[Oe List ...] A Tribute to Hubert Fulkerson

[Elliestock at aol.com]

What a moving tribute to Hubert by Martha.  Thank you for  sharing.  We 
give thanks for his life and keep all the family in prayer as  they celebrate 
the gift that was his life.
Grace and peace,
Carleton and Ellie Stock
 
 
In a message dated 1/16/2011 4:42:20 P.M. Central Standard Time,  
fmkarpoff at comcast.net writes:

Dear  Colleagues--Tim and Martha Karpoff express their gratitude to the 
many who  shared their experiences in working with Hubert in the various ICA 
world  locations. Colleagues saw him in action as a caring and committed  
person, yet possibly unaware of the often difficult  journey he endured  in his 
younger days. His sister Martha has chronicled some of those events in  a 
loving tribute to his life, -a copy of which is included in this email.  
Memorial services will be held in Phoenix on Jan 22 and Muskogee on Feb  5. 
Please refer to our 2nd email for details.
 


Grace & Peace,


Fred and Marian Karpoff
6522 20th Ave NE 
Seattle,WA 98115



A Sister’s Tribute 
By Martha Fulkerson Karpoff 

For those who knew Hubert (and I’m not sure many  did, including myself), 
they know that he had a rather rough life—or was it a  fortunate life? A 
lucky life, or a sorrowful life?  It’s hard to know  actually.  One thing it 
was, was a tested life.    There are  those who know more about his life in 
Chicago, Nigeria, Kenya, Zambia,  Oklahoma City or Phoenix.  I would love to 
know all the stories they  know.   Hubert was all about stories, about looking 
at events, giving  them a twist, and making a story of them.  Often these 
stories were  ironic.  Often they were jokes.  Maybe his life was a joke, 
maybe  not. 
Hubert was born in 1938 in the Depression, in one  of the heartlands of 
Depression, Oklahoma.   His dad was a wholesale milk  man in Muskogee and son 
and brother of men who worked in the oilfields of  Illinois, Oklahoma, Texas 
and New Mexico.  His mom was daughter of a  pecan orchard planter and pecan 
variety developer.   His dad’s nickname  was Mick or Big Mick and Hubert’s 
nickname was Little Mickey. Both his parents  were pretty tough hard-core 
realists.  Little Mickey bucked that realism  thing really quickly by creating 
his imaginary dog Blackie.  Blackie and  Little Mickey roamed the town 
figuring out what was really going on.  His  parents realized he was kind of 
smart. 
In school, it turned out that Mickey was pretty  good at mathematics.  By 
high school he was being offered several  scholarships by universities, and 
finally chose Park University in Kansas  City, Missouri.  Park University was 
a private university with a good  reputation.  Mickey worked in the 
cafeteria in order to pay for some of  his expenses at school.  He was well on his 
way to becoming the first  college graduate in the Fulkerson family, first 
son of a first son. 
It wasn’t meant to be.  Instead, he got to go  prison.  There were a series 
of fires and poisonings on campus.   Hubert was among the poisoned, and in 
fact had the most severe case of  poisoning and was hospitalized for several 
days.  Later he was accused  and convicted of the crimes of arson and 
attempted murder (for having  attempted to murder himself, it seems).   The 
sentence was for 30+  years. 
My sister Kathleen and I, 6 years old and 8 years  old, were with my 
grandmother the day Hubert was convicted.   My dad  phoned in the sentence to her 
from Missouri.  My grandmother walked  outside to our acre-sized yard and 
walked and cried for six hours. (My parents  said that the jury seemed very 
sympathetic until the last day of the  trial.  They suspected somebody got 
paid off.)  We had a brief time  with Mickey at home where he played card and 
board games with us.  He was  always a fun-loving, caring and mischievous 
person-- a skinny 19 year old by  then with lots of dark brown hair. 
The Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City,  Missouri, was 
considered the toughest in the country in 1956.   Mickey’s  first week was probably 
also one of the toughest.   He was  a nineteen year old white boy in a 
largely black facility.  Some bad  things happened.  The prison authorities 
thought it best to give him  several electric shock treatments to help him face 
reality.  That ought  to do it!  By the end of the week his dark hair was 
mostly  grey. 
[Tim’s Note: The Missouri State Penitentiary,  known as “The Walls,” or “
The Big House,” was proclaimed “the bloodiest 47  acres in America” by Time 
magazine because of a prison riot in 1954 and  literally hundreds of 
