Thomas Schwaesdall:
CLASS OF 1960
Chelsea High SchoolClass of 1960
Chelsea, OK
Alluwe High SchoolClass of 1961
Alluwe, OK
Thomas's Story
Life
I graduated in 1960 in the old gym downtown. I remember I walked to the stage with Linda Layton. The electric went off about halfway through the ceremony, and some of us got to do the walkthrough twice. There was a bad storm, and my parents were stuck in a cellar because a tree had blown down on the door.
About a week after graduating, I joined the Air Force, not because I had a dying need to serve my country, but the real reason is because I was tired of milking cows twice a day!
The Air Force was good to me (no more cows to milk!), but I still had to get up at 5 a.m. After basic training and testing for a career, they decided I needed to be a medic (surgery technician) and sent me to Little Rock, Arkansas Air Force Base where there wasn't even a hospital....Expand for more
I spent three and a half years waiting for them to build one. It was finally completed about six months before I got out.
In 1964, I moved back to Chelsea and met up with an old friend, Barbara Sprague. We dated and married in 1966. We raised four children together: Ricky, John, Kimberly, and Tracy.
After we got married, we moved to Illinois, and I worked at the John Deere factory until I purchased a couple of Shell Service Stations. I sold them in 1980 and moved my family to Hot Springs, Arkansas and opened an AAMCO Transmissions shop. We still have the shop, but it is not with the franchise anymore.
We don't get back to Chelsea very often since my mother moved to Shawnee. Bobbi and I are both from the class of 1960, but we have only been to one reunion.
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Reunions
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