At the young age of 91, Oris explains that he absolutely loves volunteering two afternoons a week at a local hospital. Fridays are very special because he could rock the tiny babies in the NICU. He loves the fact that he can help so many people that need to talk to someone, find someone or just know which direction they need to go. You see, not too many years ago, he was in a hospital bed himself fighting for his own life. He knows at one moment during that stay that he had a visitor from God and was told that his mission here on earth is not quite complete.
He isn’t wasting anytime in his retirement years, nor has he ever spent time idled.
Oris was born in Streetsboro, OH, and grew up with his sister, Lois and brother, Lowell. You could say that from a young, tender age he has always enjoyed tinkering with things. That was probably no surprise to his family, as his father was an automobile mechanic. In fact, he specialized working on steam powered machine tractors that got to a top speed of 3 MPH. Unfortunately, Oris’s father passed when he was only 5 years of age. Despite the fact that his mom was left widowed at a young age, she did well at raising a fine young man.
Shortly after his father’s passing they moved near her family’s farm about 50 miles down the road. Oris attended school in a two room grade school house before graduating from North Lima High School in 1945. Yes, he did walk to school one mile each way.
Oris loved his country and decided to enlist in the Army in 1946, and really liked his assigned job in the Army. He already enjoyed and mastered building radios and fixing clocks, so being a radar instructor was something that he found very fitting. He spent time in Ft. Bragg and Ft. Bliss working with radars and other instruments before attending UCLA. Oris graduated with a physics degree and put that to use working for Tektronix and TRIAD Transformers. He specialized in failure analysis, transformers and other electronic equipment.
He met his beautiful wife, Lucille in California, and decided to ask her on a date after getting to know her entire family. There first date was to the Palm Springs Car Races. He picked her up for the date at 4 am and ended the day with a stop at the donut and coffee shop. They were officially dating for four short months and were married in 1956, and raised their three wonderful children in the Portland, OR area.
Lucille and Oris had several things in common, one being that both served during WWII where she was a physical therapist in the Navy. Needless to say, both Oris and Lucille loved their country and loved serving others.
Shortly after their retirement, they chose to work as support technicians for the Wycliffe Bible Translators. They moved to Camaroon, Africa, and then spent time in Melbourne, Australia before moving to Charlotte, NC where they spent six years, as well as some time in Tennessee. He stated that they were full-time “RVers” before settling close to family in Edmond in 1994. Lucille & Oris had a wonderful life spending 57 years together.
You could say that Oris is coming home to Tealridge, as this is his second time to move to Tealridge. He moved in to Tealridge in 2012 shortly before it was announced that this community would be designated as a college dormitory. He was very delighted to hear that Tealridge Retirement Community would be opening again and decided to be one of the first residents. We welcome Oris and look forward to getting to know how he can continue to enrich this community as we welcome new neighbors!
Tealridge Retirement Community offers Independent Living, Assisted Living, and Memory Care all on our beautiful Edmond, OK campus. Contact us here for more information.
