STICKY DOORKNOBS

Team building: Lee coach James Morton gives band practice field, then drives to Odessa to support Lee musicians at UIL contest

For Midland Lee football fans, a lasting image of James Morton occurred October 2 in Amarilllo's Dick Bivins Stadium following a Rebels' win over Tascosa. There Morton was, running off the field in the middle of a pack of his players, hand in hand with his young daughter. Then there's a lasting story of the first-year coach, the one he tells about how his son, a first grader, hands out a Player of the Week award after every game, presenting the lucky Lee team member with a handmade silver star and a brief speech about how the chosen player performed well enough to receive the honor -- but won't be eligible again unless he continues to play hard.

The lasting impression of James Morton is the emphasis he places on creating a family feeling in the school's football program. But the family emphasis Morton fosters extends beyond his wife and kids, and has reached into other programs at the school as well.

I imagine good relationships between football coaches and band directors are not rare things. I would think they even happen more often than not. Lee band director Randy Storie said former head football coach Randy Quisenberry loved the band, even awarding them a game ball after one hard-fought win. Earl Miller once got on the band buses to thank them following a game. Spike Dykes referred to the Rebel band as "My band."

While the relationship between Morton and the Lee band may not be unique, some impressive things have happened this football season nonetheless. Taking nothing away from Quiz, Spike, Earl or others who have been and should be commended for keeping open those lines of communications between extracurricular programs, Morton seems to have gone a step further this year.

In the days and weeks leading up to the band's First Division performance at the October 17 UIL competition at Ratliff Stadium in Odessa, Morton gave the band the football team's practice field to use. The lines on the field located just off Tarleton Street are cut better and the spacing more precise than on the makeshift field the band normally uses.

Morton also gave the band a pep talk the week of their UIL performance, but he didn't stop there: On what is arguably the biggest day of the year for any high school band musician, Morton drove to Odessa to watch Lee perform at contest.

Storie has nothing but kind words for the school's new coach, who will guide the team into the first round of the 5A state playoffs tonight against El Paso Coronado (7 p.m. at Grande Stadium).

The football coach even directed the band during a pep rally, something Morton told me made him more nervous than just about anything else this year. A former baritone player in junior high, Morton was also greeted at 6:30 the morning of the Lee-Permian game by the entire band playing the fight song in his front yard, a tradition carried out for years by Storie's band. Hey, some years it works. Some years it doesn't.

Morton says good relations between the adult leaders of different programs at a school fosters a better atmosphere at football games and credited Storie for giving him "instant credibility with his kids" one day when the director talked up the new coach and his support of the band.

"Some people say the game is just about football, or band, or other things," Morton told me this week, "but to me that's why I love working with kids: I like for everybody to feel a part of the cause, and I like for everybody to work together for the same cause, and that's what's best for Robert E. Lee High School."

As for giving the band the football practice field, Morton says its not his field, or the football team's but the school's.

"For all the work the band's done, that's the least I could do," Morton said.

RebelNation has long marketed itself as a "FamiLee," a brand that this year seems to be working especially well.

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Photo: Marching Band Director Paul Meiste directs the Lee band at Amarillo's Dick Bivins Stadium, Oct. 2. A fixture of the Lee band is its loud and repeated playing of 'Dixie' while the opposing team has the ball and is driving toward a score, making it difficult for the offense to hear the quarterback calling signals.

Morning sky in Midland

How can Friday the 13th be considered unlucky if it starts out like this?

'Well excuse me, but I think you've got my chair'

Have a seat.

Andrews Hwy. and Cuthbert Thursday morning.

Rusk Elementary's Veteran's Program: When public education works best

 I have had the good fortune of attending most of Rusk Elementary School's Veteran's Programs over the last 12 years. Not only is the event moving and impacting on veterans and civilians alike, it is also a shining example of public education at its finest.

Thanks to former P.E. instructor Sharon Morgan, who created the event back in the mid-90s (and who returns to Midland every year to help pull it off yet again), current music teacher Lanese Davidson and the entire faculty and staff at the westside Midland school, children who attend this campus are learning something that wouldn't have been included as part of the classroom curriculum. The good people at Rusk took the character traits set forth in Dr. Patty Smith's Character Education Program and applied each and every one of them to showing just how much veterans are loved and appreciated every year during this touching tribute. For many of the children it is quite simply the highlight of the entire school year. The kids feel so strongly about the program because they are being taught that what they are doing by honoring veterans is important -- and necessary. The kids take it to heart and it sticks with them long after they no longer call themselves elementary students.

