Wade Anderson:
CLASS OF 1966
Poteau High SchoolClass of 1966
Poteau, OK
Wade's Story
Life
Still married to that cute little brunette (see Barbara Dame), retired and still living in the SmileAmerica City, Moore, Oklahoma. We recently celebrated our 50th Anniversary with a Caribbean cruise to just about every island except CUBA!!
We have two kids, Jennifer and Rusty. Jennifer is a Junior High school English teacher in Moore. Rusty is the "Web and Digital Media Specialist" for the Moore School System, as well as a professional guitarist. He has played lead guitar for Johnny Lee, "The Original Urban Cowboy", and Mickey Gilley, and traveled all over the country doing live shows with Johnny and The Urban Cowboy Band on the weekends for seven years, before he got tired of the bus rides. He still plays now and then around the OKC area, along with an occasional road gig with Johnny Lee or Mickey Gilley, and buys more guitars with the proceeds.
The kids are both married, and live here in Moore. Our son-in-law Matt is a Master Sergeant with the Oklahoma City Police Department, and our daughter-in-law Gloria is also a high school English teacher in Moore.
Jennifer and Matt were married in 1990, and had the first two of our grandkids, Lynn Marie, born in 1996, and Dylan Joseph, born in 2000.
Rusty and Gloria were married in 2000, and presented us with our second grandson, Zane Russell in 2004.
We have found our calling as grandparents, and highly recommend it!! Especially now that our oldest grandson, Dylan, is a star Safety for the Moore Lions, and led his conference in interceptions up until the playoffs, and wound up second for the season. And this was as a SOPHOMORE in 2017!! He had over 90 tackles this past season, his JUNIOR year, and was named Moore Lion Defensive Player of the Year for 2018. We're looking forward to his upcoming Senior year!! He's an Honor Student, and has already been checked out on grades by representatives from both Harvard and Yale!! He also plays varsity baseball for Moore, and has put more than a few dents in the outfield fence with his patented line drive doubles and triples! It's a real hoot to see him on TV and in the Oklahoman Sports Section!! The University of Central Oklahoma in Edmond won out, and that's where he is the leading tackler on the team!!
School
It was Tuesday, Oct. 13, 1964, in Mrs. Lanigan's Junior English Class. I had already finished reading whatever noteworthy literature it was that we were supposed to be appreciating, when I turned around in that goofy desk/chair combination we used to have to sit in, and saw that raven hair, that bright yellow dress (with matching yellow shoes), and that cute little smile. Whew!! Still haven't gotten over that! And she was smiling at me!!!
I made up my mind to ask her out that Saturday night, October the 17th. Had to go for Saturday night because she had to march with the band at the Friday night football game and play the clarinet. And I had to record the game for the Saturday morning playback on the radio.
The plan was to see if she needed a ride home after school, get her by herself away from Joyce Harrison, and then pop the question----the date question....the other one came later.... The plan was going along fine, until old Dale Killion asked for a ride home just as I started the car. What was I going to do with him? Well, I decided to just have old Dale jump into the back seat when we caught up to the cute little brunette, and she could sit up front with me.....
We caught up with her before she got to the highway. I ever so coolly asked her if she'd like a ride home. She said OK, so what does old Dale do but scoot right over next to me, and lets the cute little brunette sit on the passenger side of the car, with him between us. So I was forced to negotiate the entire Saturday night date deal across him all the way to her house, while attempting to drive the car and get her home safely. Funny, I lost track of Dale after that....
Fortunately, she agreed to go out with me, and on our first date, Saturday, October 17, 1964, we drove just over 100 miles making the drag from the Dairy Queen to the hospital and back listening to the radio and talking. She managed to spill a Coke in the seat between us, but I didn't care. I had my very own Barbie Doll.
Now, fifty years later, we still drive around Moore, in a Corvette now, and sometimes we even stay out late. It's a little easier now that the kids are grown and married with kids of their own, though....We don't have to be back near as early.....and she's a lot more careful with the Cokes in the 'Vette.....
Now, the coincidence of all times: Mrs. Lanigan, in whose classroom this whole deal began to transpire, was from Moore, Oklahoma, and lived on Nail Parkway before she moved to Poteau. Some twelve years later, when Barb and I bought our first house in, of all places, Moore, Oklahoma, it was located just two blocks west of Nail Parkway on Bellaire Drive.
To say that we suffered the pains and pangs of true love is a definite understatement. Everybody, and I mean everybody, that we knew over the age of 21, friends, teachers, LOTS of teachers, even distant relatives all felt it nec...Expand for more
essary to render their opinion of our little romance. And it was unanimous!! Don't get too serious----you need to finish school before you two get married, etc., yada, yada, yada, as Seinfeld would say.....