assaults and stabbings inside the prison in the early  1960s. Sonny Liston was an 
inmate in the early 50s. James Earl Ray was an  inmate when Hubert was 
there.] 
My sister and I went to visit him once in  prison.  In Jefferson City, 
which has steep hills, there’s a road up  above the prison where the whole 
prison is displayed for the merry  traveler.  It had the look of a large medieval 
castle, designed for  various forms of torture.  And actually it was.  I’d 
say I was ten  and Kathleen was eight.  Mom had dressed us in our sweetest, 
cutest  outfits.  The doors were massive and clanged loudly behind us.  The  
“viewing” room was a series of booths where thick glass with chickenwire  
separating the prisoner from the visitors.   My grandmother had sent  Mickey 
a small portable typewriter because she couldn’t read Mickey’s  
handwriting.  Very shortly afterwards, he was back to writing his letters  by hand.  
My mom asked why.  Mickey said that somebody took  it.  “Well, did you report 
it to the guards?” my mom demanded.  Mom,  grandmother and all of us on the 
outside didn’t comprehend where he was  living. 
He worked in the library where someone was stabbed  to death one day.  He 
learned to sew suits.  He saw Sonny Liston, a  former inmate, conduct a 
boxing match.  And, he was out in the yard one  day when a race riot occurred.  
Mickey, being rather short (5’10”) and  skinny and not wanting to be killed, 
ran as fast and as far as he could away  from the riot.  Several people did 
likewise.  He was charged with  “leading a charge on the wall”.  (I’m not 
sure what damage he could have  done to the wall.)  For this, he was given 
18 months of solitary  confinement with dietary restrictions in an abandoned 
elevator shaft.   This shaft did not have a toilet, just a hole above the 
sewer that was  directly below.   Several years later, through others’ efforts 
and  lawsuits, this shaft was declared unconstitutional as inflicting cruel 
and  unusual punishment. 
When John F. Kennedy was shot, the Missouri  Executive Office, including 
the Governor of the State, was, oddly enough,  moved to the basement of the 
prison.  Mickey, who was sort of a news  junkie and pretty much a model 
prisoner, was down there and recognized the  Governor.  Mickey asked the Governor 
what he was doing there.  The  Governor told Mickey that Kennedy had been 
shot and that as a precaution the  Feds told all the governors to go somewhere 
safe.  And Mickey said, “And  you came here?” 
Finally, and surprisingly, after a year in jail  from the charges and the 
trial, and six more years in prison, the prison  officials said that Mickey 
was free to go because someone else confessed  to the crimes.  The “someone  
else” was the son of a very rich man in Kansas City.  The only problem  was 
that the son had been committed to a mental facility by his father, and  the 
son’s confession, as a mental patient, was not good enough for a  pardon.  
The rich father had recognized a problem with the son, but did  not want his 
son to go to prison.  If only he had had as much concern for  a poor boy 
from Oklahoma.   Mickey was innocent. Mickey was only paroled.  This led to 
many continuing problems for the rest of his life. 
Back home, Big Mick put Little Mickey back to work  as a driver on one of 
the milk trucks.  He and Mickey went to the County  Clerk’s office to get him 
back on the voting rolls, as felons were not allowed  to vote.  This was a 
favor to my dad, who was pretty well known in  Muskogee. 
Mickey felt most of the black people in the prison  were there mainly 
because of lack of adequate counsel at trials.  He  worked with them on some of 
their cases in the library at the prison.   When he came home he became 
active in the NAACP and eventually became  president of the local chapter.   
In the years between prison and the  Ecumenical Institute, 1964 to 1969, 
Mickey alternately drove a milk truck and  commuted to Tahlequah, Oklahoma to 
Northeastern State College, receiving a  degree in mathematics.  By this 
time, my mom and I had moved to Texas, so  the details of this period are a 
little speculative.  Mickey wasn’t a  good long distance driver, tending to 
talk to the passenger while not looking  at the road, or falling asleep. (I 
drove with him enough as a passenger to  know.) One time he totaled out his 
car, broke his arm and walked about ten  miles to get help.  Possibly through 
the local Methodist church, he  attended a weekend course called Religious 
Studies I (RSI), conducted by the  Ecumenical Institute.  He became an intern 
