(this account by Noreen Osborne-Vickrey Selman) I am the youngest child of Oder E. Osborne and Irey McCarty Dunn. My mother named me Florence Noreen and I joined two brothers and three sisters. The date was September 2, 1935 and the place was Coal County, Oklahoma. Five months later I will have had three primary care-takers and my mother will be dead of pneumonia. At the funeral my Uncle Edmond will hold me so I can view my mother's burial; and I will be handed to my father's sister, Elizabeth, with instructions to "take care of my baby." Later, my sister Dorothy, 15 months older than I will also come to live with the Vickrey's. understand that is was not Oder's original intention to let us be adopted; but as time passed Clefford and Elizabeth made that their wish and brought the necessary pressure to bear to make that happen. As an adult I have come to understand just how much pain and anguish accompanied that decision for Oder. That is how I legally became Noreen Osborne Vickrey.

Childhood in the Vickrey home was full of many chances to learn. Both Clefford and Elizabeth had been school teachers and having two little girls to raise was a real gift to the childless couple. Dorothy and I took all kinds of lessons--Expression, Rhythm Band, Tap Dance, Acrobatics, Piano, Voice, Baton Twirling, Flute-- if it was available in Frederick, Okla., we took it. Frederick was a great place to grow up in the forties and fifties. School was O.K. and I made respectable grades; but my real love was playing with the neighborhood gang--games like kick-the-can, Cowboys and Indians, Piggy-Wants-ASignal, and Blind Man's Bluff. I also loved to swim and go to church, listen to the Grand Old Opry and go to Westerns. Most of all though, I loved a parade. I would sit on my Daddy's shoulders and watch every move the drum major made. I knew that I just had to do that some day. These were the war years, too. I remember writing to James while he was in the Navy and how handsome he was in his uniform. My heros were people like Joe Lewis, Roy Rogers, FDR, and Victor Wickersham.

My high school years were full of Band and Football. My claim to fame was being drum major of the band my last two years in High School. Robert was in the Air Force stationed in Panama and I wrote to him just like I had to James during WWII. After High School graduation, Dorothy and I both received Band scholarships to Midwestern University in Wichita Falls. That is where I met and married Derwood Selman in 1954. After Derwood graduated with a degree in Geology, we left for California to seek our fortune. Six months later we headed back to Texas; not one minute too soon for me.

However, before we left from California, I renewed my connection with the California Osborne's. That was 1955 and the last time I ever saw Uncle Jake and Aunt Lela. My heros were James Dean, Hank Williams, Eddie Arnold, and Burl Ives.

My grown-up years have been full of many changes. I've lived a lot of places; had a lot of jobs. The early part was mostly about raising Steve and Cole; finding a career for myself, and making some sense of who I was and where I came from. The Church remained central and I still loved music. This phase really came to a close with me teaching public school and discovering an interest in counseling psychology. My heros are now Simon and Garfunkle, JFK, Martin Luther King, and Zorba the Greek.

The second phase of being grown up consisted of Post Graduate education with a Ph. D. in Psychology. Derwood and I divorced and both had subsequent marriages. During this time I was able to travel, build a professional career, teach at the college level, buy property as a single woman, and become a grandmother. Busy is mostly what this period was about. Now my heros are Paul Newman, Larry McMurtry, and Kris Kristofferson.

The current phase which finds me in my fifties began a few years ago when

Derwood and 1, both single again, reestablished our friendship and acknowledged our life-long partnership. Derwood, retired from school teaching, had become a master gold and silver craftsman. We began to sell our property investments in the city and decided to find a place in the country. I was able to take an 8 month sabbatical to travel through the Southwest, Pacific Northwest, Canada, and Alaska, before returning to Texas to reenter my practice. During these travels, I spent considerable time in California renewing my ties with Aunt Stellen, JoAn, Elaine, Bonnie, Kenneth, and actually meeting Terry for the first time. Aunt Stellen is a wonderful inspiration and seeing double -cousins living parallel lives 1500 miles away is quite awesome. Now my heros are women-- Jean Auel, Brooke Medicine Eagle, and Katherine Hepburn.

As this entry is being written, I am living in Lindale, Texas, in a log cabin by a waterfall (a picture of the Wolfe House hangs just inside the front door). The cabin was designed and built by Steve with the help of Derwood and Cole. I continue to practice my profession in Tyler, TX.  Steve and his family live close by as does Cole and his family.  For the past several years, Derwood and I have been primarily involved in the care of Cole's four children  whose mother is not in the home. Together, we have tried to fill that vacant place. I have come to appreciate, more than ever, what Oder did in trying to keep his children together--I now know just what a magnanimous task that is. Watching Cole with his four children, can bring back my Daddy Oder to me as nothing else can. And the Osborne Odyssey continues through this branch of the family...

Addendum... My life always seemed in some way split. Being in Frederick with Clefford and Elizabeth and Dorothy was a wonderful childhood. However, I always yearned for my Eastern Oklahoma family. The most exciting thing I could have happen was to go to Clarita or Marlow. My big brothers were heros to me during my early years as much as Roy Rogers was. James had saved me from the tarantula when I was 4 or 5; and Robert knew about "400's" and Cherry Phosphates (which we called Jerry Falsefaces) when I was 10. Juanita could sing the Wabash Cannonball and bring tears to a little girl who was so in love with the home that Clarita represented. I remember Almeta's crawling doll that Santa brought when we were 4 or 5. I remember falling off Uncle Jake's porch when I was three and how they put pork fat on my nose to stop the swelling. I recall James cooking pancakes for me and using the insides of Juanita's doll-crying-device for bee -bee's to hunt frogs and squirrels. Daddy Oder was more like a myth to me then. I can't remember ever approaching him directly, yet I was always watching him--wondering what he really was to me. Later, when he moved to Frederick with Almeta and Robert, I had a better chance to know him. He taught me about cards and dominos. Almeta was always the one who told me that we had another brother and two sisters that were older. I know that during WWII I knew that Willie was in the war somewhere. Out of deference to Elizabeth who felt the family was complicated enough with the adoption (she seemed unable to bear much that was out of the ordinary), I never met my other family until Daddy Oder's funeral. Finally having all the pieces in place was a wonderful feeling for me.

My final memory of Daddy Oder comes from a few weeks before he died when I visited him in the hospital in Altus. I was never sure that Daddy would know me because of his blindness so I always told him who I was. He seemed in good spirits and introduced me to his nurses as his "baby daughter". I think that is the only time I ever actually heard him call me his daughter. It was during that visit that he said something about how Pride had always been a problem for him. I think he was saying that he had let false pride get in his way during his life. I think most of us who knew him would agree that he was a very Proud man. Personally, I think he had a lot to be proud of.

Children:

children:

1884-1 (RN1886 ID 1-2-2-1-7-4-5-9-2-1) Cole Frank Selman, Jr.

1884-2 (RN1887 ID 1-2-2-1-7-4-5-9-2-2) Jennifer Nichole Selman

1884-3 (RN1888 ID 1-2-2-1-7-4-5-9-2-3) Casey Ferron Selman

1884-4 (RN1889 ID 1-2-2-1-7-4-5-9-2-4) Kristi Karren Selman