dad saying, ‘She had no more business than a rabbit to leave me. I knew she’d be back.’ He did really adore her.” Earns college scholarship Maggie graduated from high school in Pasadena, Texas, in 1945. With a $6,000 scholarship from Philips Petroleum, she attended Texas University at Austin. “I started out thinking I was going to be a doctor,” she said, “but I didn’t know from nothing. I had had such an easy time in school. I’d never had to study to make all A’s, never had to write a paper.” She had so much fun in college that she didn’t do much studying. Dancing, not studying “I took up square dancing and folk dancing,” she said, “and I was very involved with the archeologists. I was making C’s and D’s, and every-
body in my family was embarrassed, including me.” Her eclectic course work, including anthropology, botany, English, and a hodgepodge of other classes including music, made it hard to pinpoint a major. “The only degree we could find that would cover all the weird things I had taken was a bachelor of science in music,” she said. She graduated in 1950, several months after her only sibling, Robert, was born in December 1949. He was a welcome addition. Her mother had been trying for years to have more children. Teaches music After she graduated from college, Maggie took education classes at the University of Houston to earn a Texas teacher’s certificate. She taught music to fourth, fifth, and sixth graders in Texas City, Texas.
Until she went to college, Maggie was called Ayline, the name on her birth certificate. Here with her mother Josiephine she is dressed in her Sunday.
“I hated it,” she said. “I could never keep control of my class. They had my number, and they took advantage. I was there for one year.” Her time in Texas City had a redeeming quality. SPRING 2014 | MAJESTIC LIVING | 41