Pat LaMarr Jones Teed

Austin, TX

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I had no idea how much I would enjoy renewing old acquaintances after so many years by reading the bios that have been submitted thus far. I am impressed with everyone’s candor, views on life, insights, wit and … yes …writing ability. I work at UT Austin, and you would not believe how even honor students can mangle the language. Obviously they didn’t have Coach Nooncaster for English! 

As for me, here’s what has transpired in my life since that hot May evening when I bored all of you to death with my homily-laden graduation speech (I know how bad it was because I still have the notes.). In September 1958 Robert Collett and I found ourselves at Rice University (then Rice Institute … another reminder of how much time has passed) in an unfamiliar ambience of humidity and trees. It was like an Amazonian rain forest. 

I began as a biology major out of deference to Mrs. Lamb, who had suggested Rice to me in the first place. Since girls didn’t warrant much attention in those days, no one attempted a course correction when I selected French as my foreign language (romantic and sexy, I thought) instead of the more logical … for a science major … German. A year later, given the prospect of several years of required courses in physics and chemistry, I switched my major to French literature. It was a market decision. After all, wasn’t I there to meet a man? It was also a decision I have never regretted. 

By my senior year there was no prince on white horse on the horizon so I went on to graduate school at Emory University in Atlanta and thence to France for a year on a Fulbright scholarship. Back in the U.S. in 1964 and still no prince in sight, I went to graduate school at Rice. Two years later, I married John Teed from Pampa. Our first date was arranged by Heidi’s mother, Chris Campaigne. In 1967 our son Arthur was born. 

In 1971 John and I divorced, and I began working full-time for a steel import company in Houston where I spoke more French than English. I also finished my Ph.D. at Rice that year. In 1975, I switched gears and moved into the world of academic administration at the University of Houston where I stayed for nine years. I was Assistant Chancellor when I left in 1984 to become Vice President for University Affairs at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. 

Stony Brook is on the north shore of Long Island, a short hop as the crow flies from where Arthur was in school. In 1978 we were told that Arthur had a learning disability that had gone undetected for years and required immediate and massive intervention. At the time, Houston offered no options, so off he went to a marvelous school in the Connecticut Berkshires. After four years there, he moved on to a prep school on Buzzard’s Bay. I decided to reduce the geographical distance between us so I wouldn’t miss out on his adolescence (whatever was I thinking!), hence the move to New York. 

The position at Stony Brook was a killer. I worked eighty-hour weeks, and after five years I was ready to rest. Fortunately Arthur was also at the point of graduating from Syracuse University. I made a conscious decision to hop off the career ladder and go where I wanted to go to do whatever I wanted to do. Austin came to mind as an idyllic place to live … close enough to drive to Pampa in a day whenever necessary (two aging parents) yet far enough away for me to have a life of my own. Or so I thought. 

Austin, I discovered, had changed dramatically since that idyllic time when Martha Gordon and I came with her family to watch the Pampa Harvesters at Gregory Gym on the UT campus. Everyone had laughed when we sang “Dear Old Pampa High School” to the tune of “Let Me Call You Sweetheart” but they stopped laughing when our guys took the title. Austin had a population of 135,000 at the time. Now it’s closing in on 700,000, although it remains a wonderful place to live. My son came to that conclusion and joined me here after graduation. Mother also moved down in 1993. 

In 1991, after a year of decompressing, I took a quiet administrative job as Assistant Director at UT’s Texas Union where I still work … and will until I retire in May 2006. In 1996 my father died, and I was confronted by the tangled affairs of Jones-Everett Machine Company, the family business. It took two years, two lawyers and lots of dollars to sort things out so the business could be sold. During that time I was frequently in Pampa so I got my Coney Island fixes while Ted and Johnny were still running the place. 

Now things are quieter but not quiet. My son is 36 and is a special education teacher and football coach at a middle school near Houston. Although not married, he is seriously involved with a much younger woman who plans to be a neurosurgeon. The requisite family visits have taken place, so this may be the real thing. It’s looking as if it will be a long time before I’m a grandmother. Mother, who was 92 on August 12, has had several strokes in the last eighteen months yet remains remarkably like her old self. She has good quality of life and now lives in a lovely assisted living apartment two miles from my house. 

My house is the house I designed and built (not really, but I did hire my own contractor and worked hand in glove with him for six months) to accommodate her. Fortunately it is well suited to my lifestyle and to hosting frequent weekend visitors. I committed to building the house the week before Daddy died, so throughout 1996 and much of 1997, life was a zoo in these parts. After seven years and some major tweaking, the house and I have come to terms, and three landscapers later, the yard and I have declared a truce. 

Austinites are pro-environment, and thanks to their refusal to build an infrastructure of roads (If you don’t build it, they won’t come--or so they thought.) traffic here is a mess. I spend between 45 and 90 minutes a day on the road. That plus work plus all my other obligations has eaten into my free time and my plans for writing (essays), so I have a long list of retirement plans. They also include genealogy, my new avocational interest. John Teed’s premature death at 43 led me to search for his birth parents in order to obtain vital medical history for my son. I was successful, and in 2001 Arthur and I met the living relatives on both sides in the Missouri Ozarks. Sylvia Grider came along on the trip because her grandmother was a key player in this drama. 

By the time our 50^th comes along, I will be retired, less encumbered with responsibility and should be able to attend. At the moment I, like Cora, have an aging, ailing pet. My elder cat was 18 in July and is slowly ebbing away. She requires special care and daily medication, so as long as she is living (a matter of months, I’m assuming) I am not traveling.