Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

I remain confident of this:
    I will see the goodness of the Lord
    in the land of the living.
Wait for the Lord;
    be strong and take heart
    and wait for the Lord.

• Psalm 27:13-14

Sitting down, Jesus called the Twelve and said, “Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all.”

• Mark 9:35

To explain the verses, Psalm 27:14 is the verse my wife quoted most often, but when you add Psalm 27:13 and Mark 9:35, you get the essence of the woman I married.

My wife was again a senior in college, this time in elementary education, but I was being attacked by old enemies at the plant, for a third time, although I had created an accreditation worthy training program.  Also, I had already made a statement to the pastor of our church that major changes were about to happen.  I had no official word that changes would happen, but a year after I left, the plant started a year-long transition from 25,000 people to 11,000 people.  The entire area became severely depressed economically.  With strong feelings that this was about to happen and with a job offer that offered a nice pay increase, we moved to an economically poor area of Mississippi.  The area featured unemployed, or farming, husbands with the wives working at the factories.  The men were rarely hired for factory work since they loved taking weeks off to hunt in the winter months.  The wives were more stable.

But with this type of neighborhood, the rental properties were few, and rundown.  We could not buy until our house sold in South Carolina.  It did not sell due to the economic disaster that hit the area.  I escaped, but not fast enough to sell the house, and we were not asking top dollar either.

Our Three Residences

Our first home looked like a German cottage in the Black Forest.  It was very small, but we settled in.  There was no oven nor stove top in the house.  The landlord called that a “luxury” and not required by state law.  We found out soon why there was no stove top and oven.  The shower, directly above the space where the oven had been had faulty drain plumbing.  When you took a shower, the water drained through the floor onto the opening where the oven had been.  The landlord suggested we could forget the shower, but we insisted he fix it.  In the landlord’s view, that was excessive on our part.

We had priced our home low to get a quick sale that never happened.  We had made a six-month lease.  Our second complaint, that was never fixed, was that the electrical outlets on the lower floor, with the exception of two or three, did not work.  When we had three floods in those six months that flooded the house up to ankle depth, one up to knee depth, we decided that the electrical outlets had simply been damaged by previous floods.

In spite of this, my wife joined the YMCA.  She met some friends and invited them to the house for an authentic Indonesian meal, with a few American additions.  She had bought a two-eye electrical stove top – designed for caterers.  She used our toaster oven to bake a layer cake, one layer at a time.  When the people arrived, they loved the food, but they were flabbergasted in that they wondered how she made all that food with a double burner catering stove and a toaster oven.  She suddenly became the hostess with the mostest in the neighborhood.  Sadly, one of those ladies committed suicide a few months later.  This had a profound impact on my wife.

After six months, we had already found a new place, just a block away.  My aunt new someone who new someone, a newer house, no flood damage, but no intention of ever fixing anything either.  But as we moved the last load in my small pick-up truck the single block, the sheriff showed up with an eviction notice.  The former landlord was a Baptist preacher.  He provided the slum house for people who were homeless, and since we wanted things fixed – two complaints and only one single complaint fixed – we were not Christian material and not appreciative of such a palace as he had provided.  When the sheriff saw us leaving with the last load, he tore up the eviction notice and asked if he could help us move in, but a couple of guys from work were already helping.  It seemed the sheriff knew the landlord’s reputation, but the landlord had the judge in his back pocket.

We stayed at that residence for a year, the term of the lease.  I heard an explosion in the gas furnace.  Several control valve handles were half melted, but everything still worked, so the landlady did not fix it.  I smelled gas.  Thus, there was a slight gas leak, and then we moved near the NASA project into a manufactured home for the next two and a half years, cheaper rent, a large yard, quiet neighbors, and a short commute for me.  And our landlady fixed everything we said was broken without question.  Her husband was a fellow NASA project employee.

It was at this house that we found ourselves isolated, an antenna that could get only three networks.  I think ABC was the odd one out, but that is when MawMaw’s house was sold and we bought a satellite dish with our share of the money.  We had channels we had never heard of before and we found some sporting events on the “off” channels on some of the satellite feeds that did not have commercials (thus how a network can broadcast several local games).  We liked exploring.

Our State of Mind and My Wife’s Social Calendar

The house not selling in South Carolina was a financial disaster.  Each time we rented to someone, there were major repairs afterward, but the rent helped pay the mortgage while it lasted.  With the economic disaster where we had been, no one stayed in the house for more than a few months, maybe four months maximum.  Each renter, someone with a job, quickly found someone willing to sell their home for basically what was left on the mortgage, and they broke our lease and left the house a wreck in the bargain.  Their deposit rarely covered the repairs.  And we owed too much for us to gain an advantage in doing the same thing others were doing.

Our younger son announced that he was suicidal.  We talked to him and we thought it was just because he had moved away from his friends.  As he got involved in Scouting – for a short while – and then the band, he was still depressed, but he did not talk about suicide anymore.  We thought it was simply the trouble of making new friends.  He simply quit talking about it, and it got worse, years later.  The good news is that God used that to eventually have him accept Jesus and the suicidal ideas vanished.  But that is much later.

Our older son started dating during this time.  When we moved where the plant was located, we found that everyone in town was loosely related to one of about 3-4 families.  One girl who saw our son when he first appeared on the high school campus.  She yelled, “Look! Fresh meat!”  He ended up dating her several times.  He missed his old friends, but he seemed to find new ones.

His younger brother could not get a date, but the music teacher saw potential.  He was sent from one competition to another.  As a freshman in high school, he was the only freshman to qualify for the top honors band in the state, but we moved not long after he got that honor.

