DON NEVIUS

I was born in Corning, Adams County, Iowa on October 28, 1952. We kid my mother about her name, Watona, which is an Indian name that means "big wind." Her maiden name was Paul, so her full name is Watona Grace Paul Nevius. My father is Harold Wilbur Nevius. He had two years of college at South Dakota State before being drafted in World War II. He served as a Staff Sergeant in London. Prior to the draft, mom and dad were married and when he came back home, he had a baby daughter. He couldn't go back to school, but found a job at the meat locker in Corning. The daughter was my sister, Sandra Rae, who is ten years older than I, and I have another sister, Mary Lee, who is five years older.

When I was 2 1/2 years old, I was diagnosed with a heart murmur and rheumatic fever. I laid in bed 1 1/2years, was not allowed to walk, and had to be carried everywhere. A barber came to the house to cut my hair, and our family physician, Dr. Bain, came to check on me. I have been told by my mom and dad, that they had to rock me for hours at a time because my knees hurt so badly. My source of entertainment was a TV my parents bought, so I was well acquainted with Howdy Doody and others. Osceola readers might be interested to know that Joan Cook was my baby-sitter. She is now Mrs. Marlow Peterson, retired from a fourth grade teaching position in Clarke Elementary school.

I have also been told that it was Dr. Bain's idea for me to start kindergarten early, so that if the rheumatic fever came back, I would have time to catch up. That was the reason I was sent off to school at the age of four years and ten months. I was therefore always the smallest and the youngest in class. I remember my first day. The grade school was four blocks from our home, and I had to go past the high school to get there. For some reason, both my mom nor dad walked me to school and when I passed the high school, the kids teased me. I will never forget an elderly couple who saw what was happening. They asked me into their house, gave me a glass of milk, and finished walking me to school. It still touches my heart, and I have wondered many times why my mom or dad didn't walk me.

All through grade school, I had to go to Dr. Bain's office every two weeks to check my blood count. If it was high, I really had to rest, and every day after school, instead of playing with the other kids, which I wanted to do, I had to rest. To make matters worse, they teased me about it, which made me angry, and I asked myself again and again what's wrong with me. 'Why am I different?

I would describe my family as being of the old school. The extended family was very much a part of my life. My paternal grandmother, Bertha Jillett Nevius, lived next door to us. My deceased grandfather's name was John. He was a merchant, owner of Nevius Grocery Store. My dad was the oldest of four brothers. The son, named for his father, is still in Corning, a WW II veteran, retired. Don, whom I am named after, was a good high school athlete. He also served in WW II and was killed in France on D-Day. There was another who died in infancy. I never knew much about my grandfather. I have been told that he shot himself during the Depression. Grandma remarried and the husband I knew was named Roscoe. He might have been her second or third husband.

Dad and I spent lots of time at Grandmother's house. She was a housewife, and we did lots of things for her that she couldn't take care of. Roscoe took me fishing, and we played Chinese checkers. My mother and grandmother didn't get along. Grandmother cut the heads off all my mother's pictures. I suppose I would have to concede that Grandmother was a little odd.

Mother's father was Herman Patrick Paul, or "Pat," as we all called him. He owned Paul's Feed and Coal store. They lived on a farm and my grandmother, Rachel Minerva Sutton, was a typical farm wife. I've been told that when they were first married, Grandpa Pat drank a lot. He was probably an alcoholic, but Grandma told him that she would leave him if he didn't stop drinking, and he never touched another drop. I had a cousin Pat, and I remember that he and I went to the feed store after school, playing hide and seek amongst the feed bags. That may have been a reason that Grandpa Pat often gave each of us a nickel to go across the street for an ice cream cone. For some reason, one of my strongest recollections of the store is the pot-bellied heating stove.

In Corning's grade school, I was an okay student. I wasn't allowed to take swimming lessons, play baseball or basketball - until the fifth grade. I couldn't wait to play! Sports were my thing. In the summer, when my dad came home from work, I met him at the car door with my ball and glove, in the fall I met him with a football. No matter how tired he was, he never said no.

I made average grades in junior high. I didn't care that much about school, but I played football, basketball, and baseball. Our family attended the Methodist Church. Dad was my Sunday School teacher for probably eight years, and in spite of the fact that I can't sing, I sang in the choir until sixth grade. Dad was also on the city council, a volunteer fireman for 33 years, a member of the Masonic Lodge and VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars).  Mom was a member of the auxiliary and involved in various church activities.

