Lots of items in from classmates this time. If you know any classmates that are not getting the newsletter, ask them to send in their email and home addresses as well as their phone numbers so we can update the alumni list. So often, people move or change ISPs and forget to update their information. All help will be appreciated, especially as it gets closer to the reunion.
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Due to a change in ownership my ISP will now be Hughes and will change my e-mail address from bevferrell@direcway.com to bevferrell@hughes
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(The following came in from Dorothy Ibsen Zemler, zemler32@centurytel.net, about Dee Butler Moorehead, jimmymoorehead@sbcglobal.net )
Our very own Dee Butler Moorehead has been crowned TEACHER OF THE YEAR at Thornton Elementary in ArlingtonShe will be retiring in May. Way to go, Dee the Flea.
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Pat Pierce Nevils was in Italy (Rome and Venice) the last week of March - just having fun. She didn’t get pinched Pat’s new email address is patrician466@sbcglobal.net .
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From Joyce Hocker De Cunzo, class of 1962:
After graduation, I attended Texas Woman’s University, graduated 1966 with a BS in Sociology. I worked in Dallas County in child abuse immediately after graduation. I married in 1967 and moved to Norman OK where my husband Ralph was attending OU. We lived in Norman for 6 years, our only child Jason was born there.
We returned to Dallas after Ralph graduated and stayed for 3 years. Wanting a different lifestyle, in 1976, we moved to Montana. We bought an acreage and built our home, where we still live. I have worked in human services here in Helena almost 30 years now. Currently I am administrator of the Addictive and Mental Disorders Division in the state’s human services agency and Ralph is an administrator in the Department of Military Affairs.
Our son married a Montana girl, we have two beautiful granddaughters, ages 11 and 14 - they live only 2 hours away so we get to see them often. Life in Montana has been good to us. We’re grateful for good health, good work and close family. Retirement is coming soon and we will be happy to do that too.
It will be fun to hear from others.
rdjd@aol.com
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(From John and Pam Crittenden Brewster, pdcbrew@prodigy.net)
Our only news is about our traveling. After John retired last April, we went on a weeklong cruise up the Inland Passage to Alaska. The glaciers were astounding. In the summer we took our family (all 11 of us!) to Oahu for a week of sun and sea. Last fall, John and I went to Yosemite after most of the tourists had gone home. It was quiet and the warm fall light was just luminous.
This spring we have been on another cruise, this time around the Hawaiian Islands after a few days in Waikiki. We took my mom, who had wanted to go on a cruise and to Hawaii for years. She is 80 now and crippled with arthritis, but we all had a great time. We almost got rained out at the Pearl Harbor Monument, but rescue boats finally ventured out to help us back to shore
We often spend weekends in San Diego or Santa Barbara. It is beautiful along the coast.
My dear friend Barbara (Sampson) Sparks (Class of 60, AHS) and her husband, Richard Sparks (Class of 60, Arlington Heights HS) now live near here. They are both internationally known artists, represented in many important museum collections. Barbara recently illustrated a book called “Gansy Remembers.” It is delightful. Richard is an illustrator and a busy portrait artist. Some of his pictures are in the National Portrait Museum in Washington, DC. They now have three daughters, two are teachers and writers working both here and in Europe. Their youngest graduated from UCLA last year and immediately went to work for a nightly national TV show. She loves her job except for late, late hours
Our next big trip is back to Hawaii with the family this July. Even the five year old grandaughter is enchanted with the Islands and wants to go back
This fall we are going to England for several weeks so I can take classes at the Royal School of Needlework. I am so excited at that prospect. I taught crafts for the city parks in Denton in the 70s and then, in the 80s, ran the crafts program with all those volunteers at Old City Park Museum over in Dallas. I taught everything from lace-making to log-cabin shingles. What fun we hadNow I will take classes to take my skills a few steps higher
John’s heart seems to be okay after 3 heart attacks and 2 long bouts of surgery. He has to stay calm. (He had to go to the hospital after the University of Texas won THE football game this January, but it was just palpitations!) My arthritis has only gotten worse as I’ve grown older. Sometimes I use a wheelchair, but mostly just hobble around. We are both still so surprised when these two old people look at us from the mirrors. We certainly don’t FEEL that old
If you can use any of this blather in the newsletter, please do. If not, then it has been fun for us to remember all the fun we have had in the last year
Sincerely,
Pam (Crittenden) and John Brewster
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Rick Ezzel sent this inspiring account of the last six years in his struggle with cancer:
I have been so blessed to have so many people ask how things were going with me and I wanted to take a few minutes to put down some of my thoughts as well as a chronology of my journey for the last 6 years. It has been a wonderful life that I have been blessed with truly more people to care about me than I could ever deserve. I want to thank everyone who has ever been concerned for me, prayed for me or cared about me. Those are the things that become treasures in your life.
