Chapter XVI

We Will Fly Away

Much water has gone under the bridge since the proceeding 15 chapters of my life were recorded 12 years ago. It is now 1995 and I am approaching my allotted time on earth, for God said in Psalms 90:10 "The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away."

In February of 1987 I retired and Lois and I took a trip through Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska, South Dakota, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Arizona and back to our home in Conroe. We met Tommy and Mary Jo (Allison)Shoemake at Centerville, Texas and drove together along Highway 287 through Texas and New Mexico to I-25 in New Mexico and then north. They had a motorhome just like ours except it was on a Ford chassis whearas ours was on a Dodge chassis. They were having a problem of smelling propane and we discovered in Dalhart, Texas they had a pipe to the refrigerator almost severed by rubbing on a metal through which it ran into the refrigerator. We drove on to Deadwood, South Dakota together and visited Mount Rushmore and Custer State Park. On the next Sunday they departed for Jasper, Alberta, Canada. Lois and I visited some of the places I had seen only from the air and some of the places I had traveled to when I was flying for a living. We enjoyed the Black Hills of South Dakota and Devil's Tower in Wyoming, Yellowstone Park, the Great Teton Mountains, the Snake River, the Great Salt Lake, Bryce Canyon, Zion National Monument, Hoover Dam, Grand Canyon and the beautiful "Land of Enchantment" called New Mexico.

We fell in love with New Mexico, and beginning in the summer 1988, we have enjoyed our summers in the Sacramento Mountains at Ruidoso, New Mexico. We served as hosts at the Cedar Creek Picnic Grounds of the Smoky Bear District, U.S. Forest Service on the outskirts of Ruidoso for 5 of the passed 7 years. We plan to return to New Mexico each year that God grants us health and the ability to go there.

In 1986-7 I preached at the Church of Christ in Thornton, Texas where life began for me and where my Grandfather Gazzaway had preached at the Methodist Church before I was born. I commuted from Conroe on weekends and enjoyed the opportunity to take the gospel to my hometown. Although it has been said, "A prophet is not without honor, save in his own country, and in his own house." (Matthew 13:57), I was accepted there and received encouragement from those in the community both within the congregation and from without.

In January of 1993 Lois and I moved to Fairfield, Texas, where we had bought our marriage license on May 8, 1944. We feel as if we are back home. We are close to old friends in Teague where our lives together started and where Loraine was born. We are constantly amazed at how much old friends have aged and yet we feel young and only when we look at pictures made there in Teague when we lived there in the 40's and 50's do we realize that we too have aged.

In the summer of 1993 while at the Cedar Creek Picnic Grounds in Ruidoso we invited a number of friends to come to the park for an evening pot luck and campfire. Lois ordered some fried chicken from the local grocery and called to me as I was visiting with two Mexican men at a picnic table in the park that it was time to pick up the chicken. A small black poodle was scavenging in the fire pit and when he heard Lois call he ran to her and lay down on the ground in front of her and started to cry. She picked him up and took him to the two Mexicans at the picnic table and said, "Here is your dog." Their reply was "That's not our dog."

When I returned from the grocery store Lois was sitting in a lawn chair at the side of the motor home and the little black poodle was lying on the ground beside her. She had given him some food and water. When guests began to arrive he greeted each one and during the course of the evening he became personally acquainted with all 21 of our guests. When the last one left he proceeded to slip in the door of the motor home and plant himself under the dining table where he spent the night.

We made every effort to find the owner but to no avail. We did learn he had been wandering in the area for about 3 weeks and although the black bears were out each evening and during the nights he had managed to avoid them and survive. On the second night he was with us he gave us a good hint of what to call him. At about 2 o'clock in the morning he came to my bed and acted as though he wanted outside and I became upset at him because he wanted out in the middle of the night and told him so. About that time we heard a garbage dumpster near the motor home turn over and the spotlight I turned on revealed a very large black bear making a meal of the contents. The name Bear came to mind immediately. This little black dog had survived in the presence of big black bears so what name could be more appropriate.

Bear now lives with us and is constantly at Lois' feet or in the chair beside her. He begs to go with us wherever we go and if he has to stay at home alone he vents his frustration by pounding on a pillow. When we arrive back home and I open the back door he darts passed me and lies down at Lois' feet and starts to cry. She picks him up and he lays his face against her neck and whimpers until he has his fill of petting. He is one of the best things to come into our lives in a long time. Bear is a part of the family.

In the fall of 1993 Earnest Pack, director of the Freestone-Navarro Bi-County Educational Cooperative, asked me if I would be interested in working as a special education teacher with a problem boy that had been assigned to the Cooperative. I told him I would give it a try and spent the fall semester working with a young black boy who had severe behavioral problems. He moved to Dallas during the Christmas Holidays and I started the spring semester in Wortham working with another young black boy with behavioral problems. I continued there until school was out for the year.