Somewhere about 1963 or '64, mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. I didn't know and wasn't told. She had a complete mastectomy. It was a sad, depressing time. Mom was very sick and in the course of receiving blood transfusions, she was given bad blood, causing her to have Hepatitis B. She was sick for a very long time, but she came through it. She was working for the NFO (National Farmer's Organization), whose headquarters were in Corning. They have since moved and become less well known, but at that time they were powerful. They dismissed her from her position, and I was told that my parents took them to court for wrongful termination. My parents lost the case and Mom became pretty much the caretaker of the house. Cleaning, cooking, washing and ironing clothes, kept her busy. I remember that she ironed everything ­ sheets, shirts, handkerchiefs - everything she washed.

Additionally, she always had a garden, and canned green beans, com, and bread & butter pickles. It would be so hot in the house with pressure cookers going! Dad didn't do inside work, but Mom taught me. We sat outside to do much of it. We didn't really have a deck, but there was a slab of concrete and we sat in lawn chairs to snap beans, shuck com, shell peas, listen to ball games on the radio, and talk. Dad took care of things outside the house, like trimming the hedge - with a hand trimmer - and mowing the lawn with a mower with a roller at the back. It was man-powered, and one time I tried to push it. I couldn't get it to budge. Every time Dad finished mowing, he sharpened the mower blades.  He also took care of the rose bushes and peonies.

Dad got a post office job in 1960, starting at the bottom. He cleaned the bank and an insurance office, each two nights a week, and on weekends worked at the butcher shop. Dad and I did lots of things together. He took me fishing at Grandpa Pat's farm to catch bullheads. We used old cane poles, and because there were no roof racks in those days, we transported them by tying them on the passenger side of car. Sometimes we'd catch snapping turtles. They were mean looking and Grandpa didn't want them in his pond, so Dad took his gun with us and shot any that got on our line. Dad taught me how to hunt, how to make sure I never shot a female of the species - such as a hen pheasant - and whatever you shot you brought home, cleaned, dressed, and ate or gave away. I never saw him kill anything for the sake of killing.

We did lots of family things. We often went to Viking Lake or Lake of Three Fires in Bedford, or our own lake Binder.  We had get-togethers for our family and boy - or girl-friends on holidays like Memorial Day, 4th of July etc. We played softball, and had barbeques. Every 4th of July, the Coming airport hosted a Fly-in Breakfast. For a dollar, we could have a plane ride. Pilots were retired Air Force fellows. I was never scared to go. I loved it.

I was a Cub Scout and liked it well enough to go on into Boy Scouts. They taught me a lot about camping and survival skills, until I got to the age when I thought it was kid stuff. Some of us older ones got to acting up, so we were invited to leave, but as a general rule, we were pretty much able to do whatever we wanted. We rode our bikes everywhere. Probably beginning when I was about fourth grade, I had a Des Moines Register paper route. What a shame that kids can't do that any longer. I learned so much! I had my own alarm clock, got myself up and dressed on time. I made collections and started a bank account. Sometimes if snow or other weather conditions were bad, Dad took me on the Sunday route, and if he had the money we might go to a restaurant and have pancakes for breakfast.

In junior high and through high school, I had various means for making money. I put up hay - round bales, square bales, some farmers nice and some not. We had a Low Boy for stacking. We'd take bales off the Low Boy and put them on the elevator that took them into the barn. At lunch time, the farmer's wife had a great meal for us - fried chicken and all the trimmings. I was out for baseball and football. Often after a day like that, we had practice or a game.

I also walked beans. We started early mornings when the beans were wet. We had a sharp weed knife, with which we cut out button weeds and others, and for this we were paid $1.25 or $1.50 an hour. When I was a freshman in high school, I worked at the locker plant an hour before school in the morning and all day Saturdays, for 75¢ an hour. I wrapped meat, helped cure ham, did general clean up, and put meat in the freezer. I was the youngest there and often someone thought it was funny to turn the light off while I was in the freezer. One day a guy told me to go uptown and get a bacon stretcher. I went to all three hardware stores and didn't, of course, find such a thing but the merchants caught on and helped with the joke. Once I was sent to get a lard hook.

