Half a century cannot keep Jackie Shelton from knowing all about some of the students she has taught — not when they’ve grown to lead such memorable lives.

There’s the Whittier boys who grew up to be a doctor, a grocer and an insurance agent, the Fort Gibson girl who now teaches college, the kid at Hilldale who now cleans her carpet and represents her town in the Legislature.

Keeping up is important to the veteran teacher, now 76. She not only keeps up with former students, but also several teachers with whom she has worked.

“We retired teachers meet once a month at different places — we even had a meeting yesterday,” she said last week from her sunlit living room in southeast Muskogee.

Shelton looks back on a teaching career that includes one year in the old two-story Whittier Elementary School, one year at Grant Foreman Elementary when it was the newest school in town, then 23 years at the ever-growing Hilldale Elementary.

She even married an educator, David Shelton, who taught and coached for 11 years at Alice Robertson Middle School.

“I met David in college at Northeastern,” she said, recalling her years at Northeastern State University. “He played football at the University of Oklahoma under Bud Wilkinson.



“He planned on teaching school, so he finished his two degrees at Northeastern.”



Teaching came as

a surprise occupation

Even though Jackie Shelton looks back on a distinguished education career, she does not recall growing up wanting to teach.

“When I was in high school, I took an aptitude test and the and the teacher said to me, ‘Jackie, it looks like you need to be a teacher, and I kind of laughed, because I didn’t know what he had in mind.”

After graduating from Okmulgee High School in 1951, the Henryetta native attended Oklahoma State University’s Okmulgee branch “to get some preliminaries out of the way.”

After a year at East Central College in Ada, she transferred to Northeastern, where she eventually earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees.

She got her first teaching job at Fort Gibson, immediately running into an interesting job requirement.

“They said you could not commute; you had to live in town,” she said. “So I lived in a two-story house.”

After a year in Fort Gibson, the Sheltons moved to Okmulgee, where David Shelton could work on the Beeline Expressway, which linked the town to Tulsa.



Fond memories at

Whittier Elementary

Back in Muskogee, Shelton began teaching at Whittier Elementary School in 1957 and 1958. At the time, part of Whittier was in a two-story building that was constructed in 1911. She said she was in that “old, old building,” which had the cafeteria in the basement.

“They gave me the smartest kids in the third and fourth grade, and man, they worked me to death,” she said. “They have done great things with their lives. There were three businessmen who came out of that class. One became a doctor, Dr. Janway, Jimmy Keitel, who was in the grocery business, Steven Smalley, he’s in insurance.

Shelton eventually taught with Smalley’s wife at Hilldale, and Smalley’s son, Matthew, was her student at Hilldale, she said.

Shelton recalled a first-grader she taught at Fort Gibson grew up to become a professor at University of Central Oklahoma in Edmond, “and she married one of the fellows I had at Whittier.”

“During my year at Whittier, I was the youngest one in my building,” Shelton said. “To my knowledge, I am the only one still living.”

The following year, Shelton was transferred to the new Grant Foreman Elementary. But there was a problem.

“The building wasn’t finished, so a teacher and I had to share an auditorium at Whittier that first part of the year,” she said. When we moved in, it was so modern. It was beautiful.”



More than 20 years at

Hilldale before retirement

After Muskogee, Shelton planned to raise a family, but Hilldale Principal Kenneth Parker had other plans.

“He was my first principal at Hilldale, and he was fantastic,” she said. “He called one day and said, ‘Jackie, I’ve got to have another second-grade teacher.’ I hadn’t planned to go back to teaching that soon. I had to find a housekeeper, and we worked it out.”

Shelton taught at Hilldale for 23 years, starting when the school only went up to the eighth grade and retiring after it added the high school. One of her students grew up to be State Rep. George Faught, who owns a carpet cleaning business.

“Hilldale was fantastic,” she said. “It had marvelous parents you could work with. I had more good days than bad days.”

One of her most memorable days also was her last.

“The day I retired, they gave me a surprise ‘This is Your Life’ retirement party. I was thoroughly surprised,” she said. “They had a mic behind the curtain, somebody would say something and they’d open the curtain. It was a whole day of marvelous things featuring friends, teachers, principals, my mother came over. I thoroughly enjoyed it.”

Shelton said she and her husband spent part of their retirement traveling.

“But we’ve gotten so involved with family and church, we don’t get a change of scenery often,” she said.



HOW DID YOU COME TO BE AN OKIE FROM MUSKOGEE? “The reason I am an Okie from Muskogee was that I married David Shelton. He was born and raised here, and he played football at OU under Bud Wilkinson.”



WHAT OKIE HAD THE MOST INFLUENCE ON YOUR LIFE? “My mom. She was here in 1987 until she passed away in 2008. She was such a loving, giving, caring person. You cannot out-give my mother.



WHAT IS THE MOST MEMORABLE THING TO HAPPEN TO YOU SINCE BECOMING AN OKIE FROM MUSKOGEE? “Our children were born here in Muskogee, our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren also.”



WHAT IS THE BEST THING ABOUT MUSKOGEE? “There are so many good things. We have so many good schools, from nursery school to colleges in and around town. We have so many different places to eat, places to shop, all kinds of entertainment. There is no reason to be bored in Muskogee.



WHAT WOULD MAKE MUSKOGEE A BETTER PLACE TO LIVE? “People are trying as best as they can to get rid of vacant lots and move houses that are dilapidated.”



HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE MUSKOGEE TO A FRIEND? “I have told my friend about the marvelous things at Honor Heights Park around Christmas, and the azaleas in spring. We have the parades, the Veterans parade and the Christmas parade. We have museums, one at Bacone, the Five Tribes and the one on Elgin.”



Meet Jackie Shelton

AGE: 76.

HOMETOWN: Henryetta, raised in Okmulgee.

EDUCATION: Graduated from Okmulgee High School, class of 1951; bachelor’s degree from Northeastern State University, 1951; Master’s degree from NSU, 1961.

CAREER EXPERIENCE: Taught school at Fort Gibson, Okmulgee, Muskogee and Hilldale.

FAMILY: She and husband, David Shelton, have four grown children: Sheryl Shelton, Sandi Coltharp, John David Shelton and Stacy Shelton, plus 10 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

CHURCH/RELIGIOUS AFFILIATION: Eastern Heights Baptist Church, “ever since the late 1950s. We’re very active and teach Vacation Bible School and Sunday School.

HOBBIES: “Besides crochet, I like lots of crossword puzzles, and I am definitely a football and basketball fan. We like to walk the mall.”