7 minute read
Lasting Impressions: Glimpses into Upper School Teachers’ Most Memborable Moments
By Jack Drake
Mexico Mission Trips by Hank Harmon
Thinking about the stories I remember most at TCA will always bring me back to the Mexico Mission Trips. A missionary named Ray Hansen came to visit and shared his vision to use high school students primarily to build a needed orphanage in a needy area of Mexico. We joined the cause and a relationship was started that remains to this day.
In 1990 we started the mission trips for several reasons such as; showing the students the great need still in our day for servants of God on the mission field, to feel the joy of serving God by working hard for others, but probably for most was the desire to show the students how incredibly blessed we are and how needy others can be and they can make a difference for God in this world. Our theme verse was James 1:27 – Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstrained by the world.
Our first work on building an orphanage was done in the middle of the Chihuahua Desert at a beautiful oasis there. But with the passing of NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) on the third year of our trip we moved to the USA/Mexico border with the rush of thousands of people seeking jobs. They would come with their starving children and most would not find jobs. Because of this, they would carry their children across the border and leave them there thinking the children would get to stay in America. The border patrol would pick them up and carry the babies back across the bridge to the Mexican side, only this time having no parents so the need for orphanages increases. Ray and Leah Hansen heard the call and so Trinity was given a vision for mission work.
The memories are so numerous of TCA on this mission project, but I will share one story that exemplifies our faculty and their commitment to our work. It took place on our first year to work on the Rio Bravo Children’s Home site. The land where the children’s home was to be built was a jungle. It took a drive down a poor dirt road to get there. The site was being used as a dump. Ray had been told by the Mayor of Raynosa that the land would be deeded to the children’s home if it was cleared, fenced in, water and electricity brought to it, and it maintained for 10 years. I must admit that at this point of the story I didn’t believe there was any way that there would ever be a children’s home on this site. It was such a jungle and there was so much trash to deal with. I was right that there was no way on earth that there would ever be a children’s home at that site, but it took miracles of God for this home, but that’s a story for another time.
We were divided into 3 work crews. One crew was armed with axes, machetes, and a chainsaw and chopped and sawed to clear a fence path around the property. The second crew cleared an area to set up for tents and eating. The third group hauled trash into a deep crevasse and burned it. The fire burned for 6 days. All of these crews worked from sunup to sunset with only a break after lunch. After work we would go to local communities and put on our evangelical show. We would get to bed around eleven and get up the next morning at 6:30 and repeat each day.
After 7 days of work we had finished hauling and burning the trash. We had made a path through the jungle. The place looked great by comparison. So, the last day scheduled for work we decided to go souvenir shopping but after getting cleaned up and dressed up we drove back to the work site to look at all we had accomplished.
But we were met with a surprise! A local chicken processing plant had loaded a dump truck with a huge load of rotten chickens and driven down and dumped the chickens in our newly cleared and cleaned area. Hearts sank. Then without missing a beat a teacher named Trisha Bailey jumped up with a smile on her face and with a cheery voice said, “ome on everyocne. Get your gloves on. God has given us another job to do!” The students bounced up and followed. What seemed at first like a disaster became an opportunity.
The Final Hurrah by Kyle Morril
In the spring of 2000, I was named as the new Head of Upper School after seven years as the Dean of Students. Our headmaster, Dan Russ, asked me to retire from coaching varsity girls basketball, because of the complexities and time demands of my upcoming new position. I asked Dr. Russ if I could coach one more season, because I was very invested in the eight returning seniors.
We had great leadership and a very balanced team. We depended on about eight different girls to score points. We had a good mix of young talent as well. I had taken four different teams to the final four, but had never won the state championship. Bishop Lynch’s girls had won twelve in a row. Our district was always tough, so if we could make the playoffs, we would be ready to hopefully go for the state championship.
We started off the season 19-3 before entering district. We had won two tournaments against strong teams, but our district was very tough. We played close games but came in third in our district and made the playoffs. We got hot at the right time. In our first playoff gams, we defeated San Antonio Antonian after being down by 13 at the half. We then defeated our big rival, Ursuline, and San Antonio Providence. San Antonio Incarnate Word dominated Bishop Lynch in the other semifinal, setting up a final game with us.
Most people thought that we would have no chance to win. We played the game at Baylor’s Ferrell Center. We completely changed our defensive game plan and confused the other high-powered team. We made many first half shots and were up by 13 points going into the second half. Incarnate Word made a run at us in the fourth quarter, but we hit free throws down the stretch and won by seven points. We all cried like babies. It was the first and only girls basketball state championship in TCA’s history. Every coach wants a state championship. I was so happy for our school and especially for our eight seniors who had worked so hard for so many years. The feeling that we had when the final buzzer sounded was probably my favorite of the many TCA memories.
Musical Memories by Norma Browning
In 1987, Trinity’s first musical was the Fiddler on the Roof In Trinity’s second musical (1988), we performed Oklahoma! for the Lower School, the Friday after our opening night. The girl who had the lead came down with a throat infection after the opening night, so we had to switch the girl who played Ado Annie to the Laurey role, pull up Ado Annie’s understudy, and have the boy who played Will Parker’s understudy do his role, since the original boy cast for the role was at the state golf tournament. It made for some creatively interesting new lines! After all the students should have been back in class, I went backstage to clean up, but fortunately had the good sense to call out, “Mrs. B coming back – hope everyone’s dressed!” It was a good thing, since there were two gentlemen who were only almost dressed! The dancers in the dream sequence had to do high kicks, which were not allowed for drill team at the time—you’re welcome! Dances were not sanctioned by the school in the late 80s, so the parents sponsored a dance. Teachers were given permission to attend AFTER I had already been invited and attended!
In 2003’s reboot of Fiddler on the Roof, J.R. Rasberry proved that he was better in his role as Tevye than many professional companies’ production of it. In The Secret Garden (2009), I got to see my wedding dress as a costume on my daughter, which was one of the coolest on-stage moments for me.
Everything about Les Misérables (2011 – the first year in the PAC) was magical (and exhausting)! Due to the generosity of some parents, we were able to rent a rotating stage and additional musicians for our inaugural musical in the PAC. I do remember how the talent and intelligence of the students rose to the challenge when I explained to them that we would indeed be singing all the songs on our concerts from memory, rather than from folders.
Wall of Archived Technology by Kent Pendleton
If anyone were to come to my room, they might be struck by the fact that I am a collector of things that I deem nostalgic. One wall is dubbed my ‘Wall of Archived Technology’ which prominently features a large yellow ‘stick’ which some in the older crowd might recognize as a ‘slide rule.’ Before there were hand-held calculators, students/teachers/professionals used this device to do advanced calculations. The model on the wall is a giant replica that teachers at TCA used to teach students about the use of the slide rule, which was typically done in Algebra 1 classes. (I graduated from high school in 1976 and in 1974 our math teacher taught us how to use slide rules. I was even in a slide rule competition team! Our 9th grade class was the last year I know of in our high school that taught slide rules. Electronic calculators were beginning to hit the market and the slide rule was doomed!) At any rate, one day I discovered that a teacher when cleaning house tossed the slide rule in the dumpster! (Oh! The humanity!) I couldn’t let that legacy piece go into oblivion, so I rescued it and it is now hanging in a place of honor to show what the world used to be like before the technology wave!