Spring Fever

As we find ourselves surrounded by the glorious season of spring, I always recall how challenging as a teacher it was to "corral" students inside the four walls when perfect weather awaited those winter-weary young people. My grandfather had a constructive solution for this malady.

In the late 1920s, Finis Ewing Rippee and his wife, Elizabeth, arrived in the Big Bend community to teach at the Woodland School. (Lester Anson’s home is located where the Woodland School once stood.) Mr. Rippee captured the interest of his students as a creatively innovative teacher. He was one of the first people with a radio in the Bend. On historically momentous occasions, F.E. Rippee brought the radio into the rural school building, introducing the wide-eyed scholars to a world of which they knew nothing.

Even though my father, Edmund Gates, Jr., found Mr. Rippee fascinating as a teacher, when he was around 10 years old, he began loafing instead of studying in school.  Mr. Rippee visited with Edmund, Sr. about the situation. My grandfather, Edmund, Sr. told Mr. Rippee, “Just let me keep him out of school a week to help me clear walnut trees.”

Eighty years later, my father explained the process this way. He and my grandfather dug down around each of the tree stumps about a foot and a half, with both of them using a shovel. This allowed a place wide enough to maneuver a crosscut saw effectively. Then Dad and his father each got on one end of the crosscut saw and began pushing and pulling. Some of the walnut trees had trunks with 10-inch diameters. My father exhibited unparalleled strength for his small size. He was so agile that he could easily climb a tree to get a squirrel. (Steve Gates, his nephew, would later categorize Dad as a squirrel on the rafters of a new dwelling. Dad was in his 70s and 80s at that time!) Even with the sturdy physique of my father in his boyhood, he characterized the week out of school as very hard work. I'm sure he collapsed his work-weary body into bed each evening that week. 

When Monday morning rolled around, Dad was the first one in the buggy to go to school. He had learned the value of education on the end of the crosscut saw.

My father, Edmund Gates, Jr.,
as taken from a group photograph
 taken at the Woodland School
located in the Big Bend. Notice
the hat on backwards and his
bare feet.

Both my father and Ruby Martin Rice conveyed the respect they had for Mr. Rippee as an educator and a person. They related how he taught them principles for life that made them better people after they graduated from the eighth grade at Woodland School. A teacher who can impart to his students the qualities that make a responsible employee, a reliable parent, a trustworthy spouse, and a dependable neighbor deserves the loftiest of accolades. 

Easter Sunday and the 60-cent Trio Book

Beautiful Harmony  - No Matter How It Is Done

                As soon as my father arrived home from his rehabilitation stint following his first stroke in 2012, we began having what my mother refers to as “church.” It consists of reading a devotional, the accompanying Bible passage, a prayer, and singing two or three hymns. Until Dad’s second stroke in April of 2014, the three of us sang. Dad can no longer sing so Mother and I do the singing. Usually, she adds harmony. When Angie stays overnight, we sing three-part harmony.

                The last time Angie stayed and sang, she mentioned, “I sing harmony by note.” Just a day earlier, Mother had commented that she sang harmony by “feeling it.” Actually, Mother‘s experience and innate musical talent enable her to say this. Since I love singing harmony, these comments set me off on a search for some music for Angie to “read” and sing the next time she came to the farm overnight. I pulled a well-worn harmony book entitled Sacred Trios for Sopranos and Altos from the music shelves above my piano. Upon seeing it, my mother began reminiscing.

                Mother used that choral book first with girls in her Sunday School class at the Masham Baptist Church. I flipped to the song “Were You There?” which three of the girls had sung for Easter well over fifty years ago. Most of the young ladies in her Sunday School class sang in the Pawnee High School Glee Club. (These girls had more experience than the little elementary-age ones she had taught at Belford Grade School in the Big Bend community. See the blog post entitled at this link: https://bernadeanjgates.blogspot.com/2014/11/when-little-brown-eyed-durgan-lived.html)

The Masham Girls in the Early 1960s - Back Row - Linda Bright, Sue Schultz, Mary Jo Thurber,
Norma Nell Wheatley, and Frankie Wills. Front Row - Elaine Wills, Nancy Leforce, and Vickie
Wills. My mother took this on an Easter Sunday morning at the Masham Baptist Church.

                She reminded me that Peggy Barnes, Sue Shultz, and Norma Nell Wheatley came to our home to practice that Easter Sunday trio special.* Surprisingly,  I recall more succinctly a practice at the Masham Baptist Church. The close harmony of those teenage girls, who were my idols at the time, mesmerized me as a little preschooler sitting quietly in a pew by myself,

                My mother retains cherished memories of those girls in her Sunday School class over 50 years ago. Anytime she gets to visit with those women proves to be filled with joyful recollections as well as updates on their own children and grandchildren. Her heart goes out to them when they suffer illness or loss in their families. She grieved over several of the “girls” from her class who have already died.

                She hardly ever discusses the “Masham girls” without bringing up their present faithfulness in their churches. She may mention how they have raised their children according to the principles of God’s Word, reaping multiple benefits. One of her former students mentioned in her 2014 Christmas card of her husband’s serious health issues. Each evening we lift her and her husband up in prayer.

                One of my favorite verses is the last one in most versions of Were You There. The words prepare us perfectly for a genuine Easter celebration.

Were you there when He rose up from the dead?

Were you there when He rose up from the dead?

Oh! Sometimes I feel like shouting glory, glory, glory,

Were you there when He rose up from the dead?

                                                                                                                                                                                              Public Domain

                So many times I sing the third line with a memory of Dad. Frequently, Dad would come into the house to share a blessing he had experienced on the farm or we would share some good thing that had happened to us. Instantly, he would throw both hands in the air as though the Woodland Cougars had just scored, and exclaim, “Glory!” That’s how we should celebrate the resurrection of Jesus  - not just on Easter Sunday, but every day of the week. He alone is worthy of our praise and the beautiful harmony of lives lived for Him. That same sweet harmony can then permeate all our relationships to the glory of Him.

               

*A later trio of girls that sang in the Masham Baptist Church was composed of Nancy and Janie Leforce along with Linda Laird. 

The Trio Songbook published in 1945 and sold for $0.60.
My sister, Angie Gates Bradley, Barbara Rice, Sharon
Stewart,and I sang at least one song from this classic
treasury of trio arrangements for female voices. It remains
one of my favorite publications for a trio of voices.