In May of 1994 Loraine gave a reception in our honor at the local Church of Christ celebrating our 50th wedding anniversary. There were 79 registered guests and letters and cards from many more whom were unable to attend. The Grandsons acted as receptionists and gave a helping hand to James Deane and Loraine as they prepared for the event. We were overwhelmed by the event.

James Deane, Loraine, Stephen and Garrett still live in Garland. Stephen is now 16 years old and handsome. He is 5 feet 10 inches tall and weighs around 175 pounds. Garrett is 11 years old and is a clean cut, good looking boy a little over 5 feet tall and weighing about 85 or 90 pounds. He inherited his skinny frame from his Father and from his Grandfather on his Mother's side. I have great hopes for them.

Upon returning to Fairfield from New Mexico and an enjoyable summer vacation in 1994 I was called upon by Mr. Pack to do some work on the school computers and decided to open a small business in computer consulting. It has been a successful venture. I enjoy working with computers and the business is good but not demanding. I hope to continue with the business as long as my health holds.

We hear from friends via ham radio daily and those who are not amateur radio operators write often. Loraine has her ham license now and we communicate via digital radio E-mail at least once a day if not more often.

The Internet has become a part of my enjoyable hobbies and I spend hours searching for and finding relatives and facts about my ancestors. I have located another generation of the Cooper family for Lois and re-affirmed information on the Hayes, Gazzaway, Jordan and Whatley families.

Life has been good to us both and especially to me. As I update my "Home Page" on the World Wide Web today April 26, 1998, our 54th anniversary is less than 2 weeks away.

Since I last updated this epilogue in 1998 much has happened in my life. Lois suffered a stroke on November 23, 1998 and became almost totally dependent on me and Loraine. She did not suffer from physical damage but lost reasoning power and the ability to really take care of herself. She remained that way until the morning of October 4, 1999 when we were working together in the kitchen preparing breakfast. As I was removing freshly cooked biscuits from the pan I hear her fall to the floor in the kitchen. I turned to her and determined she had no broken bones as she responded to my questions about whether she could move her legs and arms. I called 911 and when they took her to the hospital in Fairfield an MRI disclosed hemotoma internal and external on the right rear side of her head. The doctor summons a helicopter from Baylor Hospital in Dallas and they transported her to that facility. Upon my arrival at Baylor by automobile I was told she had stopped breathing on the way to Dallas and she was on life support. She had a living will that asked that she not be on life support but because she did not have that will with her in the helicopter she had been placed on it. They performed surgery on her head and found the right side of her brain destroyed by the blood. She was pronounced brain dead at 4:10 p.m. on October 5, 1999. She was laid to rest in Conroe on October 9, 1999.

Living alone in that house in Fairfield became almost unbearable. I stayed busy with my computer and work for the Special Education Cooperative there but knew that living alone was not for me. Mary Jo (Allison) had been the first girl I had cared for in my life. Our mothers brought us together when they had visited each other when I was 2 weeks old. She had married in 1945 and her husband, Tommy Shoemake, had passed from this life in July of 1998. I got a phone call from her asking if I would exchange Email with her so that she could improve her typing and help to relieve her loneliness. We exchanged Email on a daily basis until her computer developed a problem. She asked if I would come to Woodville to repair it which I did. Subsequently we grew to love each other and were married on March 18, 2000 at Loraine's home in Garland, Texas. We now make our home in Woodville and travel frequently in our motorhome. The little black poodle named Bear which Lois and I had found in Ruidoso, New Mexico came to love Mary Jo and overcame the loss of Lois. He was getting old and began to have seizures which ended when we had to have him put to sleep on September 7, 2000. Loraine gave me a Black Toy Poodle named Missy which she had gotten from Poodle Rescue in Grand Prairie, Texas shortly after Lois died and she now lives with Mary Jo and I and is the center of attraction for us. She loves Mary Jo and spends much time in her lap when we are on the road and at rest in our home. Life goes on and we are gleaning every presious minute of it we can. We are both 75 years old and soon will celebrate another birthday. We are happy together.

There were lots of places Mary Jo had wanted to visit and had not been able to for one reason or another and we made the decision to visit all 48 contigious states of the United State and also Alaska.

Our very first trip after our "Honeymoon Trip" to visit the Warrens in San Saba, the Hunts in Kerrville and the Bains in Bastrop, was to Hidden Ponds RV Park at Sulphur, Louisiana in April of 2000 with the Piney Woods Sams Chapter of the Good Sam Club. We followed Marty and Lea Belanger from Ivanhoe to Catfish Cabin for lunch in Lumberton and then on to Sulphur. We became members of the Piney Woods Sams on the strength of Mary Jo's former membership. It was good for me to make new friends and get out and about with Mary Jo at my side.

