Discovery has defined Patsy Barham’s life.
“I am a pioneer,” she said. “I identify with the covered wagons going across the country. I identify with the spirit of it. Or to be an astronaut! I would never – I’m a chicken,” she laughed, “but I love the idea of discovering something new.”
And so she has.
Barham, it seems, “pioneered” from her earliest days, helping reestablish girls sports opportunities at NHS, becoming an Episcopal priest as part of a second career that spanned 20 years, and helping establish some of the earliest programs at NISD to help students battling dyslexia.
Student at Nacogdoches High School
Patsy Barham’s recollection from her days at Nacogdoches High School is impressive. The Nacogdoches native – and member of the NHS Class of 1967 – moves easily between her days walking the halls of her alma mater as a student and the more than 30 years she served as an educator at Nacogdoches ISD.
With great affection, she easily recalls the memories and odds and ends of a lifetime devoted to education, reaching all the way back to advocating for and being a part of the return of girls UIL athletic teams at Nacogdoches High School.
By the middle of the 1960s, there were no University Interscholastic League activities for girls, even though the Dragons had fielded women's basketball teams as far back as the 1930s. So Barham, and some of her friends, forced the issue and Nacogdoches High School had a girls volleyball team her junior year.
“There was no UIL competition of any kind for girls at the time in our school,” Barham said.
So she and her friends got busy. “I petitioned the PE teacher along with about two or three of the other girls.” The petition went up the ladder, all the way to the Nacogdoches ISD school board. And they agreed.
“We had the neatest uniforms,” Barham said. “They were gold satin – and they were appropriate length.”
Barham co-captained the team – she wore No. 11 – when practice got underway her junior year, and the Dragons reached bi-district in the first season of competition.
“Think about how many girls organizations they have now compared to what we had,” she said. “That was the beginning.”
During those high school days, Barham worked on the Dragon Echo, the student-produced newspaper that’s still published today at NHS. But Barham and others wanted more, and they founded The Observer, a slick-paper magazine-style publication that contained features on students and other subjects of interest around school.
The students were encouraged to be as independent as possible by their journalism teacher.
“I said ‘I wanted to be the editor,’” she said. “We had human interest stories, but we also would volunteer information to know more about a teacher or student. The Observer also carried stories on fashion from around the school, and while the magazine-style publication came with “extra responsibility” for the student staff, Barham said, “We had a good time with it.”
Barham was also Poet Laureate for her class. In English, in 10th grade, while sitting at the back of the room, she began writing poems about each of her classmates. Spoiler alert: They weren’t always complimentary. (“They wanted to scrutinize that later,” she said.)
“One of the things I’ve always enjoyed is studying people.”
Tragic day in Dallas
It’s with remarkable clarity that Barham remembers Nov. 22, 1963… the day President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. An announcement from the intercom let students know something was taking place in Dallas, she said (and that was a rarity in and of itself because the intercom was rarely used). Sitting in a ninth-grade science lab, Barham said she and her friends first ducked under the tables, an exercise they had practiced in response to a severe storm warning or threat of nuclear war in those days of the Cold War.
The teacher – Ms. Alexander – reassured them there was no reason to take cover. “It was an instant response,” said Barham.
The entire student body was solemnly ushered into the auditorium so the principal could share more information about what had happened that day in Dealey Plaza.
“It was very sobering for us as young people because at that time, the general thought of human growth and development is that you think you will live forever,” Barham said.
Upheaval… in the world and at home
The late 1960s and early 1970s were a period of upheaval, and Nacogdoches was not immune. The Vietnam War was in full swing overseas, and at home, communities across Texas and the American South were dealing with the realities of school integration.
Full integration of Nacogdoches schools came following Barham’s time as a student, but she was back on campus as a teacher.
Barham said it took a while for everything to settle that first year at the high school. “It became routine to expect the unexpected.” But she was also pleasantly surprised – and grateful – for how students were able to find ways to work through their differences, oftentimes in ways that were both humorous and thoughtful.
