Bio, 2014: Claudette Driever Selph
I know I am far behind so many of you in getting this bio completed. After encouragement (nudges) from some of you I am undertaking this attempt at recapping my life since high school. I cannot tell you how impressed I am with what so many of you have done both professionally and personally. It makes me proud to be part of this awesome class.I attended OSU and married my first husband my junior year and we had one child, Bradley. The marriage was short lived. After graduating from OSU I attended the University of Tulsa where I received my masters degree, worked at the Tulsa Boys’ Home and met John Selph, who was also a counselor for the boys. We fell in love, were married in 1972 (we celebrated 42 great years of marriage this year) and had a daughter, Charity and a foster daughter, Donna who joined our family when she was 12 and Bradley was 10 and Charity was 1. John and I both moved up through the ranks at the Boys’ Home with John becoming Executive Director and working there for 15 years before running for County Commissioner, an elected post he held for 17 years and then served as the state CEO of Volunteers of America the last 10 years of his career. He was commissioned as a minister serving this organization. I stayed at the Boys’ home 21 years ending my tenure there as President of the Tulsa Boys’ Home Foundation after having served as Executive Director for several years. (interesting when I applied for the job it was women who said a woman could not run a boys home – times were different then but I had enough support to be hired and yes I am a feminist and have also worked hard as a volunteer on women’s issues with great support from my feminist husband). The Boys’ Home was an awesome place to work and we both feel fortunate to have had an opportunity to help so many troubled young boys. I then accepted a position as Executive Director of a child abuse treatment and prevention agency where I stayed for 16 years before opening my own nonprofit consulting firm which was wonderful as I went from working 50 to 60 hours a week to 30 to 40. I did consulting for 6 years before retiring. Legislative advocacy was the favorite part of my consulting and I focused on child abuse, animal abuse and increasing services to those with disabilities. I wanted more time with my grandkids, which by the time I started my consulting company I had 8. Donna has 4, Bradley has 1 son, Brandon, who we have raised and have had since he was 6 weeks old, and Charity has 3. Our life together has had many challenges, ups and downs, and many many rewards.
Donna now works at Blue Cross Blue Shield in Tulsa with two of her children grown and two still at home. Bradley is working on an import export business in Thailand and Charity is a dropout prevention counselor and social worker at a middle school in Tulsa. Brandon is starting his junior year at University of Colorado this fall and has spent the summer in Uruguay working for room and board at a hostel, his own devised study abroad program to immerse himself in Spanish and learn the language.
I read many of your bios and marvel at your grasp on your beliefs. I guess I am one of those still searching. Being raised in the Methodist Church in Stillwater, I considered myself a Christian growing up and tried to live by those teachings. I still try and live by the teachings as I understand them, but now consider myself a good Unitarian who often asks “Is that really true or is it just what I want to believe.” The Unitarian Church has been a “home” for me to search, review challenging concepts, and more fully develop my own spirituality. Moving to Colorado a year ago has enhanced that opportunity as we live in the most beautiful environment with the opportunity every day to be filled with the awe of creation at its best. I have joined a women’s book group that reads and discusses religion, spirituality, belief systems etc. We are mostly Christian with one Jewish member, one Unitarian (me), and one Atheist. It makes for an interesting couple of hours a week and very interesting reading. I may never find all the answers I want but I am enjoying the process.
We are really enjoying retirement and John is fishing again, which he really has not had time to do for many years. We both hike, ride bicycles, motorcycles, and spend lots of time in our yard with our garden and keeping our trenches open as we irrigate with snow melt that runs into irrigation ditches as this is a semi-arid area. We spend some time at the gym and play with 3 rescue dogs. And very important we have lots of company and enjoy people coming to see us. We have kept a small cottage on Grand Lake in Oklahoma so we stay there when we go back to see our kids that are still there (Charity and Donna). We swim and sea doo there and drive to Tulsa a lot.
So in ending, I am grateful for a life well spent, grateful for a wonderful family even if we don’t all always agree and get along, and grateful to have had the class of 1964 in my life. Many of you had great influence on my life and reconnecting at the reunions and at other times has been so rewarding. I have hopes in the future to do more traveling as I note many of you have done an immense amount around the world and in this country. We brought our place in Colorado 21 years ago and usually came here when we had vacation time. Now that we live in this awesome place we are making plans to do more travel in the future. We did my dream trip this last January with Everett and Linda Ely to Galapagos and we took Brandon to Uruguay before leaving him there for the summer. We were fortunate to visit Israel in l998 on a child abuse exchange funded by a foundation in Tulsa and have done a few trips to Mexico and Nicaragua, some of those family trips with kids and grandkids. Our bucket lists includes touring the state of Colorado one section at a time and perhaps more international travel. We are just beginning to explore possibilities and would welcome your suggestions. If Bradley stays in Thailand that is definitely on the agenda as well.
©2009 Stillwater High School Class of 1964