Page 20 - Senior Link Magazine Winter 2018- Online Magazine

Jack Zoe Kirkpatrick
The Handwriting on
the Wall
by Hannah Kirkpatrick
ven though he walks with a
hitch in his get-along and her
Eknees creak like wooden stairs,
their eyes shine
with memory,
embraced in
wrinkly wide grins,
if you ask about the
first time they met.
Before we get into
that entertaining
encounter, let me
introduce you
to whom I am
referring: my grandparents, Jack and
Zoe Kirkpatrick.
Daddy Jack, as all us grandchildren
call him, was born in Ft. Worth in
1934 to Willard and Ruby Kirkpatrick.
When he was a young boy, his parents
packed up their two sons and moved
to the ranch near Post that Ruby’s
father bought in 1924.
Daddy Jack grew up
ranching, roping and
riding alongside his
father and brother,
K.W. He went on to
graduate from Post
High School in 1952
and then meandered
down Highway 84
to play football and
college rodeo at Texas
Tech.
Zoe, aka Zoedie, was cut from a
different cloth - city girl fabric to be
exact. She was born in 1935 to Ed
and Elsie Merriman in Austin. Ed
was in the Navy, so that meant the
20 Lubbock Senior Link
family moved often, following
his assignments. Occasionally,
when Ed was deployed to a
remote base,
Elsie would
bring her family
to her Czech
parents’ home
near Austin.
Not being able
to follow her
father every area and began noticing a particular
time was not all star player from Post High School.
bad because that Yep, you guessed it: Jack Kirkpatrick.
meant she and her “Daddy talked about him all the
brother Larry could visit the horses time,” Zoedie says, “and he did the
their grandparents owned. She loved taxes for the Kirkpatrick family.”
horses.
Soon the two crossed paths at a
When Zoedie was in junior high, Ed, freshman function on campus. Well,
a CPA, joined a buddy in Lubbock let’s just say it wasn’t love at first
to work for his accounting firm. In sight. Daddy Jack had been playing
1952, she graduated from Lubbock football prior to this event, and I guess
High and entered her first year at he did not have time to clean up - or
Texas Tech. Zoedie loved perhaps he just didn’t mind showing
sports and wanted to up the way he did.
major in P.E., but her
parents didn’t approve, Picture this, a tall freshman
so she chose the obvious quarterback wearing a button up
alternative - Spanish. western shirt with ripped off sleeves.
Despite her major, sports That doesn’t
remained a large part sound too
of her college years. She terrible, but
became one of the first shirt sleeves
Texas Tech females to weren’t the
compete intercollegiately, only thing
when she joined the Daddy Jack
women’s fencing team, all the while was missing
keeping up the ballet lessons she had that day.
taken since childhood. “I don’t
remember
After moving to Lubbock, Ed kept how many
up with everything football in the teeth he had