Oh, yes . . . in 1960 my father started working as a medical director for Gulf Oil in Houston, Texas over various regions - South, Southwest, etc. depending on how the split it up. He even went to Lagos, Nigeria for Gulf. . While in this job he served as president of the Texas Industrial Medical Association and taught at Rice University,He was very respected among the medical and any other employees he ever worked with.
Then, in 1969, the Gulf muckedy mucks decided that they would use their political mussel to elect a Senator from Texas. That year, Lloyd Bentsen won the Democratic primary, beating the incumbent Senator Ralph Yarborough. My dad had supported Ralph since forever and even donated to him after his loss so that he could retire the debt.
Gulf decided to throw in with the Republican candidate, an oil man from west Texas by the name of - get ready for it - George Herbert Walker Bush. They instructed their people to give money to GB. Daddy would not. He gave more to Ralph.
I remember in December when the head medical officer from Pittsburgh came down to Houston. My dad made all the arrangements, picked him up at the airport, and even had him and his son out to the house. He always did that every time he visited the office in Houston, but never got the same courtesies when he visited Pittsburgh. Hell, my brother, a friend or his, and I even took his stuck up son to see the Cotton Bowl in Dallas where UT beat Notre Dame.
Shorty after this visit my dad started hearing from friends in the know that he was in trouble for not donating to Bush. He was transferred to New Orleans, which for Gulf was sort of a backwater. He would be the only medical person there - they didn't even have a medical office there.
Now I know that many of you might think that New Orleans would be a great place to be sent, but none of us had wanted this. The whole move was stressful. Fortunately, daddy had very good friends with Gulf in New Orleans and since Gulf owned a building there with an empty floor, my dad got to design facilities to be built. He and I designed the office ( I had taken drafting in Jr. High) that was kind of cool, but having to stay in a long term hotel etc. out by the lake was stressful.
Now we come to the "Bain" of the experience. My Mom was a real super mom and got us through a lot. She held it all together while Daddy was looking for a house to buy. She was great at being everywhere all the time. Oh, she missed something every now and then - like a doctor's appointment - but not much.
I started college that fall at Millsaps in Jackson, MS. It is hard to explain all the ways in which my mother made our lives. Well, the next year, when I was a sophomore, my mom's one missed appointment came home, and not in a good way. You see, if she had made it to that appointment, it is pretty likely that they would have been able to catch the cancer. She was given about 2 months.
Mom was a fighter, and she was able to be with us for about 2 years before the end. We were able to move back to Houston - my mom on a special air ambulence, the fall of the next year - and my dad continued his job where he was before. I remember vividly that December when my mom was feeling better and she cooked a fine supper of eye round roast. That was the last one. Shortly after Christmas she went into a coma that lasted a couple of months. Miraculously she came out of the coma - though she was not able to get out of her hospital bed. She was even strong enough to cuss out Richard Nixon on the TV. She was mad because the enemies list had just hit the news, and she wasn't on the list.
In July she went into another coma and died on the morning of July 13, 1973.
This year I got so mad when the worker (I can't remember his name) who'd wife had died a few years after being fired by Bain. The pundits from CNN and their sister network Fox kept going on about how it was unfair to blame Bain for his wife's death. That is not what that was about, and if they had gotten down off of their high horses long enough to listen, they would have known that!
Anyway, sorry about the rant ... it just sort of got away from me.
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