Intro and Other Blogs Relating to this Memorial Project

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46., 46.1 May 14 &17, 1968: Letters from Barb and Milton to Grandma and Grandpa Cochrane

46. May 14, 1968 Dear Mom and Dad, (Cochrane from Barb) Got your letter today and I guess we don’t say enough about what goes on here. I mean with regard to the floods around. There are plenty of them, but none real close by, and only one minor one on the road to nairobi. There is a valley on the way to Nairobi that was flooded, but the road goes around it instead of through it. In fact, I think the guy who built the road between here and Nairobi did his best to see how far up and how far down he could go at every turn. It is an uncomfortable road to ride because the pavement is full of dips and bumps, similar to small frost heaves, but Frank says it is just poor road construction. And while there are many curves and uphill and downhill, it seems to be fairly easy to drive.  Some of these African drivers are something else, but you don’t worry about that, you just drive with extra caution. On the way to see Diane last Saturday, we saw two wrecks. One, a bus was laying half way down...
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The Beginning

The following is an introduction that Barbara wrote to this collection of letters that Barbara penned in 1988-89.  Greener Pastures. That connotation must have mutated into our genes by the thirteenth year of teaching. We had moved so many times in Frank's teaching career, always with the hope that we could find that "ideal job", that it seemed a natural fit, when our friend and colleague, Kim Kimberling, discovered an advertisement in the NEA Journal for tutors to train teachers in East Africa. Frank was feeling the potential stagnation of teaching several years in the same junior high school in Boise, Idaho. He really began to worry that things were going too smoothly; that he might be taken for granted, and as such might be staring at the same four walls, in the same classroom when he reached the age of fifty five. We had been farming since 1959 when we moved on to the family farm from a teaching job in California, in hopes that we could make a thriving enterprise out ...
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47. May 20, 1968: Barbara's letter to her folks - Diane is home

  47. May 20, 1968 Dear Mom and Dad (Line from Barb) Last Saturday we went to Nairobi and brought Diane home. Frank decided she wasn’t covering enough, especially in Science to  make her ready for the tenth grade at Madrid, and that on top of everything, moving so slow in class that she had to be first in the class and keep up two correspondence courses, one in Algebra. So she’s home to finish the correspondence course we brought, plus an extra course in Earth Science that Frank is teaching her. We are all real glad! Especially Vicki! I don’t think they have stopped talking since we got home! I suppose it will be just as bad when they go off to Madrid next fall, but at least we are all together now. Lately it seemed every time we wanted to go somewhere we felt we couldn’t because Diane wasn’t along. And when we did go somewhere it was always to Nairobi and to see Diane. Now we are thinking of some one-day weekend trips around here to see the country in some other directions be...
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