in the Oklahoma City House and  Office of the Ecumenical Institute.  Later, 
after February, 1970 when Big  Mick died at age 55, Mickey got me interested 
in the Religious Studies  courses.  I joined the community in March of 
1971. 
Mickey was transferred to the Chicago  Office.  After some lecture or study 
on Søren Kierkegaard about claiming  your own self through how you address 
yourself, Mickey dropped his long-time  nickname and used his given name 
Hubert.  I think it symbolized putting  the past behind and becoming a new 
person.  Hubert felt acceptance and  excitement within a very dynamic community. 
 He was finally having the  time of his life. 
The Ecumenical Institute staff self-funded most of  its administrative 
costs.  This largely consisted of some staff members  getting paying jobs with 
other organizations and contributing their salaries  to the operating costs 
of the entire group.  This was one of the first  plans for what Hubert could 
do.  For months he looked for work.  Lyn  Mathews , the wife of the dean of 
the Institute, took an interest in Hubert  and became his guardian and 
mentor.  Several times she had to go get him  because he had landed in some kind 
of fix.  If he told the potential  employer that he was an ex-con, they 
wouldn’t hire him.  If he didn’t  tell them and later they found out through 
having to bond him, he was then  fired. This happened in the case of a phone 
sales job in downtown  Chicago.  The building where he worked was several 
stories high and had  large plate glass windows.  His office was up several 
floors.  The  offices were arranged where two desks faced each other to 
motivate the sales  staff.  Each desk had a rolling desk chair for the employee.  
Each  had a different land line that could only be answered by actually 
physically  answering the phone.  One day the employee who worked across from him 
was  away from the desk and his phone rang.  Hubert leapt to his feet and  
flung himself across the two desks to get to the phone.  Meanwhile, his  
desk chair rolled backwards, shattering the plate glass window and falling  
onto the street below (fortunately not hitting anyone).    The  company tried 
to bond him, found out he was an ex-con, and fired him.   Later, Hubert was 
assigned an in-house job at the Institute, taking care of  the “mechanicals” 
at the west side facility.  I never felt that he was a  mechanical person.  
I’m certain he had many adventures there. 
Around this time, the Ecumenical Institute(EI)  established a sister 
organization called the Institute of Cultural  Affairs(ICA) to be able to offer 
training around the world without having a  Christian religious slant that 
could block interactions in Hindu, Moslem or  Buddhist countries.  Hubert was 
fortunate enough to be transferred to  Africa to begin working in one of the 
experimental outreach programs of the  Institute of Cultural Affairs called 
a Human Development Program.  These  programs were based on the community 
outreach program in Chicago in the  African-American neighborhood where the 
Ecumenical Institute was located,  called Fifth City.  Basically, the idea was 
that life, in general and in  particular, gives people and communities all 
the resources they need to live a  fully human life and that engaging in the 
efforts to be fully human together  causes a greater awareness of the 
goodness of life and of people.  Hubert  was ideally suited to this sort of 
demonstration because, once he knew what  the decision of a group was, he 
committed.  It was similar to a Star Trek  episode, where the captain would say 
(after the course was laid in),  “Engage”.  Hubert was the ultimate engager, 
able to overcome any fears,  and to work directly with people and have fun 
doing it.  He worked in  Nigeria, Kenya and Zambia for the next ten years.  I 
only know a few  stories from his work there, but know there would be 
hundreds if not thousands  of stories from staff members and community members 
that knew him.   Hubert was analytical.  Here two stories from Nigeria 
reflecting his  extreme sense of wonder and irony.  (I’ll try to tell these as 
Hubert  would.) 
    1.  Traffic in Nigeria was in its formative  stages.  Cars and highways 
were just coming into being.  People  didn’t really know how to drive.  The 
rules of the road were not  reflected in general knowledge.  This led to 
massive problems.   Cars darted in and out.  There were many accidents.  Chaos 
 reigned.  Finally, the government of Nigeria posted men along the  highway 
who would beat any person who committed a traffic infraction.   Traffic 
flow improved right away. 