The kids are not the only ones affected so strongly: It is a spectacle to behold these veterans as they watch misty eyed while first thru sixth graders at the school give them the credit they so richly deserve.

One of the most memorable photographs I ever took is of a first-grade boy handing my late father a folded American flag. The look on dad's face cannot be described. That flag stood in his den until the day he died. It was more than a material gift. It was a symbol of today's children, the warmth they extend to the veterans every year, and that the job they did overseas still means something to today's generation.

There are a lot of things right about public education -- extracurricular programs that teach children to color outside the lines, teachers who work behind the scenes so often to help a student understand something she might not otherwise get, or foreign language teachers who plan for years for trips overseas in an out-of-classroom experience their students are likely to never forget. The Rusk Elementary School program is the finest example of above and beyond in public schools I have ever witnessed both personally and from a distance. And I feel fairly certain that opinion would be shared by more than just a handful of veterans who are feeling better today because of the actions, love and appreciation of Rusk students and teachers.

View a slide show from Tuesday's 12th Annual Rusk Veteran's Program at the Commemorative Air Force Museum hangar.

Watch Congressman Mike Conaway's words about his visit to Fort Hood following last week's shooting that killed 13 soldiers.

A photo not soon forgotten

The above photo itself, which has taken on a viral life all its own outside the pages of National Geographic Magazine, is intriguing and sad, especially after studying the faces of the chimpanzees behind the fence. But read this for the full story of Dorothy and the grieving onlookers for the maximum impact.

(Photo by Monica Szczupider, National Geographic Magazine.)

Laura Bush helps put new face on Bynum School

Save for the occasional times when Laura Bush would swoop into Midland undetected by the masses for a private visit with mom (protected by swarms of Black Yukon driving, wrist-talking secret service guys), and those two famous appearances standing by her president-husband's side on their way to and from Washington, the former First Lady really never made it a habit of visiting her hometown during the Bush family's 8-year residency in the people's house. Not publicly at least.

After Tuesday night's presentation benefiting the Bynum School, we now see what we have been missing. Funny, endearing and warm, the former First Lady held the crowd of 750 at the Midland Center in the palm of her hand from the moment she first appeared onstage. Her words were brief, but in giving the school's supporters updates on the family -- her former president-father-in-law's most recent skydiving adventure and mother-in-law Barbara's recent heart surgery -- she made everyone feel a part of her family.

While we have been less in her absence, we can now instead turn our appreciation to the fact that Laura Bush did make her public return to Midland and for that we are now better and we can only hope there will be more public visits to come. After all, how many times do you get to say you (and 750 others) went to dinner with a First Lady?

Her stories of George H.W. Bush skydiving over Kennebunkport and Bush 41's joke about the new pig valve in Barbara's heart ("She's been craving corn") were laugh out loud funny and proof of Mrs. Bush's skill with an audience and a punchline. Working on her memoirs, Mrs. Bush said the title of her book will be "Former Shy Librarian Tells All." Watch Laura Bush's speech at the Bynum School Fundraiser Tuesday.

Her visit was no doubt friend helping friend; Midlander's Don and Suzie Evans long depended on the school for the education of their daughter with special needs.

As noted on the Facebook page of fellow Midland blogger Cindi Mladenka, who also once turned to the school for her own late daughter's education, Mrs. Bush helped put a new face on Bynum wth her appearance Tuesday night. The school, its directors, board members and parents have to be floating today because of the success of the event last night.

Laura' Bush's public persona has always been elegant and poised. She served the country well and was a great representative of Midland. She "done us proud" and it was good to have her back home.

Midland artist Ricky Chou hits the big time

If you've dropped by here with any sort of semi-regularity, you might have, on occasion, read the story of Ricky Chou, who immigrated to America over 40 years ago from his home in Canton, China. Most people no doubt know Ricky from his work at H-E-B where he goes about his workdays in carefree fashion making tortillas. By night, Ricky's passion is his brush. He paints every evening when not working. His work has hung in the Midland Community Theater and the McCormick Gallery at the Allison Fine Arts Building on the Midland College campus. He is a humble man and doesn't even like his picture to be taken.

