What was your childhood like?
I was born in 1933 in Paris, Texas. My mother died when I was 10 years old. She was teaching piano when I was in utero, so it was natural that I was always in music. It was in my DNA. I was in high school band and choir. The music director asked me if I would consider playing the bassoon. I am sure it was because I had studied music all my life. All I really had to do was master the instrument. One of the most interesting events occurred in my junior and senior year; I was the first chair bassoonist for the Texas High School State Orchestra. I was offered six scholarships my junior year. Bassoonists were few in those days. I played bassoon for seven years, including my time in the Paris Community Band. The City of Paris owned two pre-World War II Heckel bassoons, the finest bassoon you can find, and one of those was mine as long as I was in Paris. Paris was a great cotton town back in the late 1800s. There was a lot of wealth from cotton, like there is from oil in many places. The first Steinway piano store outside of New York was in Paris, Texas. In the 1800s they had a grand opera. Paris Junior College was one of the first junior colleges in the state.
Did you take a scholarship?
I didn’t follow up on any of them, because my dad didn’t want me to leave home. I graduated from Paris Junior College, and my junior year I went to the University of Texas. I had to leave the Heckel bassoon in Paris, Texas. A good instrument can improve your playing. I had to rent a bassoon at UT. It was such a struggle, and I began to dislike it. So I switched to voice.
How did you become involved with The Salvation Army?
My father took me to the market square in Paris, Texas when I was about six years old. There were these people in black, long dresses with big black bonnets on their heads. The men wore black suits. I said, “Daddy, who is that?” His answer I remember to this day, “Honey, that’s The Salvation Army, and they do good for people.” So 30 years ago, when Captains Bonnie and John Montgomery came to Conroe to open The Salvation Army Corps and a homeless shelter, I said to Captain Montgomery that my daddy told me The Salvation Army helped people, and anything I could do, call me. The next week, she called. I am a lifetime council member of The Salvation Army. This is my 30th year of serving on the council.
And you still travel?
What are your proudest achievements?
Tell us about your work with Shaklee.
You mentioned losing your mother at an early age. How did that affect your life?
My mother was in the hospital nine months before she died, so she left the home when I was 9. It was kind of downhill for me. That was a long time ago, but it’s something you never forget. I had to go through a lot of prayer and counseling to see that God allowed this in my life—and if he allowed it, I need to look to Him and figure out what it is He wants me to do. It’s the only way I have been able to go from one step to the next. Everybody has negative stuff in their lives, but how do you take a minus and turn it into a plus? I have to get up every day and thank the Lord for a marvelous day.
My brother Charles, who was seven years older, just died a year ago. He told me my mother had instructed my father to marry the RN who had taken care of her during her long illness. So the RN became my stepmother a year after my mother’s death. Poor thing, she didn’t know what she was getting into, except she loved my mother and father. That event gave me a wonderful large family of aunts, uncles, and cousins by the dozens. We still reunion every year.
Was there a crystallizing experience in your life?
And finally I found Psalms 50. It says—this is Alice’s translation—“Thanksgiving is the sacrifice that honors me, and I will save all who obey. Call upon Me in the day of trouble, and I shall rescue you.” I said I will do whatever comes my way from now on with thanksgiving. An attitude of gratitude works.
On my 85th birthday I am thinking of putting an ad in the paper that says, “If this were an obituary and you would come to my last celebration service, this is your invitation to join me alive and well at a party that I can also enjoy.”