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My Pastor preached a message a few weeks ago which included the statement that some of us have been “Trusted” with the blessing of something that not everyone is trusted with. He was referring to, in some cases, cancer, heart disease and so on. His comments referred to the fact that not everyone can be trusted with something like cancer because God wants His children to be strong and to show the world what it means to be trusted with whatever God decides in His infinite wisdom and will for us. When HE allowed Job to be tested by satan, Job was found faithful and God knew he could trust him. Joseph was tested, many have said, beyond human capacity yet he was found faithful and that he could be trusted. So many more throughout the ages have been found faithful and that they could be trusted. While growing up, I have heard many say, I wish I could have been someone like that that God knew HE could trust. Well some of us get the opportunity to do just that and I have been blessed with that opportunity. I pray that I can be trusted and that HE will find me faithful.
I turned 62 this year and with few exceptions, I have lived a very full and substantially wonderful life. I had wonderful loving parents and unbelievable sons. God has also blessed me with a wife for these last 19 years that has always gone so far beyond the call to be there for me in every possible way and she is so much more than I could ever deserve. I have lived my life with all of my faculties and with full use of all my parts. I have made more mistakes and sinned more against God than most people should ever be allowed to do and continue to live and God has protected me through it all even though I did not deserve that protection. I have traveled extensively over the years and been able to enjoy almost all of what I have done. I have always tried to be someone who was kind to those who were less fortunate than me including those with physical impairments. I think most people feel pretty much the same way or at least they think they do.
I have often seen someone in a wheelchair or someone without one of their limbs and thought out loud what a tragedy and to myself, thank you Lord that it isn’t me. I have also met people who could not speak and some that could not hear. Some that I have met could do neither. I am ashamed to say that I have always thought that people like that certainly had problems but were not really handicapped like those in wheelchairs or who had missing limbs.
It is so easy to be wrong and not even know it. It was in July of 2000 when my journey began and they discovered that I had cancer of the throat and tongue. I had my first surgery on July 20 th, 2000 and the second one on August 1 st. During that surgery they did a complete neck dissection taking out most of my upper neck muscle and 29 lymph nodes of which 10 were cancerous. I then went through 7 weeks of radiation treatment during which time I lost down from 208 to 145 in those 7 weeks. The first couple of weeks of radiation I did ok and continued to eat normally. Then I started getting sick from the radiation and almost overnight I started to eat nothing other than a few sips of Ensure every day from about September 25 th till the first week of November when they put in a feeding tube. I then took my first bite of actual food again for the first time on Christmas morning. I had 3 bites of my wife’s egg casserole. How incredible that was.
In January 2001 they started my chemo treatments that went through March. I was then cancer free, or so I thought, until March of 2003 when they discovered that it had come back with a vengeance. On May 12 of 2003, they removed 1/2 the base of my tongue, my epiglottis and a small part of the voice box but not the vocal cords. They took my left pectoral muscle and moved it up to my neck area without completely detaching it from its original location in order to provide new blood supply for my throat area to promote healing.