Understandably, that all changed earlier this week when Chou was visited by Bob Phillips and a production crew from Texas Country Reporter. Phillips had been alerted to Chou's story by someone at Midland College who sent an article to the show's creative staff.

Ricky said Phillips and his producers took shots of him at his tortilla station at H-E-B and then at his home where his studio is located. Ricky was impressed with the professionalism of the crew and he described Phillips as quiet and nice.

The crew was unable to tell Ricky exactly when his story would air, but he was left with the impression that it would be within a few weeks.

Texas Country Reporter currently airs in Midland-Odessa on Sundays at 10:30 p.m. on Newswest 9.

At least the witch wasn't in a school zone

Dropped call on W. Michigan Ave in Midland.

Bullock Museum to host exhibit about Texas high school football

The Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum in Austin will turn its attention to Texas high school football with a 10,000 square foot temporary exhibit from July-December 2011. Texas author Joe Nick Patoski, who has written biographies of Willie Nelson, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Selena, and who calls himself a voracious student of the game, has been appointed temporary curator of "Texas High School Football: More Than The Game."

Patoski says his objective with the exhibit will be to focus on the overall picture and how the event of high school football affects entire communities. The exhibit will also involve the many varied aspects that supplement the big games: bands, cheerleaders, drill teams, mascots, even mums and fans.

"High school football is our richest tradition in Texas," Patoski said. "It is our deepest community binder, transcending race, religion and class. Everybody puts aside their differences on Friday nights. You cannot grow up in Texas and ignore football."

Patoski is collecting memorabilia, archives and stories from throughout the state in preparation for the exhibit, and said he hopes to include the Little Southwest Conference (the former District 4-5A) to the Rio Grande Valley and even down to the six-man game. Together, such artifacts and mementos of the sport work together to create a bigger pastiche of who we are as gauged through our passion for the national pastime of Texas.

"All the stories that I am hearing speak to me of why Texas high school football is like no other kind. No one else does it like we do it," Patoski said of the Texas gridiron experience.

Patoski attended this year's Odessa High win over rival Permian, a game he called "big time football like nothing else." His research has also taken him to the DFW metroplex where he watched Euless Trinity play Allen and marveled at Allen's band: 690 members strong. Patoski said at that game, when the bands, the teams, cheerleaders and drill teams were added together, over 1,000 students were participating.

The wider appeal of the exhibit will come when the other extra-curriculars are included; supplemental entertainment and students that work together to make our Friday nights a must-experience phenomenon.

"From Gussie Nell Davis and the Kilgore Rangerettes on, we invented the business (of dance)," Patoski said. "There are so many dance squads that perform like the Rangerettes. And there is a photographer right now shooting nothing but pictures of mums. No one does mums for homecoming like we do in Texas."

Although likely not a part of the official exhibit, Patoski related a story of how one high school official broke off an interview because it was time for him to "patrol under the stands," where high school lovers commonly congregate during the game. Even high school love is ingrained in students at the Friday night football experience.

Patoski, a Fort Worth native who spent years chronicling the interesting and unique in the Lone Star State for Texas Monthly, is an avid hiker and lover of the Big Bend region and West Texas. He currently lives in the Hill Country and is also working on his next book, which he describes as a cultural history of the Dallas Cowboys. The book is due out in the fall of 2011.

To suggest rare or unique items for consideration in "Texas High School Football: More Than The Game," drop an email to footballexhibit@thestoryoftexas.com.

Photos: Cedric Benson would be a "strong candidate" for inclusion in the Texas High School foobtall exhibit for his helping to lead Midland Lee to three consecutive state titles in 1998-2000, while the Odessa Permian Panthers dynasties, including the team that led to Buzz Bissinger's N.Y. Times Bestseller, "Friday NIht Lights," would be a definite part of the exhibit, according to Patoski.

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Such a humiliating loss sorta takes the excitement out of that old rallying cry, "Bring on Kansas, baby!"