I weighed 99 pounds when I was a freshman in high school, and again I struggled academically in both my freshman and sophomore years. I was a quarterback in football, and also played basketball and baseball. At that time I was starting to act out, stealing alcohol from my parents and experimenting with it, and messing around with girls. I was about 11 or 12 when I started smoking cigarettes. Mom and Dad smoked so I stole from them. One day I was smoking upstairs in the bathroom, and Mary smelled smoke. She called Dad at the post office. He came home and caught me. Was he angry! The next day he quit smoking and never smoked again in his life. I stopped smoking for three months during my senior football season in high school but after our very last game, I started smoking again. However, I never got caught smoking or drinking during the whole of my high school career.

In my junior year, I started taking academics more seriously, even making the honor roll. I was in student plays, was on the Student Council, and this continued in my senior year when I was vice president of Student Council. That year I was starting quarterback, even though I was the smallest kid on the team. I lettered in football two years, in basketball one year, and in baseball three years.

I graduated in the middle of my class of 98 in 1970. I weighed 135 pounds and thought I would be too small to play college football, but I had always wanted to be a coach and teacher. I looked at small colleges, and at that time my sister Mary, her husband Bill, and daughter Wendy were living in Blair, Nebraska, which is the home of Dana College. I enrolled there in the fall of 1970, at 17 years of age. I arrived on a Sunday afternoon, went to the dorm, and met a black guy named TC. He had a huge Afro haircut, a chain around his neck with a .306 bullet, and we immediately became friends. I began classes preparatory to becoming a physical education teacher and coach, and probably within the first month, was introduced to marijuana. Most of the black male students at Dana lived on our floor, some athletes and some not, and many were users. I found I really enjoyed it.

Shortly after graduation, I was notified of a second interview in Lincoln, Nebraska, for the teaching position in Australia. My Dad asked if he could go with me and we drove to Lincoln together. Within a couple weeks, I was offered a 16 month contract in Australia, although the location wasn't designated. We wouldn't be told until we got there.

During the summer of '74, I worked at my brother-in-law's gas station, changing truck and car tires. I also spent the summer applying for my permanent resident visa and passport, getting my medical injections, etc. For about eight months, Laura, a student from Kansas, and I had become quite serious about one another. She was not happy about my going to Australia but accepted the fact. We agreed that once I was there I would try to make arrangements for her to come.

Somewhere around August 24, 1974, Laura and my immediate family gathered at the airport in Omaha, and I headed for Australia. I flew from Omaha to San Francisco, and the following day I was joined by about 350 other American teachers. We boarded a Quantas jumbo jet, and after stopping in Hawaii, flew straight to Sydney, Australia. We spent a night and day there, and the following day was put on a plane for Melbourne. A number of teachers were placed in a hostel there, and after several days, a male teacher from the school in which I was being placed, picked me up and drove me to his residence. The town where he lived and taught was Timboon. It was a small town of 800, in a rural setting of Southwestern Victoria, approximately 2 1/2 hours from Melbourne. It had already been arranged for me to share with him an old farm house that we rented from a sheep farmer. We lived 12 miles south of Timboon. We could see and hear the ocean from our house, and I became totally enthralled with the ocean.

The seasons are opposite in the southern and northern hemispheres, so when I arrived it was the end of winter and still quite chilly.  Most houses do not have furnaces, nor did we. We had fire places and kerosene heaters. It rained quite often, so things always seemed to be damp.

I began teaching physical education grades seven through twelve, but they use different terminology there. A senior in high school in America, is equivalent to "sixth form" in Australia. A junior is "fifth form," etc. Both male and female students were required to wear a school uniform, the theory being that all students look alike and it doesn't separate the rich from the poor. There was no gym. We used an empty hall with a stage. There was also a new female phys ed teacher from California. That was nice and helped me settle in somewhat. There were also other Americans who had already been teaching at the school.

I had not purchased a car so I rode the bus to school each morning and afternoon. At times I was quite lonely and homesick. The only adult I saw was my roommate, who was nice but very boring. We just had different personalities. He was extremely well organized and very meticulous. Everything had to be done his way. Consequently, I spent a lot of time reading and taking walks along the ocean, exploring the beach. We lived about a mile from a little hamlet called Peterborough, which consisted of a convenience store and a motel. It was sometimes a vacation spot for people to come for fishing, swimming, and camping. I became friendly with the proprietor. He was kind of a story teller, who always had an opinion about everything.

