Origins of a Legacy

Finishing School for Moods

ometimes it takes just one teacher to set you on a life path. For Ned, that was Miss Castelaz at Pershing Elementary School. He soaked up her attention.

“She was calm, serious, dedicated, attentive, and determined to improve the world by training some good citizens. Somehow, we all knew that. In her class, we all did our best.” [9]

Young Ned was a precocious, skinny brainiac, boastful and brash. A born achiever who wanted to be recognized for it while trying to maintain humility. But there was that temper. He let his tart tongue loose on his mother one day. She visibly recoiled in hurt and left the room. The weight of his words pained him. [10]

It was more than compassion for his mother’s feelings. Ned grasped that those who anger you control you. Lashing out meant losing control which he could not abide. Learning how to make a point without alienating people became a plank in his self-improvement plan—an extraordinary depth of thought for an eight-year-old.

Ned and Eleanor, circa 1925.

A tamed temper aided relations with his sister Eleanor, who’d always been kind to her pesky older brother. Being suddenly far from familiarity and without friends brought them closer. They became partners in adventure, playing make-believe cyclone in the neighbor’s root cellar and more. They adored each other until Eleanor’s passage at the too-young age of 62. [11]

Ned’s mother and aunts had admonished his swagger and petulance plenty of times. But Pershing served as an emotional finishing school, putting his social skills to the test. Being the boy with the right answers wasn’t everything. Working well with others ranked high. He loved being the center of attention, but that’s not a way to win many friends. Balancing being respected with likeability would be a lifelong lesson.

As a young boy wrestling with internal conflict, nature provided solace.

I would head for the woods near my parents’ little house in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and walk, and walk, until my body took over from my brain. [12]

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In the Holler

n emotionally sensitive whiz kid, Ned was also Tarzan of the Osage, a somewhat feral child of the outdoors, especially in summer—an Oklahoma tradition. With plentiful nature so close to him, the self-described “adventuresome child” engaged in endless exploration. His empathy for nature grew, just as human insight had deepened. [13]

Down the hill was the ‘holler,’ where large oaks and elms leaned over a slow-meandering creek and orchestrated the theme song of my life. I would sit there beside the creek for long intervals, watching the chickadees and woodpeckers in the trees, and the bass and bream in the pools. I was fascinated to watch the surface-striders on the water, and the swarms of tiny catfish hatchlings as they slowly circled in cyclone-like patterns from depths in the pool to the upper level. I wondered about the mysteries of life on this amazing planet, and where I would fit into it. [14]

Playing wild with other boys, they’d lure crawdads with food scraps and tote them back home, where they quickly expired.

Mother made me bury them and promise never again to bring any home. I shifted from being a hunter-gatherer to just an observer. [15]

The Holler would become the first natural space that Ned loved and lost. His father worked for Atlantic Refining operations, so he couldn’t complain as oil machinery noises drowned out the bird song and petrochemical waste poisoned fish in his Holler. Until he turned old enough to wander the more remote hills, this broken world was all he had.

Sixty years after the Holler gave me inspiration, I went back to visit. Nothing was left but streets, houses, and utility lines. In my lifetime, civilization has devastated piece after piece of the nature that I love. The Holler was but the first. [16]

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Bound for Boy Scouts

ed watched transfixed as the man wading in the wide creek whipped his long, flexible fishing pole backward. He snapped it forward, suddenly stopping short with a jerk of his elbow. The fishing line swirled with the grace of a purple martin high in the air, then arced impossibly high before landing the end in the creek middle. It soon caught the attention of a big bream, which was reeled in.

Far better than trawling for crawdads at the Holler. This fellow was hauling in fish big enough to eat. Ned and friends begged their parents for flyfishing equipment. After the boys received a few lessons from a local fellow, Ed took them fishing at Spring Creek and other larger streams. Ned was hooked (pun intended).

One summer, dad took group of boys to the Conejos River, where we learned to catch enough trout to provide breakfast for all four of us.

Years later, Ned would take his family to the Conejos almost every summer, his daughters romping in the woods while he fished, the river washing away his intense stress. Pan-fried trout followed by campfire singalongs and snuggly nights in a tent with Genie captured life in nature as it was meant to be.

Fly fishing was just one of the activities Ned experienced at summer camp—first with the YMCA and then Boy Scouts—that became life-long pursuits. Crafting bows from bois d’arc branches and learning archery deepened his interest in Native American practices. Overnight hikes taught him camping and basic outdoor skills like fire-making, first aid, and navigation.

Learning the names and qualities of wildlife and native plants lit his fire. So much to learn! No better present for Ned than a set of field guides. It quickly became a quest to become the most knowledgeable naturalist. At least in Boy Scout Troop 17 at Tulsa’s First Methodist Church. Boy Scouts brought about once again challenges for Ned balancing achievement and cooperation.

