[Magdalen] Anyone Here?

[Donald Boyd]

While I was teaching at Del Rio HS in the early 1960's (I was 26 or 27 
years old)  i had the privilege of serving as O/CM at the church in Del 
Rio (St James?).  My pay was Sunday lunch at the rectory, and since the 
rector was a gifted cook I considered myself well compensated.  He (the 
Rev. Wally Nickle) was a Canadian by birth, advised by his doctors to 
live in a warm dry climate for his health.  His wife was a registered 
nurse, and a son was in seminary (in Canada of course, where everything 
is done RIGHT).  The son (Dison Nickle) I believe came back to the Dio 
of West TX.  An older son had died young and left a six-year-old boy as 
a survivor who lived with his grandparents most of the time. The people 
of the church were very much "we've always done it this way" 
Episcopalian, and I believe Wally would have liked to hang a portrait of 
the Queen of England in the narthex if he could get away with it.  this 
was during the run-up to the 1964 presidential election, and every 
pickup in town had a Nixon/Lodge sticker on it.  But within a week after 
the assassination in Dallas, every one of those stickers was covered 
with one that read "All the way with LBJ"!  (Native son trumps party 
preference)  I am sure I would not recognize Del Rio as it is today.  
Falcon Dam had not been built when I lived there, so the culture was 
still white ranchers vs. Mexican (and Texas residents of Mexican 
descent, who were a considerable majority but did not own land.)  I was 
one of the five or six liberal Democrats in town (the others found me 
easily since one of them taught in the same school as I did).

On 7/4/2019 8:16 AM, Robert Counselman wrote:,
> I'm still here in Texas supervising construction on the house once again
> and supplying in Del Rio and Brackettville twice a month.  I guess that
> still qualifies as retirement.
>
> Bob
>
>
> On Thu, Jul 4, 2019 at 6:55 AM James Handsfield <jhandsfield at att.net> wrote:
>
>> I loved my work at CDC.  As a statistician, I got to be involved in all
>> the interesting parts of a research project but didn’t have to deal with
>> the boring reiteration process of research.
>>
>> I retired a bit earlier than I had planned - we knew something was
>> happening with Marcy, even though we didn’t have a diagnosis then.
>>
>> I don’t miss my job at all.
>>
>> -------------------------------------
>> Education is its own reward, both for the individual and for society.
>>
>> Jim Handsfield
>> jhandsfield at att.net
>>
>>> On Jul 3, 2019, at 10:32 PM, Christopher Hart <cervus51 at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>> As long as we're all posting update notices I suppose I should mention
>> that
>>> this is my first week of retirement. Last Friday was my last day in the
>>> office although they only asked for about two hours of my time before
>>> sending me on my way. There was a dinner a couple of nights earlier and
>>> some festivities in the office and a gift, etc. On the whole it's been a
>>> nice farewell after almost thirty years there. I've been turning over
>>> responsibilities for the last couple of months and I hope I did a good
>> job
>>> of training others. Now to find new challenges.
>>