I was still living with Russell and his girl friend, when I met an actress named Sue. She was involved in theatrical plays in Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide, was in sit coms (situation comedies), commercials, and a couple movies. I got a job with the Federal Department of Youth and Industrial Relations. I worked with two other people to help young people, who dropped out of school and were on the street, with medical attention, groceries, finding them jobs, counseling, and offering them a place to hang out. I was in that job for three years and really enjoyed it. It opened my eyes to the seedy part of life. However, I began to use more and more heroin, spending most of the money Sue and I made. She was becoming angry, frustrated, and sad. While she was doing a play in Adelaide, she left me because she couldn't handle my addiction.

Shortly after this, I hit rock bottom. I began stealing money from my employer's bank account. My co-workers knew what was going on and I was confronted by them and by members of the committee who oversaw the work. They asked me to resign as a youth worker and told me they would help me get into treatment. Within a few days I entered Odessy House, which offered an inpatient treatment program in an old monastery building in the suburbs of Melbourne.  It was a huge facility on about 35 acres of land. There were between 100 and 150 male and female addicts. There was even a place for parents and children. The facility was managed by 50% Americans and 50% Australians. Most of the staff were recovering addicts.

Odessy House was originally started in New York City in the late 1960s by Dr. Vincent Barber. They were so successful that she started other facilities in Australia, Italy, and Canada. Everyone was required to detoxify cold turkey and I thought I was going to die. It is the most horrendous feeling to go through withdrawal, suffering severe cramps, headaches, and nausea. For me it lasted about a week.

I worked my way through the Odyssey house program and was in there for six months. When I left, I started working as a youth worker again in Fitzroy, a suburb of Melbourne, working with inner city kids in high rise apartments. I was probably there for six to eight months before I took a different youth job but still with inner city youth in the suburb of Richmond. Unfortunately, I relapsed into drug use and after a few months, in October 1986, I reentered Odyssey House and had to start from the bottom again. At this time, because of my particular therapy issues, the people in charge at Odyssey House decided it would be to my advantage to transfer to their program in Salt Lake City, Utah. At the end of November 1986, I left Melbourne and flew by myself to Salt Lake City.

I stayed in that program for eighteen months, finished, and returned to Mom and Dad's house in Corning. That was March 1987. I was 35 years old, not a penny in my pocket, very low pride; but I was clean, sober, and healthy, and I thanked God that my folks brought me home. At times it was very embarrassing to be living with Mom and Dad at age 35. One of my sisters told me that my dad was pretty embarrassed by my having been a drug addict. I realized that when he sent letters to Salt Lake City, even though he was assistant postmaster in Corning, he went to another town to mail them.

My first job was being hired by my uncle to chop and cut down evergreen trees on his property for $3.50 per hour, which I thought was quite humbling. I kept busy at that time by going to the high school on certain nights playing in a men’s basketball league. I also tried to help around the house as much as possible, and often went to the library. Later I was approached by a friend I had gone to high school with. He had started a concrete business and offered me a job pouring driveways and basements. It was extremely hard work.

"When late spring came, I invited my Dad to go fishing, and tried talking to him about life. It didn't seem that he wanted to talk. I wanted to tell him what I'd gone through, but he didn't want to know. In June of that year, on Friday before Father's Day, Dad woke Mom and me saying he was having chest pains. We took him to the Corning hospital, and from there they life flighted him to Omaha. He had an extreme heart attack. I think they gave him medication to thin the blood. We thought he was going to be okay so I drove from Omaha to Corning to pick up clothes for Mom and me. I drove out the next day but by the time I got there, he'd had a severe stroke and was in a coma. We pulled off the ventilator and he passed away on Father's Day.

I continued to work in the concrete business and one day in January 1989, I discovered I still had a teaching certificate in Iowa, and I had it reissued. I went to various schools to apply for substitute teaching, and started subbing in Corning, Massena, Bedford, and Lenox. At Lenox the principal asked if I would meet with him and the superintendent. Somebody had told them I'd done a lot of youth work. They wanted to start a youth program called behavior disorder program for kids with severe behavior problems. In February 1989, I became a behavior disorder teacher. I had to go back to school to take behavior classes, and got a temporary certificate for behavior disorder students. It scared me to death to go back to school. I hadn't been in school since 1974, but I began taking classes at Northwest Missouri State University.

I met my wife Diane, while I was in Lenox. She had three children - a freshman boy, a boy in seventh grade, and a girl in third. Her seventh grade boy was one of my students. On our first date we immediately shared almost all our life's history with each other and accepted one another's past. We immediately clicked and fell in love. I was ready to settle down and share my life with someone, and on September 2, 1989 we were married in a back yard wedding.

