Iola Caldwell springs from hardworking small-town Oklahoma stock. Diligence, meticulousness, and self-sacrifice characterized the lives of her parents, and their values have been passed down undiluted to their daughter. Growing up in Depression-era Oklahoma required a unique kind of personal determination and pride in oneself and in work. Iola’s father made hand-crafted leather saddles that still exist. Her mother, in addition to caring for her family, washed dishes in a local restaurant. Iola remembers that her mother always admonished her to “always do your best.”
A youth of 82 years, Iola’s best includes careful, specialized attention to the laundry of all the residents at Rivermont Gardens Assisted Living. For the last sixteen years, Iola has faithfully treated the residents and families at the Gardens the way she would want to be treated herself. No matter what particular wishes or demands an individual may have, Iola meets them. Here are some actual, verifiable examples of individual laundry requirements imposed by various residents for whom Iola cares:
One man required that at all times, ten empty plastic (only) hangers were to be left in his closet. Another man insisted that his pants be dried for five minutes, only-no more and no less-and then hung by the cuffs. Two current residents require that their sheets and bedspread be washed bi-weekly only. Another woman wants all her clothes hung on velvet hangers. There are approximately 58 residents in the Gardens, and each one is an individual who receives respect, right down to the way their washcloths are folded. “I have a certain way I like to fold the towels and washcloths,” says the Queen of Laundry.
While these demands may seem petty to some, Iola respects the preferences of the people who live at the Gardens. She not only abides by their wishes, but is cheerful and even proud of the way she provides such individualized service. “I’m here for the residents” is Iola’s constant motto. Soiled or stained clothing is lovingly cleaned, scrubbed, repaired, unstained, re- sewn, re-buttoned, and returned to the resident without complaint. Other staff-members joke that Iola knows the owner of every sock and washcloth in the entire building, and it is true! “I do watch out for people’s things,” Iola says. “I try to make sure that everything is returned to the particular place that each resident keeps it. I want them to be able to find their things easily.”
A full-time employee, Iola is punctual and dependable. She is unfailingly cheerful and diligent. She says “My work is a joy.” And it is obviously so-never grouchy, never discouraged, and never failing, Iola not only enjoys work, but participates in a bowling league, the Moose Lodge, Eastern Star, VFW, and a national railroad employee organization. Iola is an avid University of Oklahoma sports fan, wears school colors on appropriate days, and attends games regularly.
For uniqueness, it would be difficult to match an 82 year old laundress who works circles around employees fifty years her junior. Regarding her example to other employees, she is never absent or late, and her work is not only done, but done with a meticulous attention to detail that defies description. She works as a team with housekeepers to ensure efficient processing of laundry. Iola’s oversight of residents’ possessions reflects her deep care for their dignity and quality of life. What is more basic to quality of life than having clean and well cared-for clothing and bedding? As an example of independence, Iola is older than a number of her clients at the Gardens Assisted Living. She works full-time, stays physically fit, and clearly enjoys a very active social life outside of work. Simply knowing and observing her on a daily basis encourages residents to be independent like Iola. Ageism? Please! The very life that Iola lives is a slap in the face to ageism. She is more active than many who are half her age. And she has such joie de vivre! To her, everything is fun. What could be more opposite to the stereotype of grumpy, sedentary, depressed old age?
In summary, we have never met a better example of willing, committed, service to a senior care employer or senior clients and employees than Iola Caldwell. As one staff-member put it, “It is an honor to work with her.” We agree.

