I attended Oklahoma Military Academy.  When I tell someone that, they are skeptical since the Academy was an all male Oklahoma institution.

But it is true, and probably the reason the Academy is no longer in existence.  It happened like this:  I lived in Pryor, twenty minutes from Claremore, which was the site of the Academy.  Ken had left for Viet Nam, and I needed something to do with my time, so I decided to start college.  I was 28 years old.  We had three children, all in school, and I had too much free time on my hands, thinking...trying not to worry about Ken.

The year before, some woman--I don't remember who--had protested to the state legislature that OMA was all male, being funded with our tax dollars, and there was no equitable institution for women.  So the cheapest legislative solution was to allow women in.  Which they did.

That first semester, three women--I was one of them--enrolled at OMA.  The cadets marched in, in uniform.  We three women stood out like a sore thumb.  I competed with all A's at the end of that semester, and by tradition, was offered a full scholarship.  It covered everything--except housing--there were no accommodations for women of course.  I didn't need that anyway.

The name of the institution was changed after the next semester, and OMA for cadets went by the wayside.  Sad.  It was a good thing for young men.  But indefensible with tax dollars in the middle of the 1960's when equitable treatment for men and women, blacks and whites was such an issue.

The administration asked me to organize an honor society--which I did and those who qualified elected me as their first president.  I wrote a poem for them which is still used today--sixty years later.  I didn't plan to be a part of the demise of OMA, I just happened to be there  when it happened.

Becky--my daughter--says I never write about myself, that I always tell stories about Ken's life and not my own.  So there.  You have a story about me.