But while I was working and getting regular pay increases at work, my wife joined the NASA project women’s auxiliary.  They performed service projects in the area.  They brought good will to everyone.  And they gave the wives of the engineers something to do in the backwoods of Mississippi.  The second year there, my wife became president of the organization.  She had more face time with my boss’ boss’ boss than I did.  While they were on a first name basis, I had never met the man other than in a group setting.

While I was guiding and directing the educational efforts of the NASA project, she was soaring with the big bosses and getting the project’s name in the newspaper on a regular basis.  She even renovated a building that was ear-marked for a government assistance project.  She had all the necessary requirements to be the manager of that project.  The town was required to advertise, and they knew exactly who she was, but they had used the usual nepotism and hired a family friend.  It was an awkward, government-required interview.  The newly hired manager had no qualifications whatsoever.  They pocketed the government money and the building was empty a year later and no one new where the ”manager” had gone when they disappeared.  They could have hired my wife, but they didn’t.

The next auxiliary president could not get the group to do anything.  She told my wife, “I’m a retired colonel’s wife.  I know how to get things done, but I cannot get these ladies to do anything.  How did you do it?”

My wife replied, “The congressman that got this project funded had a stroke.  We have lost our champion in Washington, DC.  Everyone is afraid the project will be cancelled.”  A few months later, Clinton was elected president and our project was cancelled before he ever took office.  Of course, he had come to the project area and said he would ensure we kept our jobs.  The red tape took a year, but over 200 people were all out of work.

My Wife Got a Job When I Could Not

I was out of work for exactly one year.  Laid off on 20 December.  Hired for a nuclear project in Washington state on 20 December, a year later.  Each of the boys would experience three different high schools over their four years.

But two months into the layoff, the hospital where we used to live, thirty miles down the road, told the media that they were looking for certified surgical techs.  They had few nurses that were qualified and no certified technicians.  The new hospital administrator was adamant about fixing their problems.

My wife showed up the next day.  The administrator saw a lifetime certification and he was sold, but during the employee physical, she was rejected.  She asked the doctor who rejected her if she could look at the form he had filled out.  The reason for her rejection was “Too Old.”  She was 43 years old at the time, but she had not done any surgical work for over ten years.

As the doctor tried to wrestle the paperwork out of her hands, she walked down the hallway to the hospital administrator’s office.  He saw what had been written there, and he told her that she started work the next day.

With the hospital hating that there was a certified candidate in the area, the entire staff conspired to sabotage everything my wife did.  When she was on call, we were thirty miles away, but she had to be “less than” thirty miles away.  Other employees could go to another town, seventy miles away, but she was not allowed to go home and sleep in her own bed. When she stayed at a local hotel, we lost money since she did not get called in, so she decided to sleep on a recovery room bed in the surgical suite at night.  This was before the days of cellphones, so she had to let them know what she was doing.  They became angered that her resourcefulness had thwarted their plans to force her into quitting.  She had to work.  Mississippi was the next to lowest, by about $5 each week, in unemployment benefits, and I was already cashing in portions of my IRA to buy food (with severe tax penalties).  By the end of the year, my older son would try to get financial aid for college, but I had made too much money while not working at all – by cashing in the entire IRA which became claimed income. And my substitute teaching had been hit or miss.

Thinking of sabotage, she worked almost all the cases, only having the unqualified people work the cases when emergencies meant two surgical suites were in operation.  I think they had four in total.  The nurses and other techs ruining things, making them unsterile so my wife would run out of instruments were common.  Endangering countless patients was a daily practice.  This outsider, my wife, who was certified had to go along with the new hospital administrator.  But on one case, my wife was always responsible for a sponge and suture count before the doctor could close the patient’s cavity (where they cut into the patient to do the surgery).  They were one suture short.  She looked everywhere.  She asked everyone to step back, and all did except for the surgeon.  A suture or sponge left in the patient would certainly cause infection and another surgery to get the offensive item out of the body. The suture could be found nowhere.  A suture was a curved needle with thread attached to sew up something.  Before she raised the alarm that the patient could not be closed up, she saw something in the doctor’s eyes.  She lowered her shoulder and imitated an American football linebacker.  She rammed into the doctor, and he staggered a few steps back.  He had dropped the suture and then kept his foot on it to make her count off.  She then announced that he could close the patient.  Of course, the doctor claimed that he had no idea how the suture got there, but he had been the only one who refused to move, and all the nurses were laughing.  His lie was not believable at that point.

Yes, patients could have died, but getting rid of my wife was more important.  If you need surgery in Northeast Mississippi, go to Tupelo or out of the state.  Your life may depend upon it, but I will not name the hospital.  Besides, that was over thirty years ago now.  All those people are either retired or no longer living.

When I got the job in Washington state, my wife gave them two week’s notice.  The nursing director asked, “Why?  They will only abuse you for two more weeks.”  Surprisingly, since they knew she would be gone soon, they backed off.  The only other new hire, a fresh graduate from a nearby community college, came up to my wife and said, “Thanks for nothing.  With you gone, they will start abusing me.”

Just as she left, my wife got pneumonia.  We did not know it at the time, but she would get either pneumonia or bronchitis every year, about the same time, for the rest of her life, diagnosed as COPD, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder.  We drove two vehicles from Mississippi to Washington state with her sharing the driving with our older son, who had recently gotten his driving license, while I drove the pickup truck, a stick shift that he could not drive.  And she finally started feeling better from the pneumonia when we arrived in Richland, Washington.

And what is next?

The next couple of years showed my wife’s versatility, but also signs that her health was already worsening in her mid-40s.

And to all this, I give praise and honor to God.  Only He knew that the two of us would one day marry each other, and it would truly be until death did we part.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.