Page 14 - Senior Link Magazine Summer 2025 - Online Magazine

EXCEPTIONAL SENIORS

Three Caballeros: Walter and two kindergartners during Feria Day at
David Glasgow Farragut Elementary School in Rota, Spain

the school bus to meet Rashell who was teaching at
another DoD school on a nearby base. They immediately
began their long trek home. Due to power outages,
the streets were congested, and Japanese police had to
direct traffic at most major intersections. In the following
days I put my family and dogs on one of the evacuation
flights out of Japan back to the United States along with
thousands of other military dependents. My school’s
student population dropped from 1,340 to 297 during
the evacuation period. Gasoline was in short supply, and
local grocery stores and the military commissary began
to experience food shortages. By the end of the school
year, many students’ families were back, and school life
returned to normal.

After thirty years overseas, it was time to return to
Lubbock. Unlike Mac Davis, it was the birth of our first
grandchild calling us home. We observed many changes
in Lubbock after thirty years away. Lubbock Christian
College had become a university. Reese Air Force Base
succumbed to the military drawdown. Rashell’s Bayless
Bears were now the Bayless Plainsmen. My Tubbs
Elementary was torn down, enlarging Rodgers Park with
the students consolidating into Centennial Elementary.
Haynes Elementary was demolished and the property
sold to housing developers. Its students consolidated
into Miller Elementary. The Marsha Sharp Highway The Man in the Yellow Hat—Preschool Story
occasionally prompts us to use our GPS to navigate an Hour with Curious George
ever-growing Lubbock, although we use it less and less
now.

14 Lubbock Senior Link