In Memory of Van D. Foster

The Foster Family of Goodlett, Texas was one of the first families I remember meeting when I first moved to Quanah. Jay, Vanda and Rodney rode the same bus I did to school everyday. Rodney was quite a bit older than me and I remember him driving to school mostly. Vanda had this long blonde hair that caught my eye! LOL! I immediately had a crush on her. Jay and I made friends right off. Of course, he had a crush on my sister.

The first time I can remember meeting Van was at the old Quisenberry filing station in Goodlett. He always had a pipe he was smoking on. The aroma of pipe tobacco followed him. He would aways take time to joke with us kids. Giving us a hard time about different things. Always had a smile that was his trademark. His precinct barn was across the street form the filling station.

As the years passed, all us kids got closer, good friends! My first car date was with Vanda and Jay's first car date was with my sister. We always looked after each other. We used to play basketball and other games out at the old Goodlett gym. I can remember one time, Jay and I had to go out and find Vanda and Keith Melton, who were out in the country one night. They had run over a utility pole that was laying out in the middle of the county road and blown out all 4 tires on the pickup they were in. Jay and I took 4 wheels and tires out to where they were at and got them back going again. I can remember Van pulling up there and ribbing Keith a bit about putting the lug nits on backwards on the one spare they had with them. I think Keith was scared at first, but Van always had a way of making everything "OK".

Jay and I ran around together quite often after we got out of high school. Jay was in the class behind me. We used to fly his plane to Goodlett from Vernon to hunt. One time Jay had Travis Taylor, Skeeter and I in his plane with 4 shotguns. We landed on the farm to market road next to Van's airport north of Goodlett because it had rained the day before and the runway was muddy. On our "approach", I noticed we were about to take out a guide wire that was going across the road. I just grabbed a hold and yelled "wire!". Jay just ducked below it and we landed just fine. Waiting for us at the airport, Van asked us "how much did ya'll miss that wire by?". We were all still scared, trembling a bit as we got out of the plane. We went on to hunt dove and finally got to where we could laugh about the experience.

Van always took the time to make sure we had "prime" hunting. He had scouted out where the dove were before we got there.

I will miss Van dearly. I know he's resting easy, being able to breath with ease now.