There is a certain picture we have in our heads about Texas women, and there is some evidence to bear this out.

Here is a picture from the obituary of a woman who died last month in the West Texas town where my family lives.

This is a picture of Billie Sol Estes’s daughter.  Billie Sol died last week too.  He lived just down the street from us when I was in high school.

There is even some evidence, so I cannot deny it, that I was briefly involved in The Big Hair Movement as well.  (Kappa Kappa Gamma Spring Dance, Texas Tech, 1964)

As well, apparently, in a big-dress event. (Pecos High school, 1960)

For most Texas women, these pictures do not represent reality or truth.  Here are three women who do.

This is my mother who dropped out of college to have me and to raise me and my sister and to follow my father from the oil fields of Oklahoma to the cotton fields of West Texas.   She went back to work to help put me through college, and I was the first in her family to graduate.  She was the second.  As soon as I graduated, she returned to college to earn her degrees and began a long teaching career.  I know this expression on her face very well and I’m sure hundreds of her former students do as well.   It says, “I expect you to do your best.”  Mother will turn ninety this summer, and I still learn something from her nearly every time we talk (or email!).

And this is Coach Terri Morse who is retiring this year after developing a swimming program in a dusty West Texas town where — need I say it? —  football was the only sport that counted.  Against insurmountable odds, she led her swimmers to a combined 38 district championships and took swimmers to State every year.   Good job, Coach!

And this is my sister who is retiring this year too.  She has spent every year of her life in the classrooms of Pecos, Texas, except for the five years she was too young and the five years she was away earning her B.A. and M.A. and her teaching credentials.  I cannot think how many young minds she nurtured in thirty-four years of teaching government.  Her passion is the U.S. Constitution and the Supreme Court.  Here she is making a detour to the state capitol on a recent trip to the state swim meet in Austin, demonstrating to her students just how cool it is to live in the United States.

And here she is on Election Day, having made sure that all her eighteen-year-olds were registered to vote and signed up to volunteer at the polls.

After seventeen years in the classroom, she added a new field to her teaching career — coaching.  Having never been an athlete, she decided to become a part of Coach Morse’s swim program and went into training.  She became the assistant swim coach and head diving coach. She has had at least one diver qualify for the state meet in each of her years with the program.

So for the second half of her career, in addition to teaching a full-load (and never having a student who didn’t pass the state tests!),  she and Coach Morse worked to develop a program that begins with teaching toddlers to swim and includes teaching high-schoolers and adults in the community to lifeguard.  Coach Morse showed up at the pool early most mornings to oversee a water-fitness program for senior citizens while Coach Capshaw went early to her classroom to tutor students who were having a hard time making their grades.

This is real stuff.  These are women whose life work made a difference.

No stereotypes here, and no time for big hair.