Retiree finds more to do after work

Multi-tasking and careful scheduling must have become second nature to Judy Harrell, 57, Tecumseh, who retired Oct. 1 as OG&E community relations coordinator.
Her 27-year career with OG&E took her from making energy audits in attics and weatherizing elderly peoples’ homes to teaching electrical safety and economics/free enterprise in six counties’ grade schools to pivotal posts in a long list of social service organizations.
Harrell’s first day as a retiree started at 3 a.m. Oct. 1 when she and her husband, Mike Harrell, arose to take their houseguest, a Nikaho, Japan, teacher to Shawnee City Hall to join his delegation for a 4 a.m. trip home after an annual Shawnee-Nikaho sister cities exchange visit here.
And Harrell is still busy. Among her activities are:
• President or chairwoman of  Big Brothers/Big Sisters, Retired Senior Volunteers Program (RSVP) Advisory Council, and Shawnee Salvation Army Women’s Auxiliary nominating committee;
• Secretary of Salvation Army Advisory Board; on recruitment-retention committee of Family Promise; board member of  COEDD’s seven county Area Agency on Aging; and CARE Association Adult Day Center;
• Active in Shawnee Sister Cities. Since its organization in 1990, she’s hosted Nikaho student or adult delegates annually and visited Nikaho twice;
• Helping with Oct. 23 Salvation Army Women’s Auxiliary spaghetti dinner; and Mike Harrell’s Big Brother friendship with a 9-year-old former Horace Mann student.
 The Harrells teach a Tecumseh First Baptist Church Sunday School class of 30-somethings. She assists with their church’s quarterly meal for The Salvation Army homeless shelter. Both are trained Southern Baptist Disaster Relief Team volunteers but have yet to serve in a disaster.
Judy Harrell was called to help in Louisiana and Texas last month but had to decline because September was her last month with OG&E.
And it was a busy one.
 Because Harrell had coordinated OG&E community roundtable discussions for years, she was asked to do ones for Pottawatomie, Lincoln, Payne, Seminole, Hughes and Okfuskee counties before she retired.
She invited representatives from social service agencies, other organizations and school superintendents to hear OG&E officials “communicate about things that are going on with OG&E,” Harrell said.
“It’s a networking opportunity,” she added, “and also to show appreciation to all those agencies for the work they do.”
Also last month, Harrell did electrical safety programs for fourth graders in Earlsboro, Butner, Macomb, Glencoe, North Rock Creek, Wetumka, Agra, Stroud and Carney schools.
 She has conducted those safety programs in the six-county area for 25 years.
Harrell taught Junior Achievement classes for many years, an OG&E program that informs students about economics and the free enterprise system.
She awarded OG&E grants, ranging up to $1,000, to seven outstanding science, math and reading teachers in this area. “There were 32 statewide,” she said. One teacher each from Grove, Will Rogers and Maud schools were among the seven area winners.
Harrell headed a United Way Day of Caring in which she and OG&E employees painted two large rooms at Gateway; and with a different OG&E team, cemented together concrete blocks to form a new base for an outdoor air conditioning unit at Stillwater’s Starting Point organization. The old base had washed out. They repaired a wood fence around it, too.
“OG&E does a lot of good things. I have enjoyed working for them,” Harrell said.
 She has never lived anywhere but Pottawatomie County. Daughter of a physician, Harrell grew up in McLoud. She graduated from McLoud High School in May 1969 and married her former chemistry teacher Aug. 1, 1969.
 Mike Harrell had just graduated from The University of Oklahoma when he was hired to replace his future wife’s chemistry teacher who had been drafted. She was a junior then.
They didn’t start dating until her senior year- and not until he got the McLoud school board’s permission.
 “They could have said no, you better not, but they gave us their blessing. I think God had a hand in it,” she said.
 The Harrells have been married 39 years, have two daughters, Angela Atkins, Norman, and Dr. Andrea Vincent, Edmond; and two grandchildren, Isaac Atkins, 6,  and Grace Atkins, two months old.
  Mike Harrell heads the state drinking water program for the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality, Oklahoma City.
Judy Harrell attended Oklahoma Baptist University her freshman year, then transferred to OU when her husband took a Tecumseh High School teaching job. She received a bachelor of science degree in home economics from OU in 1973.
Atkins and Vincent also have degrees from OU: Atkins a master’s, Vincent a Ph.D. in experimental psychology. Atkins worked eight years as an interior designer for OU. Vincent is a senior statistician at OU’s C-SHOP (Center for the Study of Human Operating Performance).
Judy Harrell taught in Tecumseh and Shawnee schools three years before joining OG&E as a home economist in 1981.
 She soon was “doing energy audits — going into attics and surveying homes to see what homeowners could do in reducing energy costs,” she explained.
 There were other duties, too. Always, throughout her 27 years, she worked with many social service organizations.
How did she do it all?
“Just scheduling,” Harrell said.
“I’m ready for whatever God has in store for me next. At 57, I’m young enough to do something else,” she said.