Recipes for Living Teri Dinham

For two years I have been trying to find an opening in my schedule so that we could begin my life story. My husband, Herb, and I have given priority to following our children's activities which has kept us going at a fast pace.

Matthew, our youngest, graduated from Murray high school in the spring of 2000. He excelled as a pitcher in baseball, lettering all four years. He played on the junior high team and when he was in eighth grade was called up to pitch for the varsity. He pitched or played first base all four years. He tied the single season record with 126 strikeouts, and broke the single season record with nine wins. Twice he was on the second All-Conference team, one time made All Conference Honorable Mention, two years All Area, and earned the Iowa Newspaper Association Honorable Mention for All-State.

His six-foot-five-inches served him well on the basketball court. He lettered three years. He would have preferred to be a point guard while the coach, Jerry Brown, saw the height advantage for his position under the basket. He dressed for varsity all four years of high school, and made Honorable Mention for All-Conference and All-Area.

There was considerable publicity given when Jerry Brown received recognition for his 500th win. Herb and Matthew were both interviewed by a reporter from the Des Moines Register because Herb was in the first class to be coached by Jerry when he took that position in Murray. As in our case, many of the boys presently on the team are sons of fathers Jerry has coached.

Laurie, our middle child, and Matthew were involved in the same production of the Show Choir’s “Excalibur." Matthew reluctantly gave in to my insistence that he try out for it. He deliberately tried to do his worst and nearly died when he saw his name among those who had been accepted. He discovered, during the year that he was involved, that he liked it well enough to try out again the following year.

Laurie, who says she was adopted but wasn't, was a senior when Matt was a freshman. She, too, was very active in school. She played softball, volleyball, and basketball for one year. She was a football and basketball cheerleader, was in the National Honor Society, Thespians, FHA (Future Homemakers of America), French Club, Business Horizons (at Drake University), Little All State Band, and had the lead female role in Murray's production of "Bye Bye Birdie." Laurie and Matt were elected to Homecoming Court in their senior years.

Laurie's class was academically exceptional. The grade point difference between the top 12 students were fractions of a percent. This made for a very competitive attitude that expanded into all areas and made better students all around. Laurie still took on outside jobs, either part-or full-time ever since she was a sophomore. She has worked in fast food restaurants, grocery stores, and a meat packing plant, insurance companies, in the accounting office at Drake, and an internship at Agricredit services to further her education. After high school graduation Laurie attended SWCC (Southwestern Community College), Drake, and will graduate from Simpson with a BA in Economics in December 2001.

Diane's nature led her more into drama and music than sports. She had the height for a basketball player but we discovered when she was in fifth grade that she had a rare kidney disease, which deprived her of the necessary stamina. She did play one year in order to earn a letter jacket and in earlier years played softball, which didn’t interest her as she got older.

Diane's high school activities were French Club for which she was vice president choir band, Little All State, FHA, and she was a mentor for kids. She was involved in Thespian's and enjoyed speech, but her greatest love was playing her saxophone. This opened the opportunity for her to travel extensively. She auditioned for and was accepted into the Southwest Iowa Honor Marching Band. They marched at the Cotton Bowl in Texas and the Fiesta Bowl in Arizona. Iowa Ambassadors is a band in which she played and traveled to Europe. They performed in 12 countries within 20 days. She enjoyed it so much that she would like to go back to visit where they played. Adding to the experience was the coincidence of our having a foreign exchange student from Germany. He left from Chicago the same day as the band. His parents met Diane and a friend in Germany and they were together for a day. It was a true cultural exchange. While he was here, I gave him piano lessons, as I also did for an exchange student from Japan.

All of this illustrates my opening remark regarding our schedule. With sports, music, and other school events, our lives have been full just following our children's activities.

The genes of our family’s musical talents go back at least as far as my grandparents. Grandmother Callison was a church organist; Dad and Mom both liked to sing; brother Randy Callison, sister Cindy Schaff, and I all took piano as well as instrumental lessons. As is not always the case, Dad was our biggest supporter when it came to practicing. We could practice all hours of the day and night. He enjoyed all music, but his favorite song was the "Hallelujah Chorus." He especially enjoyed it when Cindy and I began doing it as an organ and piano duet. We made a tape for his funeral and our brother Randy sang it with a men’s quartet.

