What's in the Water in Midland, Texas?

 By: Dianne Neuman Whittington

I was 4/5 years old (1949) when we moved to Midland from Silver City, New Mexico.  My mother, brother, and I were all born in Silver.  My father was in charge of the silver mine in the town of Vanadium, a mining town of about 20 houses and about 15 minutes from Silver City. He moved there after college graduation with US Smelting, Refining and Mining and married my mother.  Our move to Midland began my father ‘s career in the oil business.  I am pretty sure that my mother cried for the first year that we lived there.  She thought we had moved to the flattest, most desolate place possible.  The heat was unbearable and the dust storms continually filled the house with sand. We had neighbors to the east but the west was a sea of vacant lots filled with tumbleweeds that always blew into our cinderblock fence.

For some reason in the fall, my father and all the neighbors burned the Bermuda grass in their yards.  It always came back in the spring.  My father also planted a pine tree in the front yard just to prove that one could grow there. It was still there when we moved in 1965. I never had trouble making friends as the neighborhood was filled with families with children.  There was always someone to meet that wanted to play. I am still friends with these playmates.  We are grown up now and find that we all still have Midland in common. When we get together the laughter never seems to stop.  My brother, Jimmy, and I were able to start and finish school in Midland.  When oil crashed in 1965, my brother and I were in college at TCU.  My father was transferred back to mining in Salt Lake City, Utah.  My mother finally moved back to the mountains she loved. While at TCU I met Glenn Whittington (MHS ’61) and we were married in 1968.  His father was also in the oil business in Midland.  His family moved back to Shreveport, Louisiana in 1965.  Even though we had no relatives in Midland, we chose to be married there as we both had such strong memories.  It must have been a good choice as we celebrated 50 years in 2018.