Our Children in the Eighties (7)

Jim – Graduation, Corn Detasseling, and Moving to Dallas

Jim graduated from ACU in May of 1989.  His graduation was an event that we will remember for a long time, although the reason has nothing to do with the graduation itself.   After graduation we attended a reception for those who had completed accounting degrees at the Abilene Country Club.  We noticed the lettuce in the salad looked a little suspicious, but we didn’t pay much attention it – at least not right then.   In the middle of the night Ann became acutely ill and I drove her to the emergency room at Hendrick’s hospital.  The guy at the ER concluded that she probably had food poisoning, but then he thought that was strange since the last place we had eaten had been the Abilene Country Club.  Things quieted down, and we went back to the motel, but we had to spend another couple of days in Abilene before Ann could travel.  Fortunately Ted and Beverly Starnes came to our rescue.  Now we’re pretty sure it wasn’t food poisoning at all.   At that time we didn’t know that Ann has a congenital pancreas problem, and that was a big time flare up.

Jim spent came back home in time to start his last corn detasseling experience.  Every July, when it’s time to detassel corn, I think he’s glad he got a college education and found a way to make a living with his brain. He wanted to settle in Dallas.  His college roommate was living there, and a lot of the ACU graduates thought Dallas was the place to be.  He came back to Cedar Rapids in the summer and detassled corn for the last time.  He made enough money detasseling corn to survive until he could get a job.

At one point, we weren’t sure he would stay with accounting.  A well known Christian singer was looking for a backup singer to travel with him, and Jim gave some thought to that, but he ended up going to work for a small accounting firm in Allen, and he nvolved himself in the life of the Preston Road church. 

After he enrolled at ACU, he began attending church at Highland.  Having spent several years working with Ann in children’s Bible hour, he volunteered to work in the children’s classes at Highland.  While he was there he formed a friendship with Lynn Anderson, who was the pulpit minister at Highland at the time.  About that time Lynn moved to the Dallas area.  That would eventually lead to a career change, which I’ll discuss at a later time.