From a one-room country schoolhouse to recognition on the convention floor of the Oklahoma Retired Educators Association, Norma Jean Click of Duncan has come a long way. Click was chosen by the association as its Stephens County Very Important Member (VIM) for 2008 and recognized at the group’s recent convention.

The association honored 43 retired educators from across the state at its convention held at the University of Central Oklahoma in Edmond. The honorees are recognized as members of the association’s “Very Important Member Project” to honor members of the local associations who are active, supportive members.

Click taught fifth and sixth grades at Woodrow Wilson Elementary School in Duncan for six years and then moved to Duncan Junior High, where she taught seventh-grade science until she retired.

Click was the oldest of three children born to George Robert and Ada Elizabeth Shipley. She was born in an oil field camp between Shamrock and Drumright in Creek County. She attended a one-room school until the third grade. She also attended school in Shamrock, Pleasant Hill and Drumright. Her junior year was at Stonewall and she graduated from Ada High School. She changed schools frequently because her father worked in the oil fields. She said that although moving frequently didn’t allow her to make any close friends, it helped her to learn to fit in and to get along with a variety of people, which has helped her throughout her life.

Click started to college at East Central State College in Ada and finished her second year of college while her husband, Claude Click, served during World War II. After the war, he worked for Mobil in Kermit, Texas, and Norma was a full-time mom with two children when they were transferred to Duncan in 1953. She taught swimming for the Red Cross, was a Girl Scout leader and taught Sunday school along with her homemaker duties. She returned to college at Oklahoma College for Women in Chickasha and was certified to teach kindergarten through eighth grade. Later, she received a master of teaching degree from East Central State College.

Click was president of the Duncan Educational Association for two years during the time that the group was preparing to start negotiations. She continued being a Girl Scout leader, and her troop stayed together through high school.

She said she believes that the girls stayed together for so long because of the many activities that they did. They camped a lot, enjoyed paddling canoes around Duncan Lake and Lake Murray and went mountain climbing in the Wichita Mountains.

While in high school, the girls also earned their own money for a three-week camping trip by bus in Canada along the northern side of the Great Lakes and into the New England states. They slept in tents and cooked their own meals during the trip.

In January of 1995, Claude Click died suddenly from an extremely bad strain of pneumonia. After his death, Norma became a volunteer at Duncan Regional Hospital and still continues doing that work now. She is also a faithful member of Stephens County Retired Educators Association and is secretary of that organization. Both of her children, Carole and Robert, live in the Tulsa area and she has six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Click is a valuable asset to the local association, a spokesperson for the association. Her life story and picture, along with the other VIM honorees, was printed in a book that will be placed in the Oklahoma Archives of the University of Central Oklahoma’s Library and at the Oklahoma Historical Society.

Designation as a VIM is a coveted award, and the stories about members are both interesting and informative, often showing people who overcame the adversities of the Great Depression days and survived World War II, the spokesperson said. Some of the schools attended by or taught by VIMs no longer exist, and their biographies may be the only historical records of their existence.