Growing up, Barham knew other Black children, mostly in San Augustine where her grandparents lived and she would visit often, especially in the summer. Barham recalls Linda – “We were close friends” – and the two girls played regularly on her grandparents’ farm.
Once, Barham said, while she and Linda were still rather young, their arms brushed up against each other, situating their white and dark skin closely together.
“She and I both were curious, ‘Wonder what’s the difference other than besides our skin?’” Barham recounts. “Are we the same inside?”
The two girls found something sharp, and each pricked the end of a finger… not enough to hurt anything but sufficient to draw blood. “We looked, and the blood was the same,” Barham said. “So we decided we could be sisters, and we put our fingers together and became sisters forever because our blood was the same.”
After NHS? Back to NHS!
When Barham – then Patsy Griffin – graduated from NHS in 1967, she had already completed credit hours at Stephen F. Austin State University, an early manifestation of the now popular dual credit opportunities many students take advantage of today while still in high school. Those college credits ultimately let her complete her degree early at SFA. Barham went right back to Nacogdoches High School, now as a teacher.
It might be said she merely went back to the family business. Barham’s mother Bettie Griffin was also a Nacogdoches ISD teacher.
It was when she had children of her own and trying to find a way through dyslexia, Barham convinced Nacogdoches ISD to create a program to treat students like her sons. Barham studied herself on the best tactics, and NISD launched the program. And she ran it.
“Two of my children were dyslexic, so I studied that,” said Barham, adding matter-of-factly, “You can’t say that and not do something about it.”
She and her husband George – also a NHS grad – sent the two children out-of-state for schools designed to work with students with dyslexia. But that didn’t hold her back from advocating for a program here in Nacogdoches.
Students struggling with dyslexia were treated much like the hearing-impaired were in those days, Barham said. “Until then, they were considered unable to learn.”
“We can’t have children here and not have a program for dyslexia,” she added. “They’re smart, they have to learn differently.
Barham went to the Niehaus Education Center in Houston to start the process of preparing to teach students like her sons. She reached an agreement with the Nacogdoches school board; she paid half of her tuition and the district covered the remainder.
“I helped set up a plan in the district,” said Barham.
The new program was phased in at all levels, extending from the earliest grades up to Nacogdoches High School. She recalled using Scrabble to help students in the classroom. On Fridays, the board game was a reward for completing work through the week.
And it wasn’t just English speakers who needed assistance. Barham described the hurdles that had to be cleared to provide similar assistance to Spanish speaking students also struggling with dyslexia. “I would be so rewarded because they were learning.”
She also convinced some students there was a future in learning how to be translators, and at least one began a career in the court system helping Spanish speakers communicate with county officials.
After teaching, still the pioneer
It wasn’t just family and the school district making demands on her time. Barham was also active in the community; she’s a charter member of Junior Forum – established 50 years ago.
And there was more to come. Fast forwarding to the end of a 33-year career at NISD, Barham helped encourage The Powers That Be in the Texas Episcopal Church to expand a program training women to help out with the parishes, particularly those located in rural parts of the state, that had no one to lead them.
“At the time, Texas was the largest and wealthiest Episcopal diocese in the country and there was no excuse for churches to go without priests,” Barham said. “There were multiple churches out here but they were not shepherded by a priest.”
Church officials agreed, and Barham was one of the first to go through the course. At Camp Allen, just outside of Navasota, Barham and other women began training for the ministry. Some inside the church voiced reluctance. “One administrator said, ‘We’re risking a lot.’”
Barham graduated after three years while commuting from Nacogdoches. Then, the church bishop decided where to plant the new priests in a bi-vocational role. After her first assignment, Barham was sent to St. Matthew’s, just up the road in Henderson, where she’s served 17 years.
Despite ongoing health challenges, Barham remains the “Priest in Charge” and is called for consultation, pastoral care, decision-making, and resolving “chaos and confusion” (something ever present whenever humans are involved, regardless of the fact it’s the church).
“Nothing in your experience as a human being is wasted,” Barham said. “All of that was like pieces of a puzzle.”
Barham’s journey has always been about discovery, and she remains what she has always been – a true pioneer at heart.