I began taking piano lessons at age four, and through the years have been challenged to expand to other instruments. I currently can play piano, organ, clarinet, and flute. For about 10 years family members had great fun having jam sessions. I am not a fan of country music but that is what they liked, so I played country music.

At family reunions, Herb’s uncle, Harold McNeal, has brought various instruments to see if I could play them- a mandolin, a keyboard, a steel, a banjo, the last of which was the only one I was unable to play within a short time. Harold is still upset with me that I don’t play in a band. I keep telling him I don't have time. Harold has won the admiration of many people throughout the area for persistence after a stroke. He has made good use of the family trait of being strongwilled.

Even though the musical talent is spread throughout our family, I am the only one who uses it on a regular basis as a second income. I am a church organist, play at weddings, funerals, and accompany elementary, junior high, and high school kids at contests. I presently have just one piano student.

Occasionally I can con Cindy into playing special numbers with me for church. She and I started playing piano/organ duets in high school. Doing a special number for church when I was in junior high proved to be a spring board. Some high school kids heard me and told the music instructor, who gave me the opportunity to begin accompanying junior high and high school choirs when I was in seventh grade. I started playing for weddings when I was 15, and playing regularly for church at 16.

I have lived most of my life in Clarke County. I was born in the Clarke County Hospital, and we lived for a short time on the Simpson campus while Dad attended college. Dad was a hired hand for Lester and Bonita Daniels, and that is where he met my mom. Lester and Bonita were my mom’s great-aunt and -uncle. They were like our grandparents.

My brother, Randy, and sister, Cindy, are both younger than I. When Mom brought Cindy home for the first time, I hid behind the curtains and came out to say, "Good! We can get rid of Randy now." There are good memories from the days we were growing up. Cindy liked to tag around after Randy, who didn't think that was so cool. There was a procedure for when we had loose teeth. Dad offered to take care of them with a string tied around the tooth and to the door knob. It didn't work well for Cindy. Everything was in place and the string broke.

Dad always took two weeks for vacation in July. This worked very well because Mom's birthday is July 24, Randy's one week later, July 31, so it was a celebration. Our family, along with Dale and Billie Burgus, or my uncle George and his wife JoAnne, flipped a coin to see where we would go. The result was that by the time I was 16 I had been in 38 states, Canada and Mexico. We seemed to have a particular interest in caves.

Probably the most memorable trip was to the west coast when one of the cars broke down and we spent the week camping on a beach. Another year, we went to Washington state, where Mother had grown up in Tacoma. Randy had taken a friend that year. For part of our entertainment for one 12-hour period, someone came up with the idea of riding ferries. We loaded the station wagon with 15 people, and drove into Canada. The first and second ferry rides were o.k., but by the time of the third ride, the ferry was sold out. We were told that there would be a possibility of waiting in line to see if a spot would open up. It turned out that we were the last car on the ferry. By that time the weather had started getting bad. The boys were having a grand old time running around on the deck. ..Our aunt got seasick. ..We didn't get back to the campground until 12:30 that night, but all in all, it made for an extraordinary experience.

Herb also grew up in Murray and we knew one another throughout our school years. At the time we were in junior high, the community had dances in the Methodist Church. Those and the theater were the activities we kids indulged in. In 1968, the theater burned so our primary source of entertainment was the dances. That was how Herb and I became acquainted.

We didn't date until I was a senior in high school and he a sophomore at SWCC. We had been going out as friends, decided to try a date, and it progressed after that. I graduated in May 1973. We had a long distance courtship because Herb worked for a pipeline company in Carrollton, Missouri. I enrolled in nurse's training but developed a problem that may have been mono. I slept all the time. I had to give up my training at the time because Mom was going to have eye surgery. A doctor attending her birth dropped an instrument in her eye, which caused her to have problems off and on throughout her life.

Herb and I were married on June 8, 1974. I went job hunting in Des Moines and got a job at Equitable of Iowa. Herb decided he preferred to work in Iowa so he found a job in Des Moines, also. We lived in a trailer court in Ankeny, continuing there until March 1977 when we purchased a house in Murray. It was not immediately available, so we lived for a short time with my parents. We lived in that house in Murray for 18 years, then purchased Herb's family farm from his sister. That is where we are currently living, and have lived there for almost six years.

