108 involved the routine activities of farm life, plus horses and rodeos. Chris- tian training was the order of the day in the Chase home. His mother had been -Bro'u~ght-~p in a strong Christian home. Her father taught Sunday Sch- ool, was a Ban&i.aster in the High School, and had organized and directed several bands and orchestras in various churches. Richard's mother, who taught piano before she was twenty years of age, played both the organ and the piano in the church the family attended. The first school Richard attended was a small one-room type located three and one-half miles from town. There were between twenty and thirty pupils enrolled, ranging from the first through the sixth grades, with one teacher and some occasional helpers. They hardly knew what a school bus looked like; and according to Chase, they walked, rode a bicycle, when they could afford one, or hitched rides to school with farm workers. While attending Junior High School in Oxnard, Richard became interested in sports, which was the beginning of an active sports career. He also becam interested in music and played in the school band. After his seventh grade the Chase family moved to Camarillo Heights, where he attended the eighth grade. From there, he went to the one high school in the area, Oxnard Union High School, which had an enrollment of about seven hundred students. In High School he became actively engaged in sports and the school band, play- ing the Susaphone, which according to him, was so large that he had to place it on a chair and then stick his head through it to be able to handle it. In his second year of high school, Richard Chase was involved with class- mates in activities not too conducive to his education. About that time two important events which affected his life occurred; a quartet from Culter Academy, a Christian High School in Los Angeles, visited his church and deeply impressed him; also, al though not seriously injured himself, he was involved in a serious automobile accident which caused him to think more about the Lord and to realize that there were more important things in life
Made with FlippingBook Online newsletter