Day 34 - Jim Brown, Joplin, Missouri

We find it ironic that the last stop on this trip is to visit one of the people who was present as we started our life together as husband and wife. Jim Brown stood up for Joe as his best man at our wedding. He was a room-mate of Joe’s way back when Joe had just finished his service as a VISTA volunteer and he was struggling to establish a career. As Jim said, “Sandy hung around quite a bit!”

Since we last saw Jim, he went on to continue his education at the University of Iowa, where he received his PhD in English. He taught for a while at Maharishi University in Fairfield, Iowa and now is a tenured professor at Missouri Southern State University. He has been here in Joplin for about 25 years now. Jim gave us a tour of Joplin, including where he is teaching writing classes (and we hope he is not grading these blogs!) and has presented several classes consistent with the international mission of the University.

Our tour included, in addition to MSSU, what Jim referred to as Joplin’s “moon scape”, which is actually the remains of the zinc mining that went on in the area. We also got a tour of the Joplin section of Route 66 – including a couple of things we didn’t see when we came through before: an old bridge and railway station, and some old giraffe houses. We also drove around where Langston Hughes lived.

We got to meet his 15 year old daughter for a brief time as Jim shuttled her from the mall to a movie to see what was playing and then to a friend’s house where she was spending the night. She is a beautiful young woman!

We worked together on supper: hamburgers, salad and beans – but Jim made us pay for it by bringing us to the YMCA to walk for a half hour. He didn’t really drag us, it felt good to get a real walk in. This is something we need to get back to doing when we get home. But most of our time was spent remembering old times and catching up on the past 36 years.