By Darlene Franklin

Fifty books in with her latest novel, “Mermaid’s Song,” historical author Darlene Franklin is still going strong and looking forward to another fifty titles.
“I love finding a historical tidbit and teasing it into a story,” Franklin said. “I love growing a story from a character, an idea, a setting, an event. There is never enough time to tell them all.”
Franklin recently celebrated her Jubilee title, “Mermaid’s Song,” with 500 supporters joining her in an online Facebook gathering July 10.
The well-received story is an imaginative retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s classic fairy tale, set on the shores of historic Maine with a shipwrecked Acadian beauty and her rescuer.
Franklin’s storytelling career took off in 2005 with “Romanian Rhapsody.” Her first historical novella, “Dressed in Scarlet,” finaled for the 2008 American Christian Fiction Writers Book of the Year award as part of the Barbour novella collection, “Snowbound Colorado.”
“That gave me the courage to continue, and the market was wide open,” she said.
While relishing the afterglow of celebration, Franklin is committed to five additional novellas over the next year and will be contributing devotions to an upcoming nonfiction collection.
“At the moment, I’m writing this year’s Christmas romance, ‘The Christmas Child,’ to be released by Forget Me Not Romances this September,” Franklin said. “Apart from that, the door is wide open. I’m looking at writing a single-author devotional book, and maybe contemporary romance or a cozy mystery.”
When not writing best-selling fiction, Franklin pens a column for Book Fun Magazine, “The View Through My Door,” her unique perspective on life from a nursing home. Franklin’s titles are available at online retailers as e-books and in print. Her complete list of fifty, as well as dozens of collections to which she contributed, can be found at https://www.amazon.com/Darlene-Franklin/e/B001K8993A.

The new Stone Creek Assisted Living and Memory Care land was once a farm.

Almost every footstep brings a memory for Larry Griffin, who was raised on the bygone Griffin Farm. He had chores before and after school.
Griffin is pleased that Stone Creek Assisted Living and Memory Care is now on the southwest corner of NW 178th Street and Western in Oklahoma City because the old farm site continues the compassionate legacy of his family.
Stone Creek Assisted Living and Memory Care opened in late June. The grand opening is set for August 10th from 5-7 p.m. at the complex nearby Edmond.
“We’d love for folks to stop in and see us then, enjoy some entertainment and free food and a chance to look around,” Kelley said.
As an assisted living and licensed community, they are able to help people with bathing, dressing, activities of daily living and medications, said Anita Kelley, community relations director. The complex has 56 rooms in assisted living and 36 in memory care.
The 183-acre Griffin Farm was built in 1905 and was later owned by Griffin’s parents, Melvin and Anna Mae Griffin. Larry still lives nearby the Stone Creek Assisted Living and Memory Care where he is a frequent visitor. The original white two-story farm house was removed in 1958, Griffin said.
“We tore down that house and it had square nails in it,” Griffin said.
His parents bought the farm in the late 1920s and Larry, two sisters and his parents lived in the house until 1958.
“My dad taught me responsibility. He taught me a work ethic,” Griffin said.
If he did something wrong, his dad would ask him what he learned from his mistake.
Two productive oil wells were constructed on the property in 1958 and the family built another house.
“But my dad was such a giver he used money to help people,” Griffin continued. “He helped his two brothers through college and helped his mom and his sister. He used all that money he got every month to help people out.”
“In fact when he died, people came to me and told me — some of them were crying with tears and said, ‘Your dad helped us out when we were in trouble,’” Griffin said.
A few years following 1958 Griffin brought his dad a royalty check, but Melvin tore it up and said, “No. God gave me those wells. I didn’t have to work for them. You keep that money and keep going,” Griffin recalled.
“He was a giver,” Griffin said.
Fifty acres of the farm was wheat. Griffin helped plow the fields, helping his dad. The land under the footprint of Stone Creek Assisted Living and Memory Care was once one of two pastures.
“We had dairy cattle, beef cattle; we had a couple of horses, and I had 35 head of sheep,” Griffin said.
Before July 4 would come, he would help his dad fill buckets of water to place in the back of the family pick-up. Always at the corner people would shoot rockets and fireworks.
“They’d set the grass on fire,” Griffin said. “So we’d have to go down there and beat it up. And if it got out of hand we’d have to call the fire department.”
His dad always plowed back for or five feet to ward off grass fires at one side of the pasture.
Stone Creek Assisted Living and Memory Care now has neighborhoods nearby where Griffin would run around as a boy.
“I got to talking to my dad for a month and a half before he died. He had cancer and was 90,” Griffin said. “He gave my sister and I this farm. I tried to get him to sell it years ago and move to Edmond. He wouldn’t do it. He said, ‘I’m going to die here on this farm.’”
Griffin told his dad they would do something nice with the farm. Twenty acres at the corner was already zoned for commercial use. His dad always prepared for the future. His dad gave three acres to Trinity Christian Church to build the church on Edmond Road before he died in 2004. Griffin’s mom died 11 months later.
Larry Griffin is retired now. After leaving the farm he attended the University of Oklahoma for two years, but was drafted to join the war effort in Vietnam. He was gone for a year and returned to work on the farm. And he continued his education at then-Central State College (UCO) and earned a marketing degree. He worked at a medical company for three years before he was hired to be a hospital manager. Soon Griffin became a regional hospital manager over five states for 29 years before he retired in 2008.
His wife Sharla passed away ten years ago, but he still has three adult children. His daughter is 30 and his two sons are 40 and 43.
Today, he says the Stone Creek Assisted Living and Memory Care is a beautiful place.
“Like I said, My sister and I were going to have nice things along here along these 20 acres,” he said. “This will be very nice.”

