PART I: SCENES AND STORIES FROM LINDEN, TEXAS, 1960-1968
My Personal Saga / Spanish Club / Jr-Sr Banquet 1964 / Miss Linden Pageants 1963 & 1964
**A SPECIAL NOTE OF APPRECIATION TO LINDEN AND DON HENLEY**
After Bernie arrived in my life: Our first posed photos together / Our wedding
A special note of appreciation to Linden and Don Henley
After my graduation from Linden-Kildare High School in 1964, I just wanted to get away. That may even have been a small part of Bernie’s appeal to me. For sure, he also wanted to live somewhere other than Linden.
It took me a long time to gain a more-mature perspective and a fuller appreciation for Linden. Looking back, I realize that its greatest gift to me was its status as “a place I could be from,” which my gypsy-like upbringing had denied me for over a dozen childhood years.
After I married and left for good, Daddy was asked to run for mayor of Linden. He accepted, but with the curious condition that nobody else would run against him. How very like a guy who tolerated no dissent in his family!
In the ’70s, my parents moved to Daddy’s home town of Many, Louisiana. That meant I had little reason to return to Linden, and in truth I’ve only done so for class reunions, starting with our 15th in 1979 and every other ten years or so, until (maybe) our 60th in 2024.
Some of my school friends from the ’60s are now the movers and shakers behind the Linden Heritage Foundation. They’ve built a fine organization and website to help people learn about and support their town. Belatedly — and motivated by the process of recalling those years as I wrote my memoir and built this website — I’ve come to support it too,
Linden’s favorite son, Don Henley, who was a year behind me in school, went on to musical stardom with The Eagles. Don has probably done more for his home town than anyone who ever lived there. Here’s a 2022 Dallas Morning News human-interest piece about him.
It was a pleasure for me to know Don when we were teens and to follow his impressive career and generous activism from afar ever since. He’s been a dedicated advocate for saving great natural places.
Back in the ’90s, during my decade of environmental activism in Lake County, Illinois, Don even sent a personal check for $2,000 to a local group that I had written to him about, which resulted in an article in our local newspaper.
Below are a few articles — worth looking at for many reasons, but especially for their great photos and videos! — on Don’s conservation achievements:
The Walden Woods Project, which Don founded in 1990 (Be sure to watch the two videos on the site, one by Don himself, the other a beautiful documentary created by Ken Burns and narrated by Don plus an amazing group of authors, historians, scientists, conservationists.)
The Caddo Lake Institute, which Don founded in 1992 (See also this article in Texas Monthly: “The Texas Twenty”.)