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i was born and raised in froglevel , a
part of the mining town of coalwood wva. I went to school through the first nine grades at coalwood elementary. i tell people that hadley was always a writer, as in the second grade mrs brown asked everyone to write down what they had done over the summer. i think i put something like " i stubbed my toe on the railroad tie and it bled and i came back to school" hadley hickam wrote a WHOLE page on his summer. should have known then ! also, for years he kept a running story about soldiers or indians or something, and had a stack of papers in his desk drawer that a show dog couldn't jump over. then he threw them, and the story they contained, away for some reason! i always remember 7th grade because of science class and we got to use the library- i read 70 books that year .YEA! also geography became important-still love maps. ninth grade was mr. likens and algebra "telling us to put that in our pipe and smoke it" anytime he gave us a new theory to learn. mrs likens, home room teacher and the cause of me being the king of something and naomi ,(gasp-the mine superintendant's daughter,) was the queen. all i remember was i had holes in the bottom of my shoes and trying to hide them when we had to kneel down and be crowned , with our backs facing the audience from the stage at coalwood elem. then after that, when i was called to the principal's office someone had mr likens(?) give me a pair of brown and white saddle shoes, then i was king!!!! mr likens was also the principal and husband to mrs likens- powerful people they were, influenced i expect all of us more than we will ever know.lord,bless them forever! next was big creek high school and the only friendly thing i could identify was a big maple tree outside the building on the first day over at war, wva. happy to say that i met quentin the first day of classes 'cause he was left handed and doris ploss, aka dorothy plunk ,would not give him the left side of the desk, which was right up in the teachers face on the front row, so Q was sent to the back of the room to sit ,on the left side , beside of jimmie o'dell. yea! i think Q helped me get through that biology class as much as mr mams the teacher did. Q would come to coalwood and we would dip stuff out of the swamps, pools, ditches, creek, etc and learned biology by living it. by this time it was starting to get fall and then them russians had to go beat us americans and put that sputnik in space running over our heads and then hadley hickam gets this idea to build rockets. oh boy, then the fun began. gentlemen, start your nozzles!! we were off on the adventure of our lives and did not even know it ! and after all is said and done-we are still friends to a fault, which is what got us started in the first place. nice huh? in high school we did the sports thing , clubs, thespians - i have an outstanding thespian award too - as does roy lee cooke. the last six weeks of school at big creek, i had my papers for wva university to study civil eng. but to my surprise i could not go to college - no money. boy, you talk about being depressed, i was! i think i failed every test from then on out on purpose. i had thought that if you do good, be nice, study hard, stay out of trouble, etc., that you got to go to college. not! i signed up for the us air force and that made the difference in my life . i got to see the world, and had learned through our process of growing up and building a successful rocket, and the "building of a body of knowledge", that with the fire in my gut to get a college education, i finally did. after nine years, on june 10, 1969. i graduated from colo state univ in ft collins ,colo. then i hired on to state farm ins., as an adjuster for bodily injury claims, in denver,colo, and in 1973 became a state farm agent. then in 1977 i was fortunate to be allowed to move back to south west virginia, close to my roots. and as the saying goes - i'm proud to be here! and that's the truth. E-mail Jimmy O'dell at: jimodellcarroll@webtv.net |
Jimmy O'dell Carroll