Diane was born September 14, 1975. I quit work to take care of her and didn't work outside the home again until Matthew was four. At that time he could be enrolled in pre-school in the first class that was ever offered in Murray. Herb has worked nights most of the time that we have been married, so we have not had to depend on outside baby-sitters with the exception, of course, of grandmothers.

After the kids were older, I took a job at SIMCO in Osceola. My sister, Cindy, was my superior, which wasn't in all cases the best arrangement. Most of the time it worked out well. I was there for three years and then at VanDusen Airport Services in Des Moines. That company owned the fuel, serviced planes, and sold parts to the airport. They also accommodated entertainers who flew in for a performance and sometimes needed special services. The company had put in a new computer system. They had 10-inch spreadsheets of names of people who needed an explanation of the statements they had begun receiving. That was my assignment. One day short of the three-month probationary period, they decided they had too many people and cut my job.

For awhile I stayed home, did day care, and gave piano lessons. I became a temporary part-time librarian, which I realized Mom would love to do. So now she is a librarian and I consider that I got my mom a job. I quit day care after Laurie was out of junior high but I needed to find work, so I applied to a "temp" service in Des Moines. In that role I was hired by Drake University. After about three weeks of working there, I was offered a full time position. The flood of 1993 altered plans. It came the day before I was supposed to be hired for full time employment, and I wasn’t able to attain that status until two weeks after the flood.

I have been at Drake in different positions ever since 1993. I have been secretary in accounting, half-time secretary to the vice president of business and finance, with the other half spent in the grants office. When the lady who was doing grant applications retired, they combined grant applications and grant accounting into one position, and I now work totally for the grants office.

I have served on numerous committees over the last three years at Drake-an elected position on the Staff Suggestion and Evaluation Committee, which led to my being on the Vice President's Search Committee, and the Administrative Staff Advisory Group, which is involved in purchasing new software for the university.

Additionally, I take classes. I am a little late in starting because I waited to start my college education until the kids were out of high school. My first choice for a major was Vocal Music, but it requires that you audition a song in a foreign language, which I don’t know. Jenny Schaff is giving me vocal lessons so I can learn, but because of that obstacle, am enrolled as an Information Systems major which will be lucrative. I currently have 12 credit hours toward the degree requirement of 120, so it will be awhile.

Commuting requires that I leave home each morning at 6:10 a.m. Both Cindy and I need to report for work at 7:30. She works in West Des Moines and rides with me. Her week consists of four 10-hour days. She gets off at 6:00p.m. so the earliest we get home is 7:00. Matt now rides to work with me everyday for his job at Principal. For awhile Diane also rode to work with us. She now works full time for Principal in Des Moines. Along with that she attends classes at William Penn college in West Des Moines and is on the Dean's list. She will graduate in July 2004, with a degree in business management.

I became the church organist for the Osceola United Methodist Church in October 1997. For the Christmas concert of 2000, I directed the community choir. Inclement weather prevented Jenny from carrying out her intention to do that. With Melanie Eddy, I also co-directed the youth Christmas program. I have been given the job as chief recruiter, and we have hired Jenny aschoir director, Lisa Wallace as women’s choir director, and Vicki Davis as interim children's choir director. As Jim, the pastor, discovers something else I could do, he assigns it to me. I was past director of Music Connection. Cindy and I have been song leaders during worship, but I realized doing that along with playing the organ was too much. I was the one who initiated the video taping of all the services and was so glad to find Jeremy Davis and Ryan Seeberger to take over that project. I know nothing about camcorders. I only know the result I want. What I have in mind is that these video tapes will be available to people who can't attend church, as are the audio tapes. When we began, I had no idea how this project would expand.

All the above isn't a total list of what I do. I have a huge garden that includes flowers as well as vegetables. When we moved into our house, I learned to stain woodwork and still do that along with trying to keep up with repairs, which homeowners know is constant. Herb and I participated in the community theater production of "Lil Abner." It was the first play we had taken part in since high school and we enjoyed it a lot. I am an avid reader, although presently my selection is confined pretty much to class books. I cross stitch and crochet. I love shopping! A friend suggested that the two us become professional shoppers and perhaps that idea can sit on a back burner until some of my other activities are taken care of I don’t expect ever to run out of things that interest me. I have achieved a lot of goals in my lifetime, but after writing this article, I realize there are still many more that I still would like to achieve.