Our next trip was in May to Branson, Missouri to meet James and Bobbie Brown and Dusty and Viola Rhodes. We stopped in Garland to visit JD, Loraine and Garrett and parked the motorhome at Lake Lavon. We were on very unlevel ground and while I was trying to get level Mary Jo had Bear and Missy on leashes and wound up standing in some tall grass. She had a place start to itch on her leg and by the time we got to Branson it was a large red spot. We had gone on to Branson by way of Muskogee, Oklahoma where we spent one night. Mary Pate who was a cousin of Tommy, Mary Jo's first husband, came to the RV Park to visit with us. She lived alone and had farm animals. She had inherited land from her mother in Porum, Oklahoma, where Tommy had lived growing up, and made daily trips there to tend to animals. She was a very interesting person to visit with.

When we arrived at Branson we met James and Bobbie and Dusty and Viola at Tannycomo RV Park owned by the City of Branson and located on Lake Tannycomo. We had a beautiful sight facing the water and enjoyed watching the water fowl and boating activities. We made a trip to the emergency room there in Branson because of the spot on Mary Jo's leg and she received antibiotics to treat the spider bite she had gotten at Lake Lavon.

We saw several shows there and especially enjoyed the Soji Tabuchi Show. Who would have believed, when I was serving in World War 2, that I would pay $35 to see a Japanese play a fiddle? I enjoyed his show and it was one of Mary Jo's favorites.

After we left Branson we stopped by for a couple of days at Eureka Springs and enjoyed seeing "The Passion Show" there. Although it was in May we had to cover as best we could in the night air to enjoy the show. It is quite an impressive show. From there we returned to Ivanhoe.

On August 10, 2000 we left for Ruidoso, New Mexico. The last time Mary Jo and I had been to Ruidoso at the same time was in 1989 when she and Tommy along with Jim and Lois Evans had spent about 10 days at the Eagle Creek Campground off Ski Apache Road and visited Lois and me at Cedar Creek Picnic Grounds where we were hosts.

In late July we left Ruidoso to visit Sharon on her birthday, July 25. We took a leisurely trip through Northern New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming and Nebraska to Sharon and Mike's in Bellevue, Nebraska, just outside Omaha. We enjoyed celebrating Sharon's birthday with her family and left for Oshkosh, Wisconsin, Mackinac Island, Michigan, Holland, Michigan, Elkhart, Indiana (where we had some work done on the Daymond Daybreak Motorhome),Dayton, Ohio and Jackson, Tennessee. Mary Jo had two nieces and their families living in Jackson and that is where her father had lived before moving to Texas in the early 1900s. We enjoyed the visit and arrived back home in Ivanhoe in late August. The trip had fulfilled some dreams for Mary Jo and I had seen things from the ground that I had only seen from the air before. But it was good to be home.

We traveled in the motorhome a lot in 2001. On January 20, 2001 we went to Dallas for Mary Jo to have her pacemaker changed by Dr. Franklin who was my cardiologist and became Mary Jo's also. It went well and we returned to Ivanhoe the same day.

We traded the Damon Daybreak in on a 34 foot Itasca Suncruiser with a slide out in the living area on February 1, 2001 and began covering the remainder of the 49 Continental States of the United States shortly after that. We took a trip to Corpus Christi for our first anniversary in March 2001 and extended it into visits with the Quarles and W.T. and Evelyn Martin (Mary Jo's nephew and wife) in San Antonio. We camped with the Piney Woods Sams in Fredericksburg and then back home.

Estelle Ray, JD's Mother died in March of 2001 and we visited Conroe and attended the funeral.

In May we left on an extended trip that included Dan Moore's Graduation from the University of Nebraska at Omaha. He was awarded a BA in Computer Science. The trip included a trip to the Winebago Factory in Forest City, Iowa and then Duluth, Minnesota - Athabasca Glacier in Jasper National Park - Banff National Park in Alberta, Canada - Montana - Washington - Oregon - California - Nevada - Utah - Arizona and Ruidoso, New Mexico. We went back home to Ivanhoe in August and left in October for New England to see the foliage change colors. We took a leisurely trip through Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama where we visited with Lois's nieces and families in Huntsville. From there we went on to Tennessee, West Virginia, Pennsylavania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida which was the last state of the lower 48 that we visited to complete our map on the door of the motorhome. We visited Fred and Clara (Allison) Mayfield in Virginia on the way and finally with Cliff and Linda in Delray Beach, Florida. We returned home the last day of October.

In 2002 we attended Garrett's High School Graduation in Garland and left from there to Alaska by way of Bellevue to see Sharon and family, through South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Alberta and British Columbia, Canada, the Yukon, Northwest Territories of Canada and finally Alaska via the Alaska Highway. It was a trip of a lifetime. We returned by way of British Columbia, Washington, Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado and then to Ruidoso for the summer.

We have Yearbooks for each year from 2000 to 2007 with lots of pictures and a diary of our travels. We have enjoyed all that we have seen and are now settled in Fairfield after Mary Jo sold her house in Ivanhoe and bought a house here in Fairfield close to many friends and Mary Jo's relatives in Teague where she spent the first 18 years of her life. We are each 82 years old as I write this and beginning to feel our age.

God has truly blessed me in every way and I am comforted when I remember what General McArthur said about old soldiers and I apply his remarks to me.

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