The Letter, The Gift...The Bears

In 1973 when I received my acceptance letter from Baylor University I stepped outside and ran and cried at the good news, a dream come true.  Yesterday, when I read that I had been nominated and invited to be an Alumni By Choice from the Baylor University Alumni Association, I cried.  Oh I would have run but my running days are long gone in the distant past.  I sat in Sequisha right there at the neighborhood mailboxes and cried great big tears of happy.   I must have re-read that letter five times before moving on.  February 28, 2015 is the luncheon complete with a certificate presented by Baylor President Ken Star. Yes, I am totally aware this is a ceremonial thing but in my spirit the feeling of having something restored from forty one years ago that had been ripped away from me is a welcomed and very satisfied feeling.  I have cried more in the past few days than I have in a long time...happy joyful tears.

It is strange that I can't remember how and with whom I traveled to visit friends at Baylor while I was still in high school.   Back then I don't remember anyone making the formal visits to campuses like today but I was there on the Baylor campus taking it all in.  It felt so Ivy League to me, not that I would have even known what that was, but it just felt right.  Maybe I knew because the book and movie Love Story was so popular at the time.  The huge trees with limbs almost touching the ground, the red brick contrasted with white trim and green landscape...it was one of the most beautiful sights I had ever experienced.  A couple of times I visited my friend Lynnie and she lived in Russell when Russell was new and I visited her a couple of years later and she lived in Memorial.  I remember thinking if the chance to go to Baylor ever presented itself to me, I would never chose to live in an apartment, I would want to reside in those beautiful old dorm rooms and I didn't exactly think that cooking for myself was really worth the whole apartment thing.  Each trip to the campus a mandatory visit to the bookstore was paramount in my book and I returned home with t-shirts and spiral notebooks with the old school Baylor Bear on them.

I was late to the dance in making a decent GPA in high school but it rose significantly enough for acceptance to SWTSU now known as Texas State.  The plan, attend SWTSU my freshman year and make decent grades and then transfer to Baylor my sophomore year.  I didn't think my grades would be good enough to get in as a freshman at Baylor. I also planned to live in the freshman dorm at Baylor as a sophomore so I could have a true Baylor experience, a sense of belonging.  A sense of being a part of something steeped in tradition   So I began my college career and maintained a high B average, with which I then applied to Baylor and waited to see the outcome.  This is truly one time in my life I had clear cut goals and with them in front of me, working hard for good grades wasn't a chore, it was a joy knowing the prize that was set before me.  That letter from Alton B Lee, the registrar at Baylor, came bearing the great good news of acceptance. There came the running and the crying.  While home on spring break  I went to AstroWorld and interviewed for a summer job. Got the job and I was so excited to learn I was hired to run rides at the amusement park with the chance to work double shifts.  The way everything was falling into place just seemed to confirm God's will and pleasure.   I thought my hard work of getting a high B average and planning for a summer job with a great opportunity for overtime would get my father's attention and approval because I hadn't ever been this driven in my whole schooling career.   Summer came, I worked hard and worked double shifts at least 5 days a week and a regular shift on Sunday so I could go to church.  I saved over 90% of my earnings only spending money on gasoline and necessities.

Just like John 10:10 there is the abundant life plan and the plan the thief has, to kill, steal and destroy. A thief plan was being crafted and shaped during that time unknown to me. When  its presentation came, it came with unreasonable demands.   I was devastated.  All I will say here is it was mean spirited and hurtful meant to rip joy and hope right out of me and in doing this it gave great pleasure to the dream taker.  The future planned for me by my father was sparse, dismal and hopeless.   I had to write Baylor and my roommates and let them know I could not attend.  I finished working that summer at AstroWorld but I never worked a double shift after that.  I enrolled at U of H and didn't care.  I dropped out the spring semester of my junior year.

Any chance I ever had, I would go visit friends at Baylor thinking of what might have been.  When I dropped out of school, I got a full time office job and through a series of God ordained moments, went to work at Pennzoil and met the love of my life and married him.  Roy knew how much I had wanted to go to Baylor and told me he would send me there if I wanted to go but that season of life had come and gone.. I was married at the ripe old age of barely 23 (I thought that was so late to be married)   I still didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up.  So for forty one years I have gone to football games, worn Baylor t-shirts and told Roy my usual once a quarter Baylor dream I would have.   I lived all things Baylor through my Baylor alumni friends, rooted for all the teams, visited the campus every chance I got and finally after being so bitter about what had been stolen from me for too many years, came to a reckoning and acceptance.  I began looking at the good that had come out of not going to Baylor.  I would tell you about that, but previous blog post on Losing Your Treasure....thing.   Then I heard about Alumni By Choice.....

Tons of Baylor friends were excited and offered to help me and after many years of just talking about it, Peggy did something about it.  She filled out the paperwork and wrote a recommendation of why they should ABC me.  They included a portion of what she wrote in the letter they sent.  It is beautifully written and lovingly poignant.  I had totally forgotten about her filling out paperwork and writing a letter to the Alumni network until Thursday...at the mailboxes...in our neighborhood.  I called Roy who was in a meeting and left a message...  But in the midst of telling him, I started crying again and could barely talk.  I was even more happy because I just happened to be on my way to meet Peggy for dinner.  God's timing, what a gift!