Dr. Marian Salwierak is joining the Shawnee School District as a high school English teacher after spending more than 30 years at St. Gregory’s University. She was among the hirings approved this week at the monthly Shawnee Board of Education meeting.
She earned her doctorate recently, and has taught English and served in a number of capacities at St. Gregory’s. The local school system’s gain will be SGU’s loss.
Marian and her husband Gary, who works for the Oklahoma School of Science and Mathematics, have four children. They include Kathy, a Shawnee High School business teacher and her husband Jeff Chamblin, the Shawnee High School wrestling coach, who also teaches; Tracy, an attorney with Canavan and Associates and her husband Tim McDaniel, Shawnee Middle School teacher who is the current Shawnee Teacher of the Year; Stephen Salwierak, attending the OU Law School; and Ashley Salwierak, a student at Oklahoma State University.
She and Gary also have five grandchildren. Kathy and Jeff have three of them, Taylor, 11, Colby, 9 and Cade, 6. Tracy and Tim have two children, Garrett, 11, and Mackenzie, 7.
Stephen, who graduated from Notre Dame, is attending the University of Oklahoma College of Law in Norman. He will begin his second year of law school next month and he is in England this summer attending the OU/Oxford exchange program.
Ashley will be a senior at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater this fall. She is working toward a double major in molecular biology and chemistry.
And, showing what a small world this really is, Marian and Gary are the godparents of Pat’s and my daughter Meghan.
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My wife Pat and I celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary Tuesday. On Sunday, a couple of days preceding it, my mother-in-law, Ruth Davis, had us over for dinner as part of the celebration.
Ruth would call it “just Sunday dinner,” but it was quite a feast. She had cooked a ham, and had cooked the potatoes around the ham to go along with green beans, corn, a special jello salad she fixes and her huge, homemade rolls and ice tea. For dessert there was cherry confetti pie made from scratch and coffee.
It was simply a wonderful dinner.
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Leon and Leona Rogers from Shawnee recently attended the charter banquet celebration of the Rotary Interact Club of Norman Home School, which was held in memory of their son Harold Rogers who died five years ago following a long bout with cancer. Harold was 51 at the time of his death.
Leon said that his son Harold, who was described in the program as “an enthusiastic member of the Norman Rotary Club, was insistent that home schoolers should not be excluded from the Norman Interact Club which was initiated in Norman High School in 1997.
Leon mentioned that it took five years after his son’s death for the inclusion of home schoolers to become reality. He and Leona were invited guests during the celebration banquet.
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Stephanie Canada, who was chosen Oklahoma’s Teacher of the Year last September, is taking a leave of absence from the Shawnee school system for the 2008-09 academic year.
Canada teaches physical education at Will Rogers Elementary.
Superintendent Marilyn Bradford said that Canada has been chosen as one of eight “fellows” from around the country to serve and work with the Department of Education in Washington, D.C., for one year. She said Canada was one of the eight chosen from more than 200 who had applied for the positions.
Bradford said the state’s top teacher will serve as a regional director, which encompasses Oklahoma and several other states.
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Some residents in the Enchanted Forest housing addition at East 45th Street and Bryan are a little upset about the lack of trash service recently. The yard waste is to be picked up city wide on Wednesdays, according to the schedule announced by the city and Allied Waste, and trash in that housing addition is supposed to be picked up on Thursdays.
Apparently, the yard waste of some of those residents wasn’t picked up on Wednesday, June 25, and trash in the addition was not being picked up on Thursday, June 26.
People are to have their trash ready to be picked up by 7 a.m. on the scheduled day.
Reportedly, when the trash wasn’t collected on the scheduled day, some residents put their carts back up and didn’t have them out at 5:30 a.m. on Friday morning, June 27, when the trash truck entered the addition.
I suggested to the person who complained to me about this that she call her commissioner, but her commissioner was out of town, so I advised her to call Commissioner Tom Schrzan. That got some action, and among those who contacted the resident from that area were Toni Gray, assistant to the city manager, and some of the Allied Waste officials.
City commissioners recently evaluated the former city manager two months early and he is no longer there. Commissioners might want to review the performance of the local trash company throughout the city, too, especially in light of the fact that trash service rates went up $1 Tuesday.
Also, if you do experience a problem with your trash service, Gray, at city hall, 214-4243, is willing to help field your concerns.
If you have ideas or something of interest for this column, please call me at 214-3922 or e-mail me at michael.mccormick@news-star.com, but please include your name and a phone number for contact purposes.
