One little quirk to this plan: they needed to get married right away so she could accompany him. They enjoyed their mutual interest in the college experience, as well as their mutual interest in each other, as they fell in love.Īt the end of their third year in college Jim had the opportunity for a summer job manning the Wolf Mountain fire lookout (107 feet in the air) in the Ochoco Forest in Central Oregon. He enrolled in a classical dance class as one of his electives and there he met Evelyn Johanson. So, in the autumn of 1955, he drove to Monmouth and began his college career with the eventual goal of becoming a teacher. At the end of his military obligation, he returned home and found he was qualified to use the GI Bill to attend college. A short time after graduation, Jim enlisted in the Marines and served in California, Korea and Okinawa. The years passed as Jim became a high school student, he played both football and baseball as well as studying. As the years passed, and the family grew by one more baby boy, they became a happy and grateful unit. Jim was just 2 years old when the family soon found work and the school aged children enrolled in Lebanon schools. Now no more black dust to breathe, but instead, fresh air and opportunity. It was a long and arduous trip but they made it. They had family in Lebanon, Oregon and that became their destination. They had already lost their eldest child to a horse and buggy accident. They needed to pack what they could, take their family of 5 children and one on the way to a safer and productive area. His parents, Earl Solomon Saxton and Amy Smith Saxton, had homesteaded the 21 years before in Colorado and now were facing complete ruin. Jim was born on May 5 in Kansas at his maternal grandparents’ home, in the midst of the Dust Bowl which was inundating that part of Kansas, as well as Colorado.
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