Long story short, we outlasted all of the unsolicited advisors, the wrath of my mother, survived the relentless pursuit of Suzie Craig's mother at good old local Draft Board #40, and a few other minor disasters along the way, and have had a great life in spite of it all. And as the old prospector once said, "I wouldn't change a minute of it!!"
Well, maybe a few seconds here and there........ ;-)
Workplace
My first job was as a radio announcer at KLCO, the thousand watt blowtorch station "with studiator and transistor located three miles south of Poteau". That's what George Baldridge used to say when he signed off at sundown, anyway.
The employment interview went like this: R.B. Bell---Well, can he read? Vic Nowlin---You bet, just listen! Me---Read a quick AP news story..... R.B.---Put him to work....The best time I had there was making goofy commercials with George, Cliff Smith, who now owns KREK in Bristow, and LeRoy Billy, who became the OWNER of KLCO, now known as KPRV. Nothing like having a good production staff made up of radio pioneers!!
We used to listen to Ron Riley and Art Roberts on WLS in Chicago, and Dan Diamond and C.C. Courtney on WNOE in New Orleans at night when Barb and I were riding around.
Several years ago, I accidentally bumped into Ron Riley on the radio--seems he's a ham radio operator, too. We started e-mailing each other, and he got a big kick out of talking about when he was a DJ on WLS back in the mid-60's, doing interviews with The Beatles and other groups. Ron said he had a Collins "S-Line" as his ham equipment back in Chicago, which was a deluxe setup. He also had a brand new '65 Thunderbird!! Man, those guys made a LOT of money back then!!
He just recently retired as one of the Channel 8 Weathermen in Washington, D.C. Seems like I meet the nicest folks on the radio. It's really hard to imagine those guys getting old....
Art Roberts passed away in 2002 from a series of strokes, after retiring with his wife Bobbie in a suburb of Reno, Nevada. Art used to sign off his show by saying "This has been a work of Art...Excelsior!". Ron said he had been e-mailing Art for several years, and really missed his old friend. I told him I stole a lot of their lines for my own use on the air, and he said that was all right, as he no doubt stole them from someone else, like Clark Weber----ha.
C.C. Courtney went from radio to a TV soap opera called "The Doctors" back in the late 60's and early 70's, and started teaching acting in New York City, where he made quite a name for himself on Broadway. Don't know what ever happened to Don Diamond...Then there was a guy named George Basil Segraves III, otherwise known as "Scooter" B. Segraves at KAKC in Tulsa.....met a lot of neat characters.....I really loved that radio business.
That radio job did help me to land a part-time gig with Jack Beasley's broadcasting empire several years later at KLPR in Oklahoma City, where I met and worked with Tim Holt, the movie star. He was our sales manager, and used to call me on his mobile phone when I was on the air, and request songs on his way home to his ranch in Harrah.
I really liked Tim. He was a pretty neat character. We called each other "Dobbsy", after Bogart's character in "Treasure of the Sierra Madre". Tim said that was his favorite movie of all the ones he did.
When Tim was in the hospital over in Shawnee with terminal cancer in '73, I went to visit him, and just missed meeting John Wayne, who had flown in on his private jet to visit him. All the hospital people were still in shock. Tim's wife Berdee said, "You should have been here about ten minutes ago--The Duke dropped in". Talk about bad timing.....
Along with the radio station job for fun and spending cash, I also had a "money-making" job where I worked in communications for 37 years for AT&T Long Lines. The coolest assignment I had was maintaining the air to ground radio system used by Air Force One and Two when they flew over Oklahoma. Wouldn't you know, operating a radio station.....
Got to visit several foreign countries while on deployment with the AT&T Pentagon Crew, flying with the Air Force guys from Offutt AFB while President Bush 41 and President Clinton were in office and were traveling overseas.
I usually traveled with an AT&T Engineer who was in on the initial installation of the Washington/Moscow hotline back in '62, and had lots of spy stories to tell. He was a ham radio operator too, so we hit it right off.
Fun stuff, but, as my grandkids would say, retirement is funner!! I hit the door at age 56, only two months behind my planned exit at age 55, and never looked back. I went back to pickin' the guitar and singin' around the OKC area with the Killin' Time Band and actually getting paid for it!! It's a lot of fun, and keeps the ego stroked. A great bunch of guys, and we're all about the same age, and all retired, just KILLIN' TIME.
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