Bonnie Rowden Jordan

Hawkins, TX

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I have truly enjoyed reading the bios and learning what has happened in the lives of classmates over the past 45 years.  Thanks to everyone who has had a part in putting this together. 

After graduation from PHS in ‘58, I made plans to attend West Texas State in September.  The only problem was a guy I had met that worked in Pampa.  Needless to say, Jimma Garrett and I lasted only one semester in Canyon.  So we packed up our belongings and came home at Christmas.  I married my husband of nearly 45 years now, Cotton Jordan, on February 14, 1959.  I settled into the married life and went to work for Cabot.  

I was expecting our first child in 1964 when my husband was offered a job with Humble Oil & Gas, now known as Exxon, in Oklahoma.  Our daughter, Gay Lynn, was born in 1964, and then we were blessed with a son, Mark,  in 1966.  In December of ‘71 we were transferred to the Panhandle of Florida.  This was truly a wilderness experience but God was faithful to deliver us out of it with a transfer to Texas in 1976. 

Gay Lynn has a Master’s degree in banking from SMU and works for a large bank in Tyler as a  business loan officer.  She has given us a granddaughter, Courtnie, age 13, and lives in Whitehouse, TX.  Mark has an associate degree from Tyler Jr. College.  He owns and operates his own business, Jordan’s Water Well Service, in Hawkins.  He lives one mile from us and has given us two grandchildren, Austin, age eight and Amber, age five. 

Mother and Daddy moved here from Pampa in 1986 in order to be closer to both me and my brothers who also live in this area.  Daddy died in 2000 at the age of 96 but Mother, who is 86 now, is still going strong. 

I never gave up on going back to school, so upon returning to Texas I went back to school and received a B.S. Degree in Elementary Education from the University of Texas in Tyler.  I loved to teach, but when I felt that I had nothing left to give to the students, I knew that it was time for me to retire.  I left the classroom in 1997, and six months later I had a major heart attack while driving down the road, was transported to the hospital, then to the operating room for open heart surgery.  

For the past year, I have worked to help establish The Texas Special Children’s Foundation here in Hawkins.  This is a Foundation for abused and neglected children that have been removed from their homes.  We now have six children and are expecting at least thirty more in the next few months.  

Upon retirement, we purchased a motor home with plans to do a lot of traveling.  But after several years of taking children and grandchildren, it dawned on me that we were taking the kitchen with us and that it would be a lot easier to eat out or stay home, so we sold the motor home.  This summer we decided to rent a crude and rustic cabin in Colorado and take our son, daughter-in-law, and three grandchildren.  We took three four-wheelers and one small motorcycle on a trailer, and I must say we looked like the pictures of the Okies headed  to California in the great Gold Rush of 1896.  By the third day the kids were bored, so I pulled out the portable TV, and they played video games.  Even though the rest of the trip was fun, I have made a clinical decision to retire from this also.