A special day long seminar will help persons losing their sight or blind and their families and friends. The Heartland Council of the Blind will present the Coping with Vision Loss Seminar on Saturday, August 19, 2017 in Oklahoma City.
Vice President of the Heartland Council of the Blind is Sandi Webster of Oklahoma City who lost her vision in 2002. Sandi said the seminar will provide essential tools and encouragement for persons losing their vision and their families and friends. “These people go through the stages of grief, but there is help,” Sandi said.
A previous seminar participant says she used the provided helps right away. “It was like attending a one stop shop. We met Vision, Mobility and Technology Specialists and were introduced to Support Systems. Break-out sessions are: Advocacy, Training for Family/Friends, Just for Men, Just for Women, Technology, Deaf/Blind Information and Visual Services Information. Cost of $20 for the seminar includes lunch, a Resources Notebook and a CD. Registration forms are available at www.hcbokc.org. Or register by calling Heartland Council of the Blind President Frances Poindexter at 405-642-1068. Registration must be received by Wednesday, August 16th. The seminar will be at the New Hope United Methodist Church at 11600 N. Council Rd., OKC, from 9 AM to 4 PM. Check-in begins at 8:30 AM.

Photography and Text by Terry “Travels with Terry” Zinn t4z@aol.com

Having recently returned from a trip of a lifetime, in 1980 touring of ancient Egypt icons, I found exotic culture back home in Colony, Oklahoma at the annual Cheyenne and Arapaho Labor Day Powwow.
As I reported in 1981, “Faces of men painted red and yellow, and brown bodies clad in numerous combinations of colors, feathers, and animal skins rhythmically dance out of the dark and into a dimly lit clearing beneath a giant canopy of cottonwoods.”
“Ladies in pure white buckskin proudly keeping in step as their shawls and fringe swing hypnotically in the moon light. Very young braves of 7 or 8 years, dressed in colorful fancy dance dress feathers join in the ways of their elders.”
As a result, I humbly photographically documented the weekend, and returned two more Labor Day weekends to try and capture the thrill and unique authentic Cheyenne Arapaho offering. While most of the dances are held at night, and with the movement of the dancers I could not use dim available light but had to use flash for my black and white negative exposures. The challenge was not to invade or disturbed the reverential dance with the bright flash in the darkness of night, but it was the only way to get an acceptable photograph. I guess I accomplished my goal as I was not admonished for my flash.
This Labor Day Colony’s Native American powwow homecoming continues as it has each year since the end of World War II with added interests. This year the Colony Gallery of the Plains Indian will host two photographic exhibitions of Native Americans proud of their heritage. The Gallery has always encouraged Native American art and artists. The Gallery is reborn with the showing of The Last Powwow ~ the result of my three-year visits ~ and Red Earth Spirit, ~ formal double exposure color photographs made during the Oklahoma City Red Earth Festival. While many of these images have been in exhibitions during the 1980s this is the first time since then that some are on public view. Some have never been seen before as the complete portfolios are too large to mount in one exhibition.
