Linda John Lewis Regan

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Has it really been fifty years since I graduated from El Dorado High School? It does not seem like it. I still giggle when I read anything written by James Thurber; I still love Grapette soda when I can find it; and, I still love high school football. 
 
My family moved to El Dorado when I was four years old, from my father’s hometown of Batesville, Mississippi, and I lived in El Dorado until I went to college in the fall of 1961. After that fall, I only returned for the next three summers and holidays. In the spring of 1965 I was graduated from Hendrix College with a BA degree, majoring in History and Political Science and taking as many hours in French and art as I could. That summer, my father accepted a job transfer, and my parents and sister moved to New Orleans. I came to Little Rock and stayed with the mother of a college girlfriend until I found a job and a roommate. Tulane University had accepted me for their graduate program in history and I had wanted to research and write about early French history in Louisiana. However, my sister was entering college at Centenary in Shreveport, and I could not continue in school at that time.

I had wanted to earn a master’s degree and teach at the high school level, so I had not taken any education hours in college, and I was not certified to teach in elementary school. I was still very interested in writing so, with the encouragement of a good friend who had been active in journalism at Hendrix, I interviewed with The Pine Bluff Commercial and The Arkansas Gazette and received a job offer from the managing editor of each newspaper. I accepted the job with The Arkansas Gazette. I worked as a beginning reporter on the State Desk and supplemented my meager paycheck by writing free-lance human interest stories for the Sunday magazine section. I also earned extra money by working late on Friday nights in the fall for Orville Henry, the noted sports editor, who let me take telephone reports of high school football games around the state. It was a great way to keep up with the teams in all the different divisions.

I shared an apartment with a young woman who was working and studying at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. For a while, she dated an old friend of mine from El Dorado and Hendrix, Albert Hanna. One night, my roommate and Albert arranged a blind date for me, to double-date with them. The young man and I later confessed to each other that neither of us had wanted to go on that date. The young man was John Rayborn Regan. He was born in Prescott and was graduated from Malvern high School and the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. After serving in Korea as an Army lieutenant, he came to Little Rock, where he was an accountant with the local office of Peat, Marwick, Mitchell and Company, Certified Public Accountants, along with Richard Mann.

Within a year, John and I were married at First Presbyterian Church in Little Rock. My parents and sister came from New Orleans. Their minister there, Dr. Walter Langtry, had been their minister in Batesville, Mississippi, and he had baptized me. I was thrilled when Dr. Langtry agreed to come to Little Rock to perform our wedding ceremony. He returned about five years later to baptize our first child, Laura Elizabeth Regan. Four years later, our son Taylor Ferrand Regan was born, and our family was complete. I became a stay-at-home mother and spent the next two decades chauffeuring my children to dance, art, and piano classes, swim practices and meets, and school field trips. I became, at various times, a Brownie and Girl Scout leader, a Sunday School teacher, and a makeup artist for church youth group Broadway musicals.

As years passed, I had no time to sketch and paint, no time to play golf twice a week, and certainly no time or energy to work on free-lance writing. I did, however, own a small antiques business for almost thirteen years. I sold antiques at shows in Missouri, Tennessee, Texas, and northwest Arkansas, and I made buying trips to Missouri, east Tennessee, Kentucky, and Illinois. I enjoyed reconnecting with my love for social history through studying and researching antique furniture and accessories. When my father retired, he and my mother moved to Little Rock. My sister also moved to Little Rock, so my extended family was complete.

Our daughter Laura was graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with a major in business and a minor in French. She earned her MBA at DePaul University in Chicago. In 2004, she transferred with Verizon Business to Dallas, where she continues her association with Kappa Kappa Gamma Alumnae and the Junior League of Dallas. Once in Dallas, she met Charles Patrick Recer, a native of Ft. Worth. They were married May 17, 2008, in the sanctuary of Little Rock’s First Presbyterian Church, where John and I were married 41 years earlier. She and Charles have a daughter, Catherine Ellington Recer called Cate, born July 29, 2009, and a son, Jackson Wallace Recer called Jack, born May 17, 2011. She continues to work for Verizon Corporation. Our son Taylor was graduated from Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois, where he became a member of Sigma Chi Fraternity and enjoyed volunteer tutoring in English for local immigrants. He earned a bachelor’s degree, with a double major in English and psychology and a minor in Fine Arts Painting. He earned his master’s degree from Chicago’s De Paul University: Master of Science in Human-Computer Interaction. He enjoys working as a Senior Design Consultant for Roundarch, Inc., in downtown Chicago. In 2008, he married Maria Jose Alvear, a native of Quito, Ecuador. They have a son, Ethan Thomas Regan, born June 20, 2009.

During the past forty years, I have served four two-year terms as regent of Captain Basil Gaither Chapter, NSDAR. I also served as state chairman for DAR Schools. I have served as moderator of Presbyterian Women at Second Presbyterian Church of Little Rock. Since ending my antique business, I have enjoyed resuming sewing and knitting, learning to cross stitch, and I am learning to quilt. I have remained an avid reader, enjoying novels, biographies, and histories. I have recently begun to read French magazines again and give my French-English dictionary a heavy workout each week, as I refresh my vocabulary and learn new colloquial phrases. Yes, I AM trying to keep my brain functioning! I enjoy e-mails with my sister Leah, who is married to Phillip Cox, an Englishman. They live in Caversley, a village in Yorkshire.

My mother died in 1998, and my father died in 2006.

After my parents moved to New Orleans, my maternal grandfather and uncle in El Dorado both passed away. With no relatives left in El Dorado and with trying to take my children to visit my parents and sister in New Orleans several times every year, I only returned to El Dorado for our high school class twentieth anniversary reunion.

I think of El Dorado often. I have always been so proud to claim it as the hometown where I grew up and received a wonderful public school education. I think of El Dorado High School as the most wonderful high school I could ever have attended. I have always thought that our cheerleaders were the prettiest and the most talented; that our football teams were the greatest; that our men’s choir and the madrigal singers were the most gifted; and, that our engineering and chemistry and biology students were brilliant. I loved studying French and English with Mrs. Lila Brewster, Latin with Mrs. Sally Chambers, American History with Mrs. Hugh Weatherford. Bill Trego made singing an adventure, and Hogan Rountree made golf a beautiful game. We had the nicest downtown square, the most beautiful county courthouse, a fantastic new library, and a terrific football stadium. What a wonderful place to live! How lucky, how very lucky I was, that my father decided to move his family from his Mississippi hometown to a town recommended by his older brother’s Army buddy: El Dorado, Arkansas. How fortunate I am to have memories of people like Patsy Huey and Jeanie Lewis. How blessed I was, and still am, to be a member of our high school class of 1961!

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