When the Porch Light's On. . .Stories of People, Popcorn, and Parasails. Don Ph.D. Newbury PhD
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if we get tired and turn loose?” As they flew, a CD player belted out strong “flying music,” including “A New Way to Fly” and “I’ll Fly Away.”
Dr. Thurston Dean, an orthopedic surgeon in Midland who served for several years on the HPU Board of Trustees, responded this way about parasail safety: “When proper safety precautions are observed, I think parasailing is safer than many other lake sports,” he said. “I have never treated a parasail injury, never known any physician who has and have never read of a parasailor being treated medically.…Of course, if you have a REALLY BIG accident, the ambulance might as well just bypass the hospital!”
THANKFULLY, THERE WERE no REALLY BIG accidents in our lake adventures—except one. It didn’t involve the parasail, but I was the victim! (It is arguable whether it was REALLY BIG, but this description, like surgery, depends on whether it’s yours or someone else’s.) One evening, near sundown, most students had gone back to campus, but Dan Murray (now Captain/Dr. Dan Murray, a flight surgeon in the Air Force), begged for just one more ride on the wakeboard. When he finally cratered following a lengthy ride, he yelled for help, screaming that his foot was broken, and he couldn’t get it out of the wakeboard binding.…
I pulled the boat along side, killed the engine and jumped in, realizing that I needed to get him into the boat, and perhaps to the hospital. I swam toward him, grabbed his arm and started pulling him toward the boat. My left pinky finger came in contact with the idle boat prop, and I sustained a deep cut. Blood spurted, and at the same moment, Dan pulled his foot free, minimizing his injury, saying, “I’m going to be fine.”
“I’m not; get me to the hospital,” I responded, blood spurting from my finger. Several stitches were required to close the wound, and now I cannot play the piano. (But, I have to admit, I couldn’t play the piano before the accident, either….)
“DUNKING” IS A favorite part of parasailing, and this involves dropping the flyer into the water about waist-deep, then taking off again. When I went to pick up the boat in Alabama, the folks there gave me a ride on a twelve hundred foot rope. Dan and another student, Zeb Alexander, went along to learn how to be deck hands. I saw them gesturing as I began my descent. You guessed it—they ordered me dunked!
So, that’s the story of the title. I’ve been introduced at speakers’ podiums a good many times as “the nation’s ‘unstuffiest’ college president.” I hope you feel this introduction is appropriate. It is likewise important that you believe that I do recognize “serious as serious and fun as fun.” I know the difference, and can deal with both! I hope you enjoy this book, as much as I have enjoyed the experiences along the way. That’s a lofty expectation.…
Don Newbury
Fort Worth, Texas
August 1, 2002
WHEN I WAS ‘THIS TALL’
IT IS HARD to imagine any person, anywhere or any time, being so blessed by family. These blessings have continued throughout my life. My parents were the late Mr. and Mrs. T. J. Newbury. Both were from big families, both had little formal education (neither finished high school), and both were familiar and comfortable with hard work. My mom’s mother died during the national flu epidemic around 1930, and Mom--the oldest of three girls among nine children--helped her dad raise the younger siblings. My dad, born in Louisiana to a railroad family, had seven brothers and sisters, one of whom was claimed by diphtheria at an early age. Mom (the former Tempie Gotcher) and Dad (Thomas J. Newbury) met when both families lived in rural Brown County, when the country was in the depths of the Great Depression. When they married in 1931, they scratched out a living in farm work, including long days picking cotton bolls, sometimes moving around West Texas to the next fields needing cotton pickers.
I was born September 7, 1937, in their small rented farmhouse west of May, Texas. Dr. McDaniel drove out to the farm for the delivery, and Dad joked many times about how the doctor charged him twenty-five dollars--and that I probably wasn’t worth it! In those days, it was common to be born at home. (I was not to be hospitalized—not even once—until open-heart surgery required it sixty years later.) Soon after my birth, my dad got a job with May Schools. He was custodian, “fix-it” man, bus driver, and you name it—there were no written job descriptions. He eagerly did whatever “Mr. White” (H. E. White, Superintendent of Schools) asked him to do. After all, the school paid him thirty dollars a month….
I’m not sure how we got around—most likely, we didn’t go many places. When we did, I think we either walked or hitched rides with friends fortunate enough to own motorized transportation and generous enough to share it. I do recall riding the school bus routes with my dad; I was about three years of age. I remember his cheery countenance as he drove the lumbering yellow bus over the country roads and how he encouraged all the riders.…He was mighty proud to be a part of May Schools, even though his “position” was several cuts below a professional one, and I doubt very much if he had ever heard the word “contract.” If he had, he would have consulted Superintendent White to make sure he should sign it. Dad was usually leery about signing his name on anything, and he urged me repeatedly to be careful what I put my name on….
One of my earliest memories concerns Friday night movies at the school. I was fascinated by the guy who knew how to thread the projector and how quickly he could take off one reel of the old black and white film and slip on the next one with minimal delay. The projector was noisy, the picture sometimes jumped, and the film almost always broke at least once. They took up a collection to rent another film for the next week, and there was free popcorn, lemonade, and “Polly-Pop” for us kids. (“Polly-Pop” was a precursor of Kool-Aid.) Life was exceedingly uncomplicated….
IN 1940, OUR lives changed greatly. Mr. White changed professions, becoming principal owner of the Central Texas Gas Company, a small firm providing natural gas for several rural communities in Brown County. Dad was loyal to Mr. White, taking a similar multi-task job with the new company. Our family moved a dozen miles east to Blanket. I doubt that our economic status improved much, but the company provided free housing, a pick-up truck that we could also use as a personal vehicle, and a telephone! The phone, of course, was critical to my dad’s work. He had to be accessible in case of emergencies. There were few phones in the community, and many neighbors borrowed ours. A ring of “one long and two shorts” caused our phone to clang, and others up and down the party line could listen if they chose.
Part of my dad’s job included making monthly rounds to pick up payments for gas at several grocery stores in the county where customers left payments. They had no meters for gas usage; they simply paid two dollars in summer months and four dollars in the winter. I marveled at people paying so much for this utility every single month!
AT AGE FIVE, I moved to the country again (as if the early years in May and Blanket were urban). The family moved to the Salt Creek Community, about eight miles west of Blanket and a dozen miles from Brownwood, county seat of Brown County. The house redefined modesty. It had a kitchen, bedroom, and living room. My bed was in the living room. There was a bathroom with a commode and lavatory, but a washtub was brought in for bathing. A few years later, Dad hired a man to pour concrete for a makeshift shower, and Dad walled it with planks on three sides. Had there been a door, it would have looked exactly like an “out” house “in” doors….
The move to Salt Creek put dad closer to several gas wells that supplied the company, and there was plenty of room to store steel pipe used in the natural gas lines. Though I lived in the country, I was anything but a “country boy.” I don’t think I ever milked a cow and gathered but few eggs. Costs