November 4, 1969 I left Sam Rayburn and Pasadena to go live with my grandparents in Baytown. You all knew me as Don Golden. I carried (through no choice of my own) the last name of an abusive step-father until my abrupt departure. Things came to a head that night and I grabbed a few clothes and literally fled to Baytown. The next day armed with a note from my grandmother I was able to talk the administrators at Rayburn into letting me withdraw and by 9:00 AM I was gone. Later that day I enrolled at Robert E. Lee under my legal name of Coffey. It was really weird to change names after having been forced to go by Golden since I was three when my mother married my step-father. At least once I failed to answer the role call under my new identity.
Lee High school was a real culture shock for me. Since first grade Pasadena ISD had cloistered me in tracked classes and for all my years at Pomeroy and San Jacinto Intermediate many of us were kept together in almost every class. Lee had a significant Black population which you will remember was not the case ever in our educational experience in Pasadena. My first experience to be friendly did not go well when I referred to a guy as colored. At Lee it only took 18 credits to graduate versus 21 at Rayburn so I talked them into making me a senior and I graduated six months later in May of 70 having gotten to know hardly anyone in my �Senior� class. So there was never a need to attend reunions of Lee for me.
Rayburn was special during our era. It was one of the first mega or super schools. That fall of 1969 Rayburn went on to win district in what I remember in seven different sports. I have always been proud to have gone there and I missed many of you for years but I had to leave.
Life got better. In 1975 I met Jenice and we were married in 1978 and have one son. I eventually got through college and law school at University of Houston and have practiced law in Baytown for nearly 20 years. Our son is in his first year of law school at Washington University and I just got elected to Justice of the Peace in east Harris County. Life is good and I owe a great deal of my success to my grandmother who lived for 98 years. She passed away this summer but not before she got to see me elected as a Judge.
I look forward to seeing everyone at our reunion.
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