Following in parental footsteps

I grew up in a small town where the major employers were a state college and a state prison. Most female students majored in teacher education or home economics but were actually working on their MRS. hoping to marry a business  or agriculture major.

The inmates on the prison farms outside of town worked in the fields tending crops or in warehouses manufacturing the goods the state prison system needed to be self-sufficient. Oh, and the penitentiary housed "Old Sparky," the electric chair that took the lives of the most dangerous and least rehabilitative criminals until 1964 (the year I graduated from high school) when death by electrocution was struck down by the Supreme Court. Most of the convicts on death row were murderers or rapists, but none were women. Karla Faye Tucker was the first woman put to death in Texas by lethal injection in 1998. She found Jesus in prison and became born again, but then Governor George Bush chose to deny her clemancy. Texas today ranks third for giving death sentences to female offenders, and more white women are sentenced to death than women of color--which, by the way, is the opposite for male felons.

My father taught teacher education at the college. Sam Houston State Teachers College was the name of the institution when he started his career there. The name changed to Sam Houston State College in 1965 (and has since become a univesity rather than a college). If you were a teacher or principal in a Houston school or anywhere in East Texas, chances were excellent that Professor Thomas Murray taught you educational psychology or supervised your student teaching.

Education continues to be the most popular major among students today, and the university also boasts of its nationally acclaimed criminal justice program, which in 1970 became one of the first to offer a Ph.D. in criminal justice. My mother, who became the first superintendent of schools within Texas Department of Corrections in 1968, served as an interim professsor of criminal justice at Sam. For the record, my mother built a school system known for reducing recidivism through education and the Dr. Lane Murray Unit outside Gatesville, TX, is named in her honor.

Is it any wonder that my older brother and I went to college in our hometown? Stone worked as a guard at the prison while going to school and eventually became a parole officer in Dallas County. While in college, he dated home economics and elementary education majors, but found his wife in far-off Virginia. I became a teacher in Spring Branch ISD and then a college professor for several colleges in Harris County, the last being Lone Star College.

My younger brother Mark broke the pattern, went to the University of Texas and became a lawyer. Mother always said he was the smartest kid in the family. For sure he landed the most lucrative career, but I'm not convinced it is the most satisfying.


What were the main industries in your hometown? How did your parents' careers influence your choices?

My maternal grandmother

I was cleaning out a box this morning and found the bulletin from my grandmother's home church in Sudan, TX, dated Oct. 7, 1956. The bulletin is yellowed with age, and most certainly a manual typewriter was used to type the information about services, including the fact that "139 were present in classes last Lord's Day to study the Will of the Lord," and that "Granny Hanson seems to be getting along very nicely now. She is 96 years young this month."

Within the Church of Christ folded bulletin, I found these words:

Funeral services for Sister E.J.* [Elise Porter] Stone were conducted in the church last Wednesday afternoon by Brother Blake. She passed away Monday morning in the West Texas Plains Hospital, Muleshoe. Much could be written and spoken concerning the life and deeds of this fine woman, but space and feeble words cannot convey the fullness of life as she lived it. When we think of her life, above all we think of her as a faithful, devoted Christian, an untiring worker in the Lord's Kingdom, a loyal companion, mother, citizen, and builder of this community, state, and nation. 

She loved all people---little children, middle-aged, and elders, and they all in turn loved and respected her. She was a continual source of inspiration and encouragement to all who were doing anything worthwhile. She loved that which was good, high, holy, wholesome, and pure, and abhorred that which was base, evil, and ungodly.

She was an outstanding scholar of the Bible, having spent many long hours in its study, in preparation for teaching classes, in preparing for living life, and especially in preparation for life eternal. She possessed a broad knowledge on many subjects, and was a good conversationalist. Her mind was keen and had been developed to a high degree.

There will always be that vacant seat in the church, in her home, in the community, and everywhere she went. Even though she is not present in body, we know that in spirit and that her good works and deeds will last throughout this present world & extend into eternity.

Let us each be courageous and fight the good fight as she fought it, and lay up treasures in heaven as she did. May God's richest blessing abide with [husband] Sib and his children as they go through the period of readjustment.

As I finish reading, I think about how my grandmother cashed in her Texas teacher retirement (she had taught 3rd grade) so that my mother could complete her senior year at Texas Tech and become a teacher. My mother went on to be hired as the founding superintendent of the Windham Schools, within the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Mother and my daddy paid my tuition through Sam Houston State Teachers College so I could become a teacher, and I paid my son's way through University of Texas so he could be a teacher, too. Yes, my grandmother was a source of inspiration and encouragement, but her vacant seat has been filled with three generations (and counting) of believers in God's Word and Texas educators.

Her legacy lives on.


*  Eusebius Jefferson Stone was my grandfather's name. He went by "Sib."