My Oklahoma Roots and Biographical Sketch
A native Oklahoman, I graduated at Edmond from elementary school, Deer Creek High School, and the University of Central Oklahoma. In my first year of teaching (American Lit), I met a North Carolinian. By marrying and settling in Memphis, Tennessee, mid-way between NC & OK, we proved the esteemed Kipling incorrect. ‘East’ and ‘West’ did meet! Memphis is a beautiful city known for its churches, its hospitality, and its river, ‘the Father of Waters.’ This conflicted city is the setting of my companion works, two Christian novels which seek publication.
A lifelong learner and lover of literature, I earned a Master’s Degree at the University of Memphis. I’m also a wife, mother, and grandmother. A Christian since childhood, I’ve taught Bible at half a dozen churches. My students’ ages range from four to a hundred and four. I’m also a former educator. My teaching career and travels at home and abroad inspired my two literary guides to author memorials in the US and in the UK & Ireland. My husband, Charles Biggers, illustrated these two books with on-site photography. McFarland and Co. in NC published them. My writing has also appeared in several anthologies and periodicals.
Designed by O.U. architect Bruce Goff, Hopewell Baptist Church was built by its members after work and weekends from 1947-1951. They used excess oil drilling materials and native Oklahoma sandstone. Most volunteer builders were wheat farmers or oil field employees. My father, a volunteer plumber, worked for Standard Oil. The church, called “A Sentinel on the Prairie,” was featured in Time magazine in 1955. To me it is a sacred place: I was baptized and married at Hopewell, west of Edmond, Oklahoma.
Built in 1893 (before 1907 statehood), Old North Tower is the oldest building of higher education in the state. I walked under the tower during my Eighth Grade Graduation from the college’s Demonstration School and again at my graduation from then Central State College, Edmond.
I left teaching for the same reason Thoreau left Walden: “It seemed to me I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one.”