In all this surgical activity over a 3 year period I had things that were different but I still had all my functions. Even after the tongue surgery, I ended up speaking differently but still speaking. I once again was cancer free until April of 2005 when the cancer came back with every intension of staying this time. The Doctors said they could take the rest of my tongue and vocal cords but they could not stop the cancer. There was really nothing medically left for them to do. I then said well I believe I’ll keep what I have and run at this from another direction. My current Doctor, Dr. Truelson, did however refer me to Dr. Senzer who is the head of the cancer research dept. at Baylor Hospital in Dallas. After a couple of times in his office, he said he would start me on a clinical trial with a new virtually untested drug that is being very successful in killing cancer cells that are still growing. However between thanksgiving and New Years I came down with two different blood infections which prevented me from starting the new protocol until now. We start the clinical trial the first week of April. A friend of mine that had the very same cancer, surgery and treatment that I had went through the same clinical trial and it was very successful for him.
While waiting on the clinical trial to start, I decided to start exploring the homeopathic options that were available to me. In doing so I found a Dr. Cowden in Phoenix, Arizona that came extremely highly recommended by people whose opinion I respected. The more I spoke to people about him, the more people I found that had personally used him and had wonderful things to say about him and his successes so I went to see him in Phoenix. After coming back he recommended that I also see Dr. Sconyers in Flower Mound who is someone that Dr. Cowden works with but who uses a different process to treat cancer and is highly regarded by Dr. Cowden. So I went to see Dr. Sconyers and during the first 2 or 3 weeks of that treatment, Dr. Sconyers decided that I needed something more aggressive so they referred me to Jim Cropp, an engineer in Fort Myers, Florida. He has been treating people with a chromosome therapy for over 25 years and people from all over the world come to see him. He worked me in so I flew to Florida to meet him. After going to Florida 2 different times in 3 weeks he truly felt that the tumors were breaking up and I was excited because he has had so much success in the past.
During that same time I learned of two other Doctors that specialize in cancer treatment. One is in Mexico who reportedly treated Lance Armstrong and the other operates out of Mass General Hospital in Boston, Mass. We contacted both Doctors and the one in Boston said he thought he could help me with my speaking and would set two days aside for me so he could in fact make a determination. We went to Boston on March 28 th , 2006 and met with the Doctors who turned out to be the guys who invented the type of surgery that I needed to remove the tumors and help me to speak again. They are the absolute top of the line in this country for this kind of problem. However, after a very thorough examination with scopes looking at the tumors from both the top side through my nose, through the mouth and through my trach, they decided that the tumors were simply to large to try any type of surgery. Evidently the tumors were not breaking up as Jim Cropp had thought. They said after the clinical trial in Dallas is done and they are able to shrink the tumors so that they can find a starting and stopping place of the tumor then they feel they can do me some good in regards to my speaking ability. In the meantime, I will do the clinical trial and see the Doctor in Mexico when there is time between the clinical trial treatments.
I personally believe that prayer is and always has been the most effective medicine that exists and so I along with more people than I can count started praying for my situation. I think it’s important to understand that these people that pray for me have been doing so since 2000 and they are in more than 15 countries as well as coast to coast in this country. Our church affiliation and our missionary networks are very extensive. In 2000 the Doctors thought I would make it a year and were stunned when I was there for the 2 year check up. In 2003 Dr. Sinard, who did my 2 nd surgery, gave me only a 10% chance of even making it past the surgery and not much after that. Dr. Sinard told me a year later, “There is no medical reason you should still be here.” When they discovered it again in 2005, Dr. Sinard had moved to Nashville and Dr. Truelson had taken over my case and he said I had maybe 6 months to a year and then in September 2005 they said 4 to 6 months. Well it’s now the first of April 2006 and I’m still here with blood work that looks like something out of a text book and absolutely no spreading of the cancer and I feel great.
The only problem is that the cancer is continuing to grow but it is at least staying in the same area. Now that is both good and bad. It’s good because we’re not having to treat several parts of the body but it’s bad in that you really only have so much room from your throat up to your nose and above for the tumors to grow.
Unfortunately my tumors are continuing to grow and have begun to create other problems. I heard one Doctor say that cancer really never kills anyone. Instead they end up dying from other problems that were created or caused by the cancer. In my case it has taken away many things from me. It grew to the point where I could not get enough air up through my nose or mouth to continue to breath so they had to put in a trach in July of 2005. Then the tumors continued to grow until they had covered my vocal cords and now for the last 8 weeks I have not been able to speak at all. The tumors have also covered my Eustachian tube so my ears will not drain and I am getting to the place where I’m having trouble hearing like I used to. Finally they grew to the point where I can not swallow so 2 weeks ago they put the feeding tube back in which is how I now get my nourishment.