In the Boy Scouts, I could achieve and achieve. In full speed, I passed the Tenderfoot and Life Scout levels and began work on merit badges.

Elations of achievement found counterbalance with moments of peril that Ned somehow escaped from mostly unharmed. Hiking alone at night, he fell 16 feet down a creekbank. Fishing brought close calls with cottonmouths. Swimming across a river, he tired from the swift current and needed help to make shore. Close calls would become a repeating pattern in his “adventuresome” outdoor life.

Those grade-school years in Tulsa were full of love in excitement. Neither Tulsa nor the any of us who lived there then can ever recapture the days of old hills and new oil.

Above section: [17]

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High School Highs and Lows

ershing Elementary selected Ned and a few bright students for early admission into junior high. Significant benefits: Fantastic new levels of things to learn and a great library to plunder. But a drawback: Once the top of the class ladder, he was now on the bottom. And the new teachers didn’t lavish attention on him as Miss Castelaz did.

Academically, that was a wise step. From a leadership viewpoint, though, it threw me into the bottom of a new mass, already moving at its own momentum.

Vintage postcard of Tulsa Central High School.

Roosevelt Junior and then Tulsa Central High Schools were a great awakening. Interpersonal and leadership skills fostered in Boy Scouts found free reign. His love of singing enjoyed full expression in glee club as a low tenor. Debate tourneys gave his aggression a safe outlet and stirred the possibility of a future legal career. And there were lots of girls!

Ned discovered the joy of organizations: information sharing, social connections, and staging events. Cooperating to manifest a common goal fed him deeply. You could achieve more in groups. Working with special-interest organizations, even founding them, would become a hallmark of his later activism.

But school had its stresses and the need for nature never left him.

Although I was usually confident and productive, I suffered some days during high school when I was melancholy. My frequent way of coping was to head for the Osage Hills. I would return home tired, have a good night’s sleep, and be back in full swing the next day. The main cause of my moods was usually a girl.

Ned in 1931, 15 years old.

Ned’s curiosity pushed him to learn everything about the area where the family lived. He knew the best swimming holes, exciting places to explore, and where the strange things were. When Eleanor would ask her group of friends what to do on a particular day, the answer was always, “Let’s ask Ned.” He provoked many an adventure and often went along.

Journalism was a natural for the colorful and articulate Ned. School newspapers provided a place to achieve, express, and work as a team.

I loved journalism class. We put out the school newspaper, Roosevelt Times. I started as a reporter, an enjoyable pursuit. By my third year, I was associate editor.

On the newspaper beat, he acquired a lifelong friend and role model, Bill Krebs. He aspired for Bill’s high moral and intellectual standards and commitment to school and community. 

He was my longest and steadiest friend, always progressing on an even keel. A true Aristotelian– willing to help, to share his own feelings. Even as Bill was prudently choosing and applying the mean between extremes.

Above section:[18]

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Prairie Philosopher

Ned, March 1932.

ed once described to a reporter Tulsa Central High as having “a remarkably enlightened and inspired atmosphere.” He spent his summers off from school immersed in philosophers that would shape a lifetime. A personal philosophy developed with Scottish enlightenment philosopher David Hume at the fore.

I was developing my faith in the great mystery of the Earth. We cannot verify the reality of our simply by basing our reasoning on our sensory findings… Until we have scientific answers as to all principles in the universe, we cannot be sure that our present theories are sound even to the extent of our ability to verify them with our senses. So there is a broad realm of mystery.

Ned embraced a moral sense of right and wrong reflecting both his sense of Christianity and admiration of Stoicism. The ancient Greek school of philosophy—exemplified by Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Seneca, and so on—extolled self-mastery and prized action and engagement.

To have a good life, we must have faith that there is a realistic basis for our concept of right and wrong and function accordingly until science proves a different basis… But ala Hume, we can operate effectively by accepting on faith and repetition.

Osage Hills Prairie Preserve, Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Ned defined himself as a Christian into his 30s. But even as a teenager, his sense of God expanded beyond Biblical narrative.

I articulate my faith as being in the Great Spirit of the Universe. This faith is also helpful when misfortune piles up on me. I rise out of my narrow confines by contemplating the Great Spirit.

In the Osage Hills, the sky is half the landscape. How many night skies did Ned sit beneath, pondering the meaning of life and his place in it? How might this ringside view of cosmic vastness have shaped him?

As for death, it will be the same for me as for other species of life. There will be no heaven. We will live on in the influence we have made on other people and Mother Earth.

Above section: [19]

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Next Chapter: University and Navy Years

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