Calhoun High School offered new opportunities for growth.

The cast of "Our Town" at Calhoun High
School. It was a great bunch of kids. 

Teaching at Calhoun High School was different from my experience in Pleasanton. 

For one thing, I did not know as many people in Port Lavaca like I knew my friends and neighbors in Pleasanton. 

Principal Fitz dropped in on a Texas history class one day to observe, and students were reciting Texas poems they had found in research. One student read a poem about a pig, and the principal could not control his laughter; he had to leave.

Since I had directed Thornton Wilder's "Our Town" in Pleasanton, students asked me to do it again at Calhoun. The production was a success, but probably not as good as the Pleasanton version.

Dr. DeWitt C. Reddick

When summer rolled around I decided I needed to know more about advising so I traveled to Austin to meet with Dr. DeWitt C. Reddick, the dean of the journalism department.  

We discussed options and he told me about a two-week workshop at UT. He said I could register, so I did and worked with Reddick and some of Texas's finest high school journalism teachers. 

That changed my life as I returned refreshed and encouraged to Port Lavaca, and The Sandcrab won the Award of Distinguished Merit, the highest award in Texas high school journalism from the University Interscholastic League, the next year. 

Then, it was onward and upward again as I moved on the University of Texas in Austin to work toward a master's degree.