Safety is very important to Jim. As WAMS’ safety officer, he enforces rigid and precise rules, and keeps up with insurance and changing guidelines. One of the most important rules he stresses is, “Don’t go flying alone. Anything can happen. I enforce our rules by reminding the WAMS membership to be careful all the time,” Jim explained.

Since retirement in 2000, Jim spends much of his time in his workshop building remote control planes. This hobby is very flexible. “You can go from design to construction to flying, or you can buy kits that are ready to fly (RTF) or almost ready to fly (ARF).” Jim has several planes in his shop in various stages of completion. He has blue prints rolled up in a corner. His F-4U Corsair WW2 fighter plane is in pieces. A T-33 in a box is waiting to be started. The planes are made of light balsa wood. They are then covered in thin plastic called MonoKote applied with a hot iron. This hobby is also unique in the fact that “we can do it all,” Jim explained. “For instance, a baseball player does not make his own ball. A basketball player does not make his either, but we can go from design to operation. It could take months, but time is not a problem for me since I’m retired.”

National competition involves three categories — scale modeling, pylon racing and precision pattern flying. “Locally, WAMS has a Float Fly twice a year at Cartwright Park,” Jim said. “We also have an annual swap meet held at Hall Middle School. It’s like a reunion for two days, as well as a swap meet.” Classes are provided on different subjects, drawings and actions. Dues and swap meets help to finance the club operations and improvements to the facility. Swap meets are considered the life-blood of the club. “A child can experience flying using a ‘buddy box’ we bring. This is a controller for two. An instructor can take over at any time, and the child can start learning how to fly a model safely,” Jim explained.

The two-day class is for beginners. Charles’ goal for this class is to teach riders how to properly maneuver to be able to ride safely on the street alongside other vehicles. During classroom time, they are told about the basics and what will be expected of them once they get outside. “We read, we discuss and we watch a video,” Charles stated. The program is based on the strict guidelines of the Motorcycle Safety Foundation (MSF) based out of California. It’s a multi-sensory course that’s taught in sequential order. One skill builds on the next.”

Classroom time is broken down into sessions that deal with specific points. “All points are centered on safety,” Charles said. “Sessions include: riding gear, basic maneuvers, special riding situations, carrying a passenger and what can happen while riding under the influence.”

While grieving her mother’s death, 18-year-old Lacey said it also pushes her in her pageant endeavors. “I feel the pageant has kept me on my feet. It has occupied me, so I won’t dwell on my mom’s sickness and passing,” Lacey said. “My mother is in heaven now, but I know she is so proud of me and wouldn’t want me to give up on my dream to win Miss Teen Texas International 2012.”

To that end, Lacey must not only raise pageant participation funds, she must also refine her pageant skills to win over teen contestants from around the state. The full-time Northwood University student has learned to juggle her educational workload with the responsibilities of her pageant title.

“I have invested all hours of the day. Whether it’s at school informing my professors and fellow Knights about my pageant to help raise money for my expenses or going out during the week and weekends making appearances during community events,” Lacey said, “I’m determined to show that a small-town girl can make a difference, and how staying in school and making good grades can open up so many doors throughout your life.”

Involved in the pageant system since childhood, Lacey was Petite Miss Country Day 2005 and Little Miss Ellis County in 2006. Miss Teen Cedar Hill International is her most prestigious title to date.

“When I was selected Miss Teen Cedar Hill International 2012, I was tickled pink! I believe I was picked based on my community service, honors and academics, as well as my overall belief system — for what I stand for as a young woman,” Lacey said.

In 1974, Morris was telling a hunting story to a friend and co- worker who suggested Morris write down the story and submit it to a local magazine for publication.
“I didn’t even know you could do that,”

Morris replied. “But hey, if I could get paid for telling stories I was going to tell anyway, I’d give it a shot.”

That night, Morris wrote his story down on a Big Chief yellow pad and sent it to Outdoor Times. He made $40 on that first story, and a writer was born. He immediately wrote another story and that one was purchased, too. One year later, he became the editor of the magazine. The fourth article he wrote was passed on to and picked up by a national magazine that paid him $200. He was making real money then.

Morris retired in 2002 and about four or five years ago began writing a book. He started on his first book, Coming Up a Country Boy, Surviving the ’40s and ’50s, in 2005. However, half way through writing it, a classmate who was reading it and offering praise and suggestions, asked him about the food he kept mentioning. Morris credited his friends with the idea for the second book. “They said, ‘So much of your life revolved around getting together and eating these wonderful sounding meals. You should write the recipes in the book.’” Morris didn’t feel like the recipes fit in the flow of his story, so he took a break from the book he was writing and began the book that would actually end up being published first, A Country Boy’s Appetite – Following Life From One Meal to the Next.

In this book, Morris tells anecdotes and uses homespun humor to introduce the reader to his family and his life through specific times and home cooked foods. He then includes the recipes from each meal. “It’s not really a cookbook. When you grow up in the South, the food is just as important as the reason for gathering,” Morris explained. After that book was off and running, he finished the original book, and now it has been printed, published and ready for purchase.

But it was when Robert went back to Iraq to fly with a battalion of Marines that he expanded his résumé from flight “Doc” to tail gunner. “This time our primary job was to control the Iranian border to
keep smugglers from bringing weapons in for the enemy,” he explained. Robert was logging more than 16 hours a day, six days a week, “and I got very good, as a noncombatant, at using a 50-caliber machine gun at the rear of the large assault helicopter and hitting my target.”

