Bubba & Mona Starr Family
| Hey all you Bulldog Fans, Doesn’t time fly when you are having fun? Thirty years…too unbelievable! It is so great to hear everyone’s stories so we thought we would throw ours in too. Bubba and I have been married for 27 years and feel very blessed. After college, he spent many years auditing insurance, worked for his dad for awhile and now is a real estate appraiser. Bub still loves his music, has the greenest lawn on the street and is continually perfecting his grilling skills. (BAM!) I finished a degree in fashion merchandising and was a buyer for awhile. After many years as a stay at home mom, I went back and became certified to teach. For the last ten years, I have had fun and challenges teaching second graders. An unexpected surprise for me this year was being chosen in our community to be the Wal-Mart Teacher of the Year. Cake, flowers, money in my pocket and for my school and thrills for me and my 25 little Superstars were a very nice way to get an “atta-girl”. We currently live in Benton, Arkansas, just southwest of Little Rock. Let’s see…hobbies…do we have any? Our favorite pastime for the last 21 years has been being the parents of our two daughters—Maggie and Caroline. Bubba is an awesome dad—you all would be so proud of him. He is lots of fun and the girls’ friends love him. He has read with them, played games with them and best of all taken them to church. He also coached them (church softball was a real test of the Starr competitive spirit for both he and the girls), and has taught them a little about playing cards—HA! I’ve kept the Sloppy Joes hot, the Mountain Dew cold and the cheese dip flowing as well as the uniform of the season ready for the next game. We’ve both run the study hall and prayed them through that teenage tunnel. We have done lots of traveling over the years-- mainly to various gyms and softball fields in some fun cities and it has been a blast. The girls have grown to be personable, motivated young women and are still great company and fun for us. We count our blessings that they still like us! It’s a little quieter here without kids coming and going and sometimes we still can’t believe this nest really is empty. But, then again, it has been fun to learn to do what we want to do… (Thanks a lot, Timmy for giving Bub big ideas about Harleys!) Maggie, 21, is our go-getter girl with a big smile and lots of energy! She is a senior at Ouachita Baptist University, about 45 minutes from us. She loves the small school atmosphere, is active in her social club, especially participating in Tiger Tunes, a big campus show that all the social clubs and campus organizations put on. She is also working diligently on an accounting degree. The past two summers she has spent at TBarM camp down near Austin, TX (very similar to Kanakuk, if you are familiar with that camp) being a counselor and loving every minute of it. Reality is setting in with graduation just around the corner, so next summer she hopes to intern in an accounting firm before working on her masters and sitting for the CPA. Self-sufficiency in sight! Yay! Caroline, 19, is our tenderhearted, laid back daughter—until she gets a ball in her hands—a true Starr. She will be a sophomore at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro still deciding on a career plan. Her D-1 dreams came true when she had wonderful scholarship offers. After visiting all over (recruiting was interesting) she decided she wanted to stay in Arkansas (sorry, Rutgers!) She chose ASU, because she wanted to be part of an up and coming program and felt with hard work she would have the best chance to see playing time sooner rather than later. It has been a good fit for our hometown girl. You can’t believe how hard student athletes have to work at their sport, do conditioning and publicity and then have a little time left over for studying. We have all enjoyed being close enough to watch her play. They should be playing in Stillwater either this fall or next fall so if possible, we hope any of you that are close will come and cheer with us. We have thought of you all and our fun times at AHS fondly over the years and it has been a true delight to learn about your families and your lives. The personalities we knew and loved are still there! While it would have been fun to hang out and watch each other’s kids grow up in Altus, we are thankful to have opportunities like this to see all of you and catch up. Can’t wait! Love to you all! Bubba and Mona Starr |