THE ONE AND ONLY MIT WRIGHT

Mit Wright came into our lives in a very miraculous way fifty-three years ago. My husband had graduated from a court reporting school in Texas and was hired by a federal judge in Muskogee, Oklahoma to be his court reporter. At that time Oklahoma was thought of as being way far back in the sticks of the U.S. When we informed people in Texas of our plans to move to Oklahoma, we were ridiculed and told that nobody moves to Oklahoma, people move out of Oklahoma. That did not put a damper upon our excitement to move there because we had seen the city and fell in love with its huge big trees and beautiful green lawns. It looked like heaven to us because the plains of Texas certainly didn’t offer scenery to compare to Eastern Oklahoma. My husband’s parents had very good friends named Thorwald and Katherine Anderson who were also excited that we were moving to Muskogee because they had a niece who lived there and they wanted us to meet her. There was one problem. They knew her married name was Joyce Wright, but they didn’t know her husband’s name or their address. They only knew her P.O. Box number. I kept thinking that they must expect us to go to the Post Office and hang out by her box until someone came to get the mail and then introduce ourselves. Little did we know that plans were already in operation along the lines of making sure we got acquainted with her. Our moving van driver unloaded our furniture at the rental house in Muskogee and we were endeavoring to get settled into the nice rental house. There was a knock at the door and I opened it to see a very pretty blond lady standing on the porch. She commented that she wanted to welcome us to the neighborhood. “What a kind thing to do,” I remarked, and invited her into the house. She asked where we were originally from and I told her Lubbock, Texas. The neighborhood visitor excitingly asked if we might have known her aunt and uncle in Lubbock, Thorwald and Katherine Anderson. Could it really be? Could the first person we meet in our new town actually be the only person whose name we had heard about as living in Muskogee? “You must be Joyce Wright,” I said, still not believing that fate had done this marvelous thing for us. “Yes,” she said, “How did you know?” I explained to her how her aunt and uncle had told us about her living in Muskogee and said we should get in contact with her. We certainly didn’t have to stand by her PO Box and wait for her to pick up her mail. God just presented her to us at the front door of the rent house. We had actually moved into a rent house four doors from Joyce and her family. It truly was a miracle, not a happenstance because the odds were too high for it to have just been luck. Now it’s important that you know why we called her Mit Wright. Our son De loved to play with Billy Wright, Joyce’s son who was two years older than him. De was only two years old and wanted to make friends, so he would carry his little chair down the block to the Wright’s house, with me watching him. He would stand on the chair so he could reach the doorbell. Then when Joyce answered the door he would say, “Mit Wright, can Bilye come out to play?” Thereafter, Joyce was always addressed by members of our family as Mit Wright and Bilye was always called that nickname by me instead of Billy. Our families became good friends with lots of bridge games on Saturday nights, cookouts, Sunday trips after church to the river where we had our own private cove where we could visit with other friends and the kids could float the river. It was good times, like the popular saying describes memorable events. It’s always impressed me that we were supposed to meet the Wright family or God would not have gone to all of that trouble arranging the meeting. Joyce was the first person to welcome us to a new town. She died recently, and I like to think that my husband Steve, who died last year, was the first one to welcome Joyce to heaven. “Turn about is fair play.” I think God observes that principle, too.