In May 1989, Lenox offered me a full time contract to be the behavior disorder teacher and I also became a coach of football, basketball and track. I had students from Bedford, Villisca, Red Oak, Corning, and Lenox. I often felt like a fish out of water. There were times when I simply did not know how to reach these children, to improve their behavior and academics. I tried different strategies and often asked other teachers for their opinions and ideas. It is my belief that one person alone cannot do this particular kind of job. These kids need so much attention, support, and guidance.

One of happiest days of my life was March 25, 1990, when Keifer, my first biological son, was born. It was quite amazing to watch his birth. One of the scariest days was December 22, 1991 when the second sibling, Dillon, was born. He had a certain kind of lung problem and was light blue. He had to spend five days in the hospital with a plastic hood that covered his head as they were giving him oxygen. Diane stayed with him and nursed him. On Christmas Day, Ron, Josh, Erin, Keifer, and I rounded up all the presents from home and took them to the hospital in Corning to celebrate Christmas.

We then had a family of five. Ron, Josh, and Erin were excellent in helping with Dillon's care. Everyone had to make sacrifices. I was teaching and coaching, and Diane had several jobs. We decided that Diane should be home as much as possible until our boys started kindergarten, so she took night jobs. She often went without sleep. One time when she worked the whole night, I came home and found her fast asleep on the couch. Toys were everywhere, the kitchen was total havoc. The phone was in the dishwater in the sink. I said, "Did you fall asleep?" We laughed and laughed. It took us three hours to get the house in order. I look back and wonder how we did it.

The oldest son, Ron, was an excellent wrestler and one year placed second in the state tournament, another year he placed third. During the years when he was in high school, we went to wrestling meets somewhere every Saturday. We took the babies Keifer and Dillon but we enjoyed going and watching Ron compete. At the end of his senior year, he accepted a wrestling scholarship at my alma mater, Dana College. He stayed one semester at Dana, but I think he became homesick and missed his girlfriend. He decided to quit Dana and returned to Lenox.

Shortly after Ron returned home, he decided he wanted to do something hands-on, so he enrolled at ITT Institute in Omaha. He finished that program in two years and immediately landed a job with Phones Plus in Omaha, working with cell phones. He married his longtime girlfriend Heather, and in the spring of 2003, they had a son, Max. They are very responsible and caring adults.

I mentioned that our son Josh was in my behavior disorder room. Through the years, Diane had taken him to several doctors and clinics, and after we were married, we continued to do so.  It seemed that everyone gave us a different diagnosis and prescribed different medication. Nothing seemed to help Josh. He can be, and often is a very kind and caring person. He loves the outdoors, especially to fish and hunt. Josh has two sons -- Kadn, and Kethn - and loves them both immensely.

Erin is a beautician, having graduated from La James, and is working in a salon in Des Moines. She loves her work because she can talk with anyone. She has a great personality and is a great cook. She often visits her grandparents who are in a nursing home in Corning, and takes good care of them as she also does of the boys.

In 1995, I decided to make a change and we came to Osceola. I taught in Osceola until 2002, and helped coach high school football a couple years, and high school baseball for one year. I was on the Little League baseball board a couple years, and coached several years. I was also involved in coaching little kids basketball, and four years ago Bill Jones and I started little league football, which involves elementary kids playing tackle football. For eight years, Diane has been working at the high school as secretary to the Athletic Director, and she supervises the suspension room.

In the summer of 2002, I decided to make another change and accepted a position with the Des Moines school district as a behavior interventionist. I work at Longfellow elementary, an inner city school. I am what we call a trouble shooter. I can go into any classroom, in which a student is misbehaving, and we go for a walk, play catch, or whatever it takes to settle him or her down and be ready to go back to the classroom. Twice a week I go into some of the classrooms and teach social skills. This is the modern way to teach manners, respect, responsibility, rules on playground, etc. We practice how to behave in a store. We go to a bakery, make a purchase, and say thank you. Formerly children picked this up from home training and socializing, but it isn't happening now. I've been saying for the last six or seven years that social skills should be part of the school curriculum.

I often think of how blessed I am to be alive, considering the things I've done to my body. There are many times when I should have been dead. I would say the Lord must be looking after me. At the time of this writing, I am ready to go back for my second year in Des Moines and I'm looking forward to the challenge.

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Last Revised November 4, 2012