Tuesday's Internet Edition, September 07, 2010.
Evelyn Alexander: ‘Dallas is dead if you don’t get outside the house’
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She gives back to her community by volunteering in church, city, and university activities. This former teacher is a traveler, photographer, and a choir singer. She believes that there are plenty of activities in Kingsville that retired people can participate in if they choose to do so.
Evelyn Alexander serves as a role model for retired people because she finds time for volunteer activities and she enjoys life everyday whether she is in Kingsville or traveling in France. She can easily take out her camera and take a picture of an old printing press in a local publishing shop as she can photographing flowers in Paris, France.
Kingsville provides many volunteer opportunities, including the university, and she has been proud to call this city her home for 38 years. She dismisses the notion there is nothing to do here.
“Dallas is dead if you don’t get outside the house,” said Alexander, who believes retirement offers many opportunities for people.
She has also lived and worked in Brownwood, Aransas Pass, San Antonio, Austin, Port Arthur, and San Francisco, California.
“Retired people can realize their potential and untapped resources with skills and knowledge just because you don’t get paid,” she said.
“People have talents, utilize them, embrace the bubble and don’t say ‘no,’ she encourages.
Aside from her many activities, Alexander describes herself as an eclectic collector. She collects photographs, hymn books, crystal, artwork, paintings and plants.
She encourages retirees to work with people in multi-age settings that “keeps you young, active and involved.”
She believes people need to live their own lives instead of living vicariously through children and grandchildren.
When Alexander decided to retire after several years of teaching, she planned to sit back and relax.
What was there to do and was there life after retirement?
Alexander thought to herself. She realized there is plenty to do. She retired in May 2000 and that summer she read 36 books. She also decided to participate in a physical activity program.
Alexander has devoted years of involvement at the First Baptist church where she and her husband, George Alexander, a retired Texas A&M University-Kingsville education professor, are members. One of her big projects was working with the First Baptist Church’s centennial and the city of Kingsville’s centennial celebration in 2004. She served as chairman of the centennial planning committee for her church.
“Our church is four years younger than Kingsville, which was founded in 1904,” Alexander said.
First Baptist music pastor Larry Purkey praises her for her consistent work.
“We are grateful she volunteers countless hours to help several of the ministries of our church such as the bereavement ministry and finance committee. She is an active member of the worship choir and a leader in our young musicians’ children’s choir,” Purkey said.
Alexander has traveled to San Antonio before with the children’s choir.
She assisted with the church’s history book church by securing old photographs and if she couldn’t find them, she photographed the old pictures.
She also sings in the Kingsville Community Chorale with Sandra Messbarger as the choir leader. They have recorded a CD entitled “Hope.”
Alexander served as adjunct instructor, teaching special education classes at Texas A&M University-Kingsville. She also taught guidance and counseling classes. She has been a member of the University’s Women’s Club since 1969. She has also been a member of the Woman’s Club, Now Department, since 1974 and also the former Agarita Garden Club.
During her 37 years as a classroom teacher Alexander believed in accepting people and their individualities.
“We have to accept people and embrace their differences,” she said.
She spent her last 14 years as a special education teacher at San Pedro Elementary School in Robstown, which was a TEA “Recognized” campus.
Alexander speaks enthusiastically about teaching because every year would be present new experiences.
“It’s a challenge because each year was new and and the students would come up to me and tell me, ‘Mrs. Alexander, I am going to be in your room next year,’” she recalled.
She would encourage her students to be the best because they “would be competing with the whole world and not just with the boys and girls in this area.”
Alexander believes future teachers should have the brightest and sharpest minds and should be allowed to teach the way they can teach the best. Teachers can add their special teaching talents and enhance from the curriculum.
“Everybody is not a paper and pencil person,” she said. She remembered she was told she was not college material because she could not express herself with pen and paper.
“Teachers need to allow students to express their students the way they are,” she said.
Alexander has been an energetic and involved person all her life. She was a drum major at Hico High School in Hico near Tarleton. She attends the Class of 1956 reunions to see her former classmates. Her father was in the construction business and the family traveled often and she claims she was “really a migrant person.”
She received a B.S. degree from Howard Payne University, and a M.S. degree and M.ed. degrees from TAMUK.
Alexander has traveled throughout the U.S., visiting 40 states. She has traveled in Alaska, Hawaii, France, England and Switzerland. After her travels, she said she is glad to come home to Kingsville.
Alexander and her husband and other university professors and wives and friends can often be spotted at a popular local restaurant early in the morning for breakfast.
She often took her grandson, who lives out of town, with her to the restaurant.
“Nana, you know everybody and everybody knows you,” he said.
Alexander has four daughters and five grandchildren.