Picher girl still a Gorilla

By John Sutter

Published: August 20, 2006

PICHER - Driving her father's mid-90s Ford Thunderbird to the first day of her senior year, Tracy Carder, 17, anxiously flipped between radio stations and wondered whether she could find any normalcy in what may be the last year of her school and her hometown.

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Which of my friends will be back?

Will any of them be back?

An athletic, strawberry blonde who enjoys hip-hop, "General Hospital," and "Oprah," Tracy previously brushed off those questions with jokes and a smile full of braces.

The day before, she sarcastically told a teacher she had little choice but to become Picher-Cardin High School's last valedictorian, salutatorian, class president, class secretary -- and class clown.

How much competition could there be?

In far northeast Oklahoma, just two miles from the Kansas border, Picher-Cardin schools opened for business Wednesday. But about two-thirds of the students transferred in advance of a federal buyout that will pay residents to leave the dangerous mining area.

Tracy chose to stay in the only school system she's ever known. The fifth daughter of a disabled truck driver and a factory worker, she will not be a 3-point specialist on the basketball team this season, because Picher-Cardin will have no athletics, band or art classes. But she and 11 other seniors will graduate as Gorillas.

She wants to leave her mark on the town -- be a piece of its legacy.

"I am definitely sure about staying. I don't know, I just like the feeling that I'm going to graduate as a Picher Gorilla, and, you know, be in the last class," she said.

'Barely together'
Tracy pulled into the almost-empty parking lot about 7:20 a.m., though the first bell was not until 8:30. This from a student who often hustles into class in pajama pants just in time to avoid a tardy slip.

Her nerves had awakened her 30 minutes before the alarm clock.

So even after stopping for gas, she was early. And alone.

She spotted a close friend, Jessica Elkins, also 17. The two discussed how Tracy looked "super cute" in an outfit she'd bought in Joplin, Mo., and how, no, it wasn't all that noticeable that Jessica's tank top had a glob of makeup on it. Then Jessica left on a bus for classes at a vo-tech center.

About 20 minutes later, three girls assembled around Tracy -- a fourth of the senior class waiting for an uncertain day to begin.

"Who's that over there?" asked a girl dressed in all pink, down to her spiral notebook and flip-flops.

"I don't even know. The entire freshman class?" suggested another. Normally quick-witted herself, Tracy stood and listened, watched.

As the parking lot began to half-fill, it became apparent they would need to go inside.

"I'm afraid to go in there. I'm going to cry if I go in there," one girl said.

Tracy left the pack and headed for the front door. On her way, a teacher stopped her to compliment the brown belt Tracy had loosely wrapped around a long white shirt.

When the teacher touched it, the belt unsnapped and half-fell.

"Never touch a senior girl," the teacher said, "cause she's barely together."

Assembly
"Front row's all to you," said English teacher Shirley Sharbutt, 59, noticing that out of 140 chairs set up in the main room, Tracy had selected the first chair in the first row, alone.

Most students headed for the back. The girls who had been talking to Tracy outside filed into her row.

In front of a sign that read, "IT'S GREAT TO BE A GORILLA," Superintendent Bob Walker addressed 40 students and 13 teachers.

"I know some of us are sitting here right now and it's like someone put their fist right in our guts and they knocked the wind right out of us. But it's OK, we're going to get our breath back," he said. "You don't have to wear a football helmet or play in the Picher-Cardin band ... to be a Picher Gorilla."

Science
Tracy rushed to his room, as if he'd be there.

She had joked her way through two classes and a meeting, thrown her day planner into her locker and was headed to her favorite classroom, the one where he'd given her inspiration and a future.

David Meador, a science teacher who moved on to another school, had been Tracy's favorite teacher -- one of her favorite people -- for the past three years. After the counseling staff didn't fulfill her repeated requests to job-shadow a medical professional, Meador, in one day, arranged for her to follow a certified registered nurse anesthetist at a hospital in Missouri.

Now, Tracy wants nothing more than to become one. "I think you can do anything," she remembers him telling her. "I think the only thing you're gonna have trouble with is math."

She respected his honesty. And she cried when he gave her an award for her "determination and commitment to the idea of being what it takes to be a Picher Gorilla" at an awards assembly last year. She keeps the certificate on the dresser in her bedroom.

She was popular because of her joking ways, but Meador had taken her seriously. Now he is gone. And when Tracy arrived for her late-morning chemistry class, his decorations -- gorilla posters, Oklahoma State University paraphernalia, pictures of his family -- were missing. His green chalkboards were wiped clean.

Tracy sat down in the first desk of the front row.

And she cried again.

She was the only student in the class.

Her new teacher, Jerry Lewis, tried to console her by talking straight through any potentially awkward silences.

"You know, time flies when you're having fun. Learning can be fun, too. It doesn't have to be some really big activity. Once it gets going, I think it will pass faster than you think.

"From a teacher's standpoint, man, this is heaven. ... In fact, I know that's something the teachers' associations are always trying to get done: smaller classes."

"I'm excited," Tracy said, "I can't wait."

After class with a teacher Tracy knew so well she answered the classroom phone for her, the other senior girls asked Tracy out to lunch. She declined. She'd spent her last $8 on gas.

The girls sped off, and Tracy, who normally laughs her way to lunch in a pack of 10 or 15, walked across campus to the elementary school building, which houses the cafeteria.

She took the long route, through the 1936 football stadium where the grass is still mowed short, though no Picher-Cardin games will be played there again.

In eighth grade, Tracy earned her nickname, Tar Tar, on the track that loops around the football field when she sat in freshly poured tar and became so stuck to the track it took a team of people, laughing hysterically, to yank her up.

Walking alone on a path between the gym and field, Tracy tore off her new, pointed-toe heels and trudged on, barefoot.

She passed the red door to her former basketball coach's office. She slapped the door in reverence and walked toward the cafeteria where she was one of fewer than 20 people.

In English class, Tracy mostly stared at a window, chewed her nails and chimed in with witty one-liners.

"It smells good. What kind of detergent do you use?" she said after Mrs. Sharbutt passed out stretchable book covers.

Sharbutt, considered one of Picher's strictest teachers, is a gray-haired woman with circular bifocals that magnify her already large brown eyes. But Tracy has always secretly been fond of her.

Wednesday, Sharbutt went easy on her class.

Instead of diving into one of the four literature books she passed out, the class brainstormed ways they could make this a good year, one worth remembering.

Tracy perked up at her classmates' ideas of field trips -- maybe to a zoo or a museum in Joplin -- or a senior trip -- maybe they could stay two nights in Chicago to see Oprah or take a bus to Disney World.

Before the last bell rang, Tracy waited at the door. She pushed it half-open in anticipation.

All she wanted was to go home.

Two of Tracy's friends who transfered to other schools waited outside to give Tracy a hug.

One was Kalleigh Chrz, 16, who pitches softball at Welch High School. At a recent game, she played against her former teammates and cried so hard before the game that she couldn't warm up. She wears red -- the Gorilla color -- under her new blue uniform.

The girls leaned on a teary-eyed Sharbutt for advice.

"It's good if you can adjust, you know, it's good. You don't have any choice. It's rough changing schools under the best of circumstances. It's hard," she said. "But when you're forced, that's more difficult."

After their conversation died down, Tracy stood up.

"Well, I have about 15 minutes to make it for Oprah," she said.

"Keep your chin up girls," Sharbutt said.

Kalleigh stopped Tracy, hugged her, and said: "I love you Tar Tar."