As a child, I observed endless activities taking place at the nearby fraternity and sorority houses. Once a year they built elaborate displays to celebrate the annual Homecoming festivities that culminated with a football game. These displays depicted the university mascot, the tiger, doing a variety of things to their rival, and any number of other motifs thought to improve the morale of the school. Current events and popular songs also became themes. The “Purple People Eater” referred to the popular song of that time. Another clever idea was a huge cow straddling a simulated barb wire fence entitled “udder disaster.”
Not to be outdone, I imitated these efforts by building a homecoming display in our front yard. The first one occurred when I was six years old. I made a simple crayon depiction of a tiger, the Wittenberg mascot, on a large cardboard box. 
I learned to assist the college kids when their displays were being dismantled so I could drag building materials home for my use the following year. Gradually, I learned to sculpt chicken wire into the shapes of characters and stuff the holes with colored crepe paper. Each year my display became more sophisticated. Gradually my striving became mechanized, illuminated and by the time I was eleven, had an accompanying soundtrack that repeated a little ditty that Mom suggested and recorded the three of us singing: “Oh, hang ‘em up to dry, oh, hang ‘em up to dry, Ohio Wesleyan, Hang ‘em up to dry.” This recording played all weekend alongside my display of a mechanized tiger with a washtub.
Being bitten with the drive to create, paint and a dose of insatiable curiosity, my energy focused on a variety of personal ambitions. I explored the neighborhood in search of insects for my science fair project, salvaged components for my annual homecoming display, tree house or fort and developed components for my summertime circus production.
Like most little girls, Paula liked to play with dolls, toy ponies and aspired to compose stories. She once drew a comic strip with a pony as the main character. But she did not understand how to draw the hoof and ankle of a pony’s leg. That did not stop her. She simply made the lines of each leg go down to a point, and “Pinfoot the Pony” was born. She made several adventure comics books during her young career as a cartoonist with this clever equine personality.
We discovered a litter of kittens born in the window-well of a nearby fraternity house. This started our relationship with “lucky” the cat, who became part of the family. Later, our childhood was blessed with her four offspring we named “Salt, Pepper, Sugar and Cinnamon.” After having the litter of kittens, Lucky’s personality turned anti-social and sour. So, she was sent to a local farmer who needed a mouser on his farm and we kept one of her kittens. Pepper became a source of joy for the whole family for many years.
Mother loved singing and rose early to practice. After school, Mother was either teaching piano, voice lessons, or rehearsing for another upcoming opera. We had to be quiet while inside the house, so we learned to invent our own creative activities.
Dad planted a garden in the back yard every summer. One year I was delighted to find a herd of caterpillars devouring his parsley. I disclosed my discovery at dinner. My dad waited until I had gone to bed before thinning out my crop of caterpillars. The few that remained became plump. Then they found secluded places to attach themselves and transformed into a chrysalis. He knew about my interest in insects and found three one-gallon glass jars and placed a stick with a chrysalis in each one. Three jars, one for each of us to take to school.
In the spring of that year both John and Paula’s butterflies were born in their classrooms. Mine never did. I found out later that during the dead of winter my teacher had stupidly placed my jar on the steam radiator to keep it warm. You would think that a teacher would know that this organism was created to withstand the rigors of winter outside without any need for her help.
A year later, while in third-grade, the principal of the school came into our room, had a brief talk with our teacher and pointed directly at me and signaled for me to come with her out into the hall. Out in the hall, I saw two other students waiting with puzzled looks on their faces. We were taken to the gymnasium and given paints and brushes. We were then instructed to decorate the background scenery for an upcoming school play.
I became filled with creative delight as I immersed myself in this large project. At the end of the school day, I returned to my class room to find all my school mates crying. The television in the corner of the room revealed the reason. That day in Dallas, while I was painting, a sniper had shot and assassinated president Kennedy.
Letterfly Writes 