After seeing The Last Powwow exhibition at the Center of the American Indian back in 1983, the then Director of Photography, L.L. Smith, at the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Center, endorsed the exhibit when he wrote, “I was most impressed with the quality of your work and the dignity of your subjects. Your devotion over the years to this event is quite evident in your work. As a cultural document, I believe certain prints will stand the test of time.”
The renovated petite Gallery of the Plains Indian and the historic town of Colony is a treat to those travelers willing to turn off Interstate 40 at Weatherford and head south.
Justice Yvonne Kauger, a native of Colony, had long wanted a small gallery in Colony to exhibit Indian art and in particular Cheyenne Arapaho artists which would coincide with the annual powwow. The gallery building on the main street was built by her Grandfather, Fred Kauger in 1923 and served as post office until 1960 when it was used for storage..
Through the efforts of Yvonne’s parents, John and Alice Kauger, and family and friends, the old stucco structure was remodeled into a functional art gallery. The gallery had its first showing in 1981. Both exhibits this year are dedicated to Yvonne, John and Alice Kauger and all who help preserve and promote Indian heritage.
“I grew up to the sound of the powwows as a little girl,” Yvonne Kauger explains, “My father was raised by Cheyenne nannies and had a very deep respect for the Cheyenne which he passed on. In fact, until the sixth grade I thought I was Indian.”
In 1984, the Cheyenne-Arapaho adopted Yvonne Kauger as a member of the Standing Bird Clan.
Since the late 1880’s this area has been the tribal land of the Cheyenne-Arapaho Indians. Just west of Cobb Creek, teepees were first erected in a hardy grove and became home and gathering place for the Cheyenne-Arapaho powwow.
Colony’s Mayor Lonnie Yearwood is an active member of the community and an integral part in the rebirth of Colony with restoration projects. One project is the corner building in Colony which is destined to become a museum, and another is the Church Parsonage, a two-story stone structure from 1897.
Mayor Yearwood’s great grandfather John Seger, brought the Cheyenne-Arapahos to Colony to establish an Indian school.
“My great grandfather wanted a post office in Colony in 1896,” says the Mayor, “But there already was a post office west of here, and it was called Seger. If that was not already established the town might have been called Seger instead of Colony, as it was known as John Seger’s Colony.”
The Mayor continues, “Colony has more history than any other town in the county, as Colony started before there was an official county.”
Colony is in a renaissance with not only the Mayors projects but some homes are also being restored, upgraded and preserved. Someday the restoration projects may be on a town tour. The Mayor may be reached by email for more information on the town and the gallery accessibly during the Labor Day Weekend powwow.
Mayor Lonnie Yearwood: yrwd19@gmail.com
Since the authentic powwow activities, dance and singing, continues deep into the night, a planned overnight stay in Weatherford, Oklahoma is recommended.
I plan to be in attendance, not only at the gallery but at the powwow grounds. For a gallery appointment time email me before August 29. I continue my enthusiasm as I reported in my 1981 article, “Had I secretly crept upon this trial meeting on the great western plains of Oklahoma some hundred years ago, I could not have been more excited!”

Mr. Terry Zinn – Travel Editor
Past President: International Food Wine and Travel Writers Association
http://realtraveladventures.com/author/zinn/
http://www.examiner.com/travel-in-oklahoma-city/terry-zinn
www.new.okveterannews.com – www.martinitravels.com