Larry Houston did not wait for the job to find him.

It was the summer of 1975, and he had just graduated from Southeast Missouri State University with a degree in physical education and health — minor in biology, driver's ed certification included. He had taken a winding route to get there: Egyptian High School in Tamms, then a basketball scholarship to Connors State College in Oklahoma, then SEMO. He was late finishing. School years start in August. No one had called.

Then he spotted someone.

The superintendent from Egyptian schools was walking across the SEMO campus, working on his specialist degree. Larry crossed the quad and asked him a direct question: Were there any jobs available?

That conversation led to a phone call, which led to an interview at Meridian Junior High, which led to three veteran educators — George "Bo" Evers, Eddie Mays, and principal Stanley Thomas — sitting across a table from a young man who had a biology minor and wanted to teach.

"They thought I was the man for the job," he said.

That first year, Meridian was piloting team teaching. Larry was paired with Greg Krimpraski, who had five years of experience. "He was a lead teacher, and he was a mentor. It was the best thing that could ever happen to me," Larry said. "I learned a lot of things from him."

He taught science at Meridian for twenty-two years.

While teaching, he went back to Southeast Missouri State and earned a counseling degree — what he'd really wanted — only to find no counseling positions available. So he added an administrative degree while he was at it. "I might as well go get that too while I'm here," he reasoned. Both degrees, he knew, would eventually open doors.

Wayman Butler, who taught driver's ed at Meridian alongside Larry, became a mentor and then a principal. Larry watched and learned. When the Butler-and-Spain era of Meridian administration needed cover, Larry filled in as an informal lieutenant. The shape of what could come next became clear.

When a principalship opened at Egyptian High School — his own alma mater — he interviewed and got it.

"It was a dream come true," he said. "That had really been my goal — to come back as principal at Egyptian."

He raised three children during those years. His son Jairus and daughter Marla were both all-conference basketball players at Egyptian — and Larry had been one himself decades before. As far as he knows, they are the only father-son-daughter trio in the conference's history to all earn that distinction. Another daughter, Sierra, graduated from Eastern Illinois University and now works as a nurse in Missouri.

"We functioned as a team," he said about his own upbringing — six siblings, twenty acres of farmland near Miller City, a mother who cooked, and a father who farmed for someone else. His oldest brother is nineteen years his senior, his oldest sister sixteen. "My parents raised two different families, actually," he said. The youngest four were two years apart from each other, and the older two were more like additional parents. "I benefited from it all."

Now officially retired from administration, Larry is back at Meridian — teaching driver's ed, the same role that launched Wayman Butler's administrative arc years ago. One of his former driver's ed students went on to become Chief Judge of Illinois' First Judicial Circuit, chair of the statewide conference of chief judges. Bill Thurston — Meridian class of 1981 — still mentions the name.

Larry seems pleased about that without making much of it.

In the halls and classrooms, he still does more than teach traffic patterns. "I always try to practice my counseling," he said. He makes a point to learn every student's name, or at least their parents'. "If I don't know you personally, then I ask who your parents are." The kinship connections emerge. They always do here.

He has watched students arrive at Meridian from much larger schools and, somehow, fit. He's seen it happen again and again over fifty years. "They always seem to fit in here, one way or the other," he said. "And that was amazing to me."

The parents show up for the teachers. The teachers show up for the kids. The kids grow up and come back.

"This is a super school district," he said. "It always has been to me."

He already retired once. He came back.

"Once a Bobcat," he said, "always a Bobcat."