My Wise Old Grandmother - Russel Ray, 1970-1973

1970-1973
There was only one high school in Kingsville,
Henrietta M. King High, with the original school
located just two blocks south of my wise old
grandmother’s house. In 1965 a new school was
built out in the boondocks across town and
opened in 1966.

I was actually quite better in high school in terms
of conduct. I met a lot of new people who had
gone to different grade schools and junior high
schools, several of whom became great friends.

By September 1973, when I left home to attend
college at Texas A&M University, her persistent
and consistent love and discipline had changed my
life. Since college was about 270 miles away from
our home in Kingsville, I could very easily have
reverted to the old ways and wound up in prison
or dead at the hands of a law enforcement officer
somewhere—that’s how unruly a child I was.

King High School Teachers
Kingsville, Texas
10th grade -
11th grade -
Edith Head, English—Mrs. Head was the teacher
that no one wanted because she specialized in
making English tough with her vocabulary tests and
her pop quizzes. I was proud to have gotten an A
in her class, especially when I got an A on my
senior research paper on William Wordsworth. I
kept in touch with Mrs. Head up to 1994. After
she retired from teaching, she moved to Corpus
Christi, and I visited her a couple of times while I
was in college at Texas A&M University. I placed
out of one semester of Freshman English at Texas
A&M, which I attribute to Mrs. Head.

High School Friends
Dirk DeKoch, Dennis Firth, Sarita Gardner,
Paul Goode, Larry Harvey, Carol Johnson,
Gary Kriegel, Mark Johnson, Nancy Kay,
Kathy Kiel, Kathy Larde, Sharon Lovelace,
Jim Maddox, Terri Mainer, Vicki McDaniel,
Sharon Rogers, Scott Sabatka, Dru Shipman,
Linda Young

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