I have been able to deal with all of this in and of itself but where I’m really having problems is with the way people treat me except for my own loving family as well as my church family. They all treat me exactly as they always have with the deepest respect and love that everyone should come to enjoy. Now I own my own company in the investment business and as such I am used to having a certain amount of respect shown to me, courtesies actually. What I have found instead of what I’m accustomed to is that people in general make certain assumptions when you have an impairment of some sort. They automatically assume that if you cannot speak then you cannot hear either. When my wife and I go to a restaurant so she can eat, she tells them that I cannot swallow so I will not be ordering and I cannot speak either. They then direct all conversation to her because they do not want to even try to communicate with me since I cannot speak. They even ask her questions about me with me setting there looking at them and being willing to answer them myself with my writing pad or with my portable keyboard that works with my cell phone. I can type almost fast enough to stay in the conversation but not fast enough for most people to wait for me to finish. While I am typing away or writing depending on the situation, they direct their attention to whoever I’m with and speak of me as if I were a small child or maybe a plant that needs watching after. I have for all practical purposes been reduced to a level of citizenship that isn’t afforded an opinion.
I’m sure I have done this to people in my life but never with any intension of hurting the person involved. I simply never had to walk in their shoes before. Today I am a better person because I’ve lost my ability to speak and I’ve been forced to find other ways of communicating. It’s unfortunate that so many people out there will never understand what it does to a person when they are treated like they have no mind of their own simply because they cannot speak or function like everyone else.
When it’s time to leave the restaurant, I pay the bill as I always have, not my wife. Invariably when the waiter or waitress brings the check to the table, they try to hand it to her. When I hold my hand out, most of the time they either ignore me or just lay it on the table. Up to now I have just been saying it’s not their fault they just don’t understand. However I have come to the conclusion that ignorance should not be simply explained away or the offenders be allowed to escape without a lesson in manners. We have started taking the position that if they will not hand me the check then we will not take it. I make them hand me the check so I can pay it. Some actually seem confused by it all but maybe at some point they will get the message. It’s really hard when you can’t raise your voice to show your displeasure in a situation.
I am so ashamed of those times in my life when I have been that person even though I never meant to hurt anyone; my ignorance caused them to feel less than everyone else. I know because that’s how I have felt. God has given me a tremendous gift of being able to see things from the point of view that I would never have had if this had not happened to me. After living the life I have been blessed to live, I could not make it another day without knowing that my Lord it there and ever present with me. Because I know that my Lord is ever with me and I stand on His promises to keep me safe and His promise is as good as His presence. I haven’t lost hope because HE is my hope. I don’t despair because the alternative to despair is desperate faith and faith holds on and prevails. Faith honors God and God honors faith. So as not to be taken for someone who is in denial rather than full of faith, I know that the Lord may not heal me from this cancer even though I believe HE will but even if HE does not, as the three Hebrew children said, even if HE does not, yet will I praise Him. I truly do not know how long I have but however long I have, but the most important thing is how I live it. Jesus Christ has never been my security against the storms of life, but HE is my perfect security in the storms of life. HE never promised me an easy passage, only a safe landing.
My hope is that all would come to understand that level of faith and in the process realize that just because a person has a handicap does not mean that they can no longer think or communicate for themselves. We owe to ourselves to treat them as such in preparation for the day when they are us.
Ted R “Rick” Ezzell, Jr.
TREE Financial Services, Inc.
101 E. Randol Mill Road
Ste 105
Arlington , Texas 76011
Office: 817-461-5121
Mobile : 817-994-7735
Fax: 817-860-7775
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This editor, Sandra Brown Wellborn, wants to share some lofty sights on a recent trip to Orlando and Florida. Enjoy.
A huge kite - the newest rage - flying above a kite shop in Galveston. . 
This huge Octopus kite was flying at the Cape Canaveral Park. . 
Eagle was just south of NASA entrance, Cape Canaveral, watching alligator-filled pond for breakfast opportunity.