    1.  I was working and living in Ijede, a Moslem  village in Nigeria, 
training local women to be community health workers. I  was extremely happy 
and proud of the work that I had done. A few nights  after the training, a 
gang of men raided the village.  There was a lot  of screaming by women.  I ran 
out of my hut to see women being dragged  away, some carried over the 
shoulders of men, crying out to me.  Some  of the older men prevented me from 
interfering.  The next day I found  out that all the young women I had trained 
to be community health workers  had been taken.    The chief of the village 
approached me.   “Finally we’re seeing some concrete results from this 
Human Development  Project.  Because of your community health training, we got 
much higher  bride prices for our women.” 
These types of experiences might have led others  of a weaker constitution 
to abandon their work, but in fact it just gave  Hubert a greater 
perspective on good intentions and unforeseen consequences,  greater perspective on 
the how the values of different cultures may be totally  different from your 
own values.  In fact, Hubert continued to work in the  village and was 
eventually made an honorary chief before he left.  He  once showed me the 
beautiful robes and head dress of a chief that they had  presented to him.   They 
were of white muslin with a delicate dark brown  batik pattern of lines across 
it.  His first village assignment and he  became chief.  Not something that 
happened to everyone. 
In this time period in Africa, sometimes I think  he felt very alone.  He 
had done a lot of child care for staff members in  the times when he wasn’t 
working at a job in Chicago.  He thought that he  could be a good father and 
that despite his past he should have a wife and  family.  He set out to get 
married.  Fortunately, he found a woman  who accepted and loved him and who 
already had a child, Kay Schnizlein and her  daughter Dara.  What a joy and 
lucky coincidence this was for him!   Later he adopted Dara and she became 
Dara Fulkerson.  Dara was a very  loving and joyful child and very smart.  
Hubert would encourage and help  her in mathematics and science throughout her 
school years.  I think he  felt like the luckiest man in the world. 
He worked in many villages in Kenya and  Zambia.  He went for a brief trip 
to India to help explain and expand the  ability to work with more than one 
village at a time.  After ten years in  working with indigenous people in 
Africa, he returned home to his one early  ambition and love, mathematics. 
The estate of Hubert’s father, Mick, had given  Hubert a few thousand 
dollars.  On his and his family’s return to the  United States to Oklahoma City, 
he again had to think of a way to be  employed.  Being a computer programmer 
seemed a good choice at the  time.  He attempted to enroll in Central 
Oklahoma State University, but  was blocked by his felony conviction for some 
reason.  He needed people  to vouch for him.  I think several people, including 
Tim Karpoff and  Evelyn Philbrook, wrote letters of reference for him at 
that time.  After  completing his degree in Computer Science, Hubert, Kay and 
Dara moved to  Phoenix to work with the Phoenix branch of the Institute of 
Cultural Affairs.  Hubert got a job with a major technology employer in 
Phoenix.  He was now  in his fifties, competing in an industry with young people. 
 When the  computer industry decided to outsource jobs to India, massive 
layoffs hit him  first because of his age and lack of seniority.  He went 
through at least  two companies; and then the entire local industry declined and 
his age began  to be a real barrier. 
One of the great stories from this time of work  concerned a contract to 
design the landing program of one of the largest new  planes ever produced by 
a major US airplane manufacturer.  He worked on  the team that designed this 
program.  To the computer company’s credit,  the program design team worked 
in a collaborative and communicative way.   When the due date for the 
program’s completion approached, the company had  apparently fulfilled its 
contractual specifications and was ready to hand the  program over to the aircraft 
company.  Hubert vociferously objected to  this because tests of the 
program indicated that planes utilizing the program  would land 200 feet 
underground!  He also had thought of ways to fix the  program.  With his help, the 
deadline was extended and the team was able  to correct the problems still 
associated with the program.  A few years  later, this same program landed a 
plane safely in Paris with several hundred  passengers on board with both 
pilots in the cockpit passed out because of a  chemical leak in the cockpit. 
One memory I have is of Hubert sitting at his tiny  little desk in his 
apartment, with two large posters of Einstein on the wall,  reading about and 
working through fractals.  He had a mathematical and  analytic brain mixed 
with a big sense of humor.  One habit, which tended  to drive people wild, was 
his reading through every part of the morning  paper.  Where others might 
not see the humor, he would comment and show  the absurdity of the news 
reporting.  He had lots that amazed and  disturbed him in Arizona politics.  He 
was disbelieving, for example,  that John McCain could continue to be elected 
after being part of the Keating  Five who had concocted the Savings and Loan 
Disaster of the 1980’s, where many  Arizonans had lost their life savings.  
I think that the selling of the  State House to private investors and then 
renting it back to the state alarmed  him. I think his review of the news 
and trying to engage others in reading it  was a way of saying, “Wake up! This 
stuff is not just funny—start reading  it!” 
With Hubert’s inability to find another computer  job, he became a 
substitute math teacher in the Phoenix public schools.   Not directly associated 
with the Institute of Cultural Affairs by this time,  which had changed its 
staffing model, Hubert and Kay had to rely on their own  activities for income. 
 Unfortunately, this caused conflict as Hubert  became less able to 
contribute to household income.  Eventually, Kay and  Hubert divorced, although Kay 
remained his loyal friend and protector for the  rest of his life.  
Meanwhile, Dara was continuing her school career with  flute playing, volleyball, 
school activities, and good grades.  To date,  she has earned a degree in 
civil engineering, a masters of business  administration, and her professional 
engineering certificate. 
Dara’s graduation ceremonies, and even her wedding  to Marcus Griffith, 
were attended by Hubert in a wheelchair after he suffered  a serious stroke in 
2006.  He lived in a nursing home for the rest of his  life.  The stroke 
affected his right arm and leg, and his speech and  memory.  Once I said to 
him, “You were a good mathematician and computer  programmer.”  He looked over 
in wonder and with a little puzzlement and  said, “Who, me?”   The little 
speech that he retained gradually declined  until there was very little by 
the end.  He communicated by frowns,  cries, smiles and tears. The man who 
loved to talk and comment on the news now  mainly communicated through 
emotion.  Once, in a period before