The Chemistry Teacher

ASIWRITE this letter, it’s May 31, 2023: It’s my dad’s eighty-eighth birthday.

Okie Notes

1. My eighteenth anniversary with my sweetie was perfect: an afternoon Dodgers game at Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark followed by drinks, dinner, and a room at The National—on the sixth floor, no less, where my first Oklahoma Today office was located. okcdodgers.com

2. We also spent two days at one of the new tiny cabins at Beavers Bend State Park. We hiked the Friends of Beavers Bend Trail, had amazing food at The Eat Out in Hochatown, and luxuriated in our cabin’s river view. TravelOK.com/ state-parks/beavers-bend-state-park

3. Just in case you haven’t heard: On April 8, 2024, anyone in McCurtain County will be able to witness a total eclipse of the sun. It’s a must-have life experience, but if you want to stay overnight, make your booking now.

4. If this was the 1990s, I’d tell you to go buy a big box of blank VHS tapes as soon as you can. Why? Season three of Reservation Dogs, set and shot in Oklahoma, hits FX on Hulu on August 2. Just be sure not to tape over the game. hulu.com

My dad, Bobby Dean Gunter, grew up in Hackett, Arkansas, in the throes of the Great Depression. His own father was not in the picture for a big chunk of his childhood, and his heroic mother, Clara Mae, raised him largely on her own until he was ten. When he was eighteen, his high school principal called him to his office and said, “If I could get you into college, all expenses paid, would you go?” Dad shrugged and said sure, and the principal replied, “Okay, go home and pack and be back here at five p.m.”

Dad went home, where his mother— who already knew of the plan—handed him a cardboard suitcase and every penny she had, which wasn’t much. Dad earned a bachelor’s degree at the University of the Ozarks, a master’s in nuclear physics at Vanderbilt, and a PhD in chemistry at the University of Arkansas. He was a fellow at the National Laboratory at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and worked at General Dynamics as a health physicist, but it was in Oklahoma that he found his calling.

In the mid-1960s, Dad began teaching chemistry at Southwestern State College in Weatherford, and for thirty years, he molded the lives of young people—many who, like him, had grown up tending crops and working cattle and were the first person in their family to go to college. A natural-born performer—he could’ve easily been a politician or an actor—Dad had a teaching style that made a class on stoichiometry as enjoyable as a standup comedy set. His voice boomed: If he was lecturing and you were anywhere in the Chemistry-Pharmacy-Physics building at SWOSU, you could hear him clearly enough to take notes. In the days before email and cell phones, he gave his students our home number and encouraged them to call anytime—which is how, more than once as a child, I picked up the phone to find a crying college student on the other end. Dad would always take the call, always help, always see his students through.

He believes in the power of education, because education elevated his life. He believes—and he taught his five children— that every piece of knowledge you gain is a bit of power no one can take away. He believes learning is a good end unto itself, and for three decades, he dedicated himself to being the best teacher he possibly could be. He believes in kindness, because someone was kind to him, and he believes in helping others, because he was helped.

As my dad’s life nears its denouement, I’m taking a fresh look at these values and how they shaped me, how thankful I am for them. For him. I’m taking time every day to be grateful for Dr. Bobby Gunter’s life, what he gave, what he endured. And however much longer we have together, I’ll spend it—and all the time that follows—being proud to be his son.

Nathan Gunter, Editor-in-Chief nathan.gunter@TravelOK.com