The year I started first grade, here were 18 elementary classrooms in the building and all of them had over 60 children in each one.  Grades one through six.  One year earlier, this building had housed the entire school, grades 1-12.  But the war  had changed everything for the little town of Pryor.  Class size doubled.  Two tiny bathrooms for all of those people and no air conditioning.  Desks were bolted to the floor and chairs added at the back of the room for the overflow of people.

The government had built a dam, and Dupont built an ammunition plant.  Ammo for the war.  Men came from all over the United States to Pryor for the jobs.  With their families.  Their children.  The school system was overwhelmed.  Ken went to school in the city park, where they set up Quonset huts to use as classrooms for different topics.   Churches opened their buildings for classrooms during the week.   Somehow, the small town coped.  The government built a high school and sold it to the city for a dollar.  Sometimes the government does something right.

 People were living in tents, garages, sheds and three and four families to whatever houses were available.  Once again, the government--who had contributed to this situation by building a huge dam and ammunition plant in a town that had no people to fill the jobs that were created--stepped in and began to build houses.  Small, but heavenly to those of us in desperate need of a place to live.

They built them in groups of seven.  Three facing each other with one at each end.  Court houses.  Hundreds and hundreds of them.  For people to rent.  You could tell them apart by the shutters.  Each had a different carving on them.  Candlesticks were on my house.

After the war was over and the plant closed down, people moved on to other places where they could find jobs.  But we stayed.  My mom and dad loved the church they had joined.  And that decision changed all of our lives because the pastor they loved was E. R. Jacks.  And he had a son named Ken.  And God always does things right.  What a blessing that decision has been in my life.