John Elliott: Reasons for wife of 30 years to be proud

Occasionally, I ask for suggestions of people to interview for The Baytown Project. Ruth Elliott recently shared these words about her husband, John. Enjoy!

His name is John Elliott. He is currently teaching at Lee College. To some, that may not mean much. But to me, it is a testament to a man who when I first met him was silk-screening circuit boards for a living.

He was like no one I had ever met before. He was someone who drank way too much. He did way too many drugs. And he had an intelligent brain like nothing I had ever seen. When he spoke, I felt the need to carry around a dictionary to understand half of what he was saying. He is still like that at times.

John has turned his life completely around from the first time I met him. He has set so many goals for himself, and he has accomplished them with flying colors. Through the years of our marriage, he went from silk-screening, to being a local truck driver, log truck driver and long-haul trucker, and ending that career to become an owner-operator.

Ruth and John Elliott on their wedding day.

This career started about two months into our marriage. He came home one day and said he wanted to go to trucking school to get his license to drive trucks. I believe it is what saved him from the drugs, as he knew he could be drug tested at any given moment. And with the cost of his schooling, he would lose it all.

This part of our lives lasted about 14 years, until he decided he wanted to be able to spend more time with our sons. Instead of being gone for anywhere from one to three weeks at a time on the road, he decided to work for an old friend making chemicals for cleaning equipment in the industry field.

Again, he excelled at his choice of work by making it more than just mixing together chemicals. He started fabricating tools and equipment that made using the chemicals not only easier, but also safer for the companies and their employees to use in the different facilities.

During this period of his life, John met and became friends with a man who wanted to race at our local dirt track. So there he went, and he became the mechanic and fabricator for a race car for fun. He also decided he wanted to go to school for welding, as he felt his skill was lacking in this field. But he decided that if he was going to school, he might as well get a degree while he was at it.

For the next four years, John worked 40-60 hours a week mixing chemicals, doing sales and delivering products while still fabricating tools and such for his customers. He also spent weekends repairing whatever happened to the race car the weekend before, getting it ready for the next race.

To add on to everything, John carried a full semester of college classes while maintaining a 4.0 GPA. In his last year of school, Lee College offered him a night to teach welding. This happened after he earned his CWI (certified welding inspector) license and because of his 4.0.

Six or seven years later, John was teaching full time at Lee College. About two years ago, they asked him to help set up a weekend fast-track course for welding, CWI and a few other courses.

I cannot tell you everything that he has accomplished at Lee College, as he only gives me the highlights of his achievements. However, he will bring home an award and say, “Oh, yeah, they gave this to me today at such-and-such meeting.”

This wonderful man now goes to major learning conventions to represent Lee College and to learn any new teaching methods to bring back and share with his fellow instructors.

The couple renewed their vows after 25 years of marriage.

It was at one such convention where John met a group from Florida that made up the CWI testing. They invited him to join a small group of other CWI instructors to take some sample tests they had come up with. He had arrived home and flew out the next morning to spend the day there to take the test. When he came back that same night, he was so hyped about how different the new test was from what it had been.

He was due to renew his CWI license. All he needed to do was pay his fee to be good for another 10 years. Instead, he decided to take the new test himself so that he could have a guide to help his own students. This involved many nights of studying for him to pass. He set a goal to earn a score of 97 or better. In the end, he earned that 97.

Some of the proudest moments for me as John’s wife are when we are at a local store, and students come up and want to introduce him to their families. I think this speaks volumes about John as an instructor because these students want their families to meet a man who in some small way helped them to become better providers.

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to put in print a few of the reasons I have stayed married to this man for 30 years. And to remind myself of how very lucky I am to have someone like him in my life.