Under the Geneva Convention Code, a medic is not to bring harm to another person. “But these are different times,” Robert said somberly. “We were constantly under fire, and the enemy was getting smarter and smarter about the shoulder-mounted rockets.” He went on to explain that he rode in the military’s largest helicopter, the MH-53. “It’s big and loud. There’s no hiding it.”

During Robert’s second helicopter crash, the pilots were able to maintain control, despite a hit to the tail. While he reportedly felt a numb sensation in his elbow, an injury that would later prove to be quite significant, Robert once again counted himself lucky and continued to volunteer.

George served in the Army in the late 1950s when the Cold War was “hot as the dickens.” He came from a family of meager means, and it was hard for many young men to find work because the draft was in effect, and employers knew it was likely they would lose their young hires for two years. Therefore, George decided to enlist to get his service out of the way. He spent three years in the Army, two of them in Germany, where he recalls seeing lines of American tanks on one side of the East German border facing lines of Russian tanks on the other side. He was soberly reminded of the air raid drills that he had practiced at home could very well be necessary. George never fired his weapon, but army experience did get him started on a long career when he returned home.

turned 18. She had met, courted and married a fellow named George Wrigley, who is no relation to the Wrigley Gum company. They were married in January of 1941, but Rocky’s mother will never forget the announcement that took George away. “We were in a movie theater in Tampa, Florida, on December 7, when the movie stopped and the lights came on,” Jacquelyn remembered. “An announcement said all military personnel must report for duty.”

George was a sergeant in the Army Air Corps. He was only given three to four days to prepare for his journey into WWII. “He was a bombardier,” Rocky explained. “He was the one who rode in the nose of the plane and released the bombs.”

“We weren’t even married a year,” Jacquelyn said, with tears in her eyes for her first love. “We were still considered newlyweds.”

George never returned. In mid-August, 1942, the B-17 bomber he was in was hit during a scheduled mission. Everyone was ordered to bail out. When George exited the hatch, he was slammed into the landing gear, which caused his parachute to tear. It never opened. George fell to his death in the desert below. Jacquelyn wouldn’t get word of his tragic passing for several days.

“It wasn’t but a month or two later that she met my dad,” Rocky said. She had moved to Tallahassee, and was still very much in the grieving process. Realizing the picture show she had gone to see was about the war, she quickly vacated the theater. She went to the drug store across the street to get a Coke. “She was sitting there when my dad and his friends came in,” Rocky shared, retelling it the same way his mother had told him. “Guy walked boldly over to her and said, ‘You look as pitiful as a dying calf in a snow storm.’”

Among the many veterans’ graves that will bear flags on Memorial Day are Lt. Frank Benson, James P. Lumpkin, Arthur D. McKinney, Jr., Lt. Alfred Marion Gibson and Dana’s relative, Zane Christie. Lt. Benson was not killed in action but died like many wartime veterans of disease (pneumonia) in 1917, at age 25, while in training. James P. Lumpkin died at age 30 in France on Armistice Day 1918. Pilot “Sonny” McKinney was killed in 1945 at age 24 while piloting his plane, which was hit by enemy ack- ack (anti-aircraft fire). He hit his target but went down in water off Formosa (Taiwan). His body was not recovered. Another pilot whose remains were not recovered was Lt. Gibson, who at age 28, died piloting his F-86 when it exploded and crashed into the Mediterranean Sea off the shores of Libya. Staff Sgt. Christie was killed at age 22 in Vietnam in 1970.

As they fell in love again, welcomed children, developed careers and settled into their home, destiny carefully and patiently provided them with a new passion. Arriving nearly three years ago, it came with a voice — Heather’s voice — and a business challenge — Cisco’s challenge. It brought the world as a stage, and Cisco was the first to see or, actually, hear it. “Heather sang for me one time, and I thought, Wow, this is what we need to be doing!” he said. “She has a message, a special talent and the ability to touch people.” With daughters in tow, Heather and Cisco set about creating the Heather Roberts “sound.” Today, with a solid fan base and growing popularity, the Heather Roberts Band is in demand at festivals, dance halls and events. Two months ago at the Texas Regional Radio Music Association Awards Show, Heather won New Female Vocalist of the Year. Heather is writing and performing her own songs, as well as songs that she and Cisco create together. She works with a publisher, an impressive list of sponsors and maintains a super-busy schedule.

Jack collaborated with author Jerry Ahern to create the knife mentioned in The Survivalist books. Its handle has a twist top so its owner can store things inside. Jack may invest 70 or 80 hours in such a knife handle, starting by cutting a steel bar, hollowing it with a lathe and finally engraving the butt cap with oak leaves and flowers and embedding a decorative stone. He taught himself to carve, too, and made his first ivory knife handle in 1979. Sometimes, Jack carves precious resources — including jade, mother-of-pearl, walnut, black birch, ebony, hardwood from the Circassian area of the Caucasus  mountains in Spain, Alaskan mastadon tusks, legally- traded ivory and local deer horns — into handles. The craftsman does his work in the studio behind his forge, which he bought in 1981 when it was already 100 years old.

Melting metal is one of many skills Jack taught himself along the way. Achieving perfection in each and every detail was a process of discovery in the privacy of his shop. Jack taught himself how to make a fancy, medieval-looking, black-colored guard for a steel sword