Published: June 01, 2009 10:01 am      

Larue Barnes: Shorthand — the hook

Writer’s note: Many of you have repeatedly asked me to share some of the experiences of my life. That was kind of you. I’ve always been much more comfortable writing about others — as it seems awkward putting myself in print. Hopefully the meaning of this story will go beyond the subject.



In 1954, I had an important decision to make. I lived with my parents, Madge and Bob Harper, on their blackland farm between Covington and Grandview.

I had gone to Covington to school since first grade and was preparing for my senior year.

My mother decided to teach at Grandview instead of Covington. I could transfer there without paying tuition if I wanted to go.

It was my choice.

Grandview was a bigger school. I didn’t know anyone there. It would be hard to leave my girl’s basketball team and my friends.

I heard that Grandview had homemaking and shorthand classes. Homemaking, I understood but shorthand?

Making the change sounded like an adventure to me.

Amid strangers when school started, I was excited instead of frightened, somehow.

I made the transition easily, confirming in my mind that I had made the right decision.

Nell Conover was my typing and shorthand teacher.

Her husband, Brooks, was the legendary football coach at Cleburne High School, but I was more impressed that she had been a legal secretary.

Her instruction opened a new world to me.

John Robert Gregg had invented shorthand, the phonetic writing system that records the sounds of the speaker, not the English spelling.

It uses cursive strokes and includes brief forms that represent an entire word or phrase.

I learned that with shorthand you could take notes as people spoke and keep up with them.

You could write things down at home that your family couldn’t read. It pushed you for speed and accuracy; it taught you something most others didn’t know.

After graduation from GHS in 1955, I enrolled at Texas Wesleyan College to major in business education. Because I knew shorthand I received a job on campus that paid my tuition.

Through that student job I found myself seated at a conference table taking minutes at faculty forums. The faculty members took me along to WBAP-TV for planning meetings for the early days of educational television.

I studied journalism and was invited to become a columnist for the Rambler, the campus newspaper.

Mr. Gregg knew his business.

I had met E. J. Barnes at Grandview High when he visited campus after returning from a tour of duty in the U.S. Army in Korea.

We began dating then, and he came to Texas Wesleyan after he finished Arlington State College to be with me. He had attended business college before we met.

We sat side by side in psychology class and wrote to each other, pretending to take class notes. I still remember the day the professor strolled by with the intent of reading it all and embarrassing us — with no success.

We had written in our own secret code, shorthand.

E. J. and I married in 1957. We would graduate in 1958 and move to Cleburne.

I needed a job.

It was spring break. From a pay telephone on the Johnson County Courthouse square, I called Dr. Bob Kimbro, my family physician, to ask if he knew of any job leads.

He asked, “Do you know shorthand?”

Reporting to work at the Kimbro Clinic that June, I was the new girl. At age 20, I was still pretty naïve.

I remember searching a medical record for a diagnosis to put on an insurance form.

“S.O.B.,” the doctor had plainly written. I was appalled! Why would he put his personal opinion of a person on a medical chart?

Because, I discovered, it was an abbreviation for the symptom, “shortness of breath.”

I had a lot to learn.

In desperation, I made up my own system for medical terms.

My job gave me free medical care. I had elective surgery that eventually enabled us to have two children. We could never have afforded the medical bills otherwise.

E. J. and I had begun work our master’s degrees. In 1962, I started teaching at Grandview Junior High and High School.

E.J. started teaching at Cleburne High the year before.

One of the classes I taught in high school was shorthand.

I thought of Nell Conover, who had introduced me to the skill on the same campus. She had chosen me as her outstanding senior that year. I was grateful years later.

After establishing the vocational office education cooperative program at Cleburne High School in 1966 and retiring 27 years later, I became a free lance writer.

I still use shorthand scattered in my notes every time I do an interview.

It works much better for me than a tape recorder, which inhibits many. We just talk — I write it down quickly — and enjoy the visit.

My interviews with World War II veterans became my first book, “They Were There.” All 500 copies have sold.

Shorthand is a dying art. It isn’t traditionally taught in public schools anymore because many executives compose their own correspondence at their computers today.

Laptops are considered a near prerequisite for note-taking in college classrooms.

But surprisingly the study of shorthand has a few Web sites.

When you can use a dot for the words “a-an,” an upward sweep for “and-end” and a comma for “is-his,” it might still get a few curious hits.

Now, as Paul Harvey used to say, “The rest of the story.”

I would not choose shorthand as a topic in which most people share an interest. They probably couldn’t care less.

It’s just that looking back I am amazed that my decision in the summer of 1954 became so important to my future.

If I had not attended school in Grandview, E. J. and I would have never met. Our children and grandchildren who make Cleburne their home would never have been born.

How did I make such a major decision so easily?

I believe God can use trivial things to put us in the right place at the right time.

How humbling to see that he had a personalized plan for a young girl on a blackland farm.



Larue Barnes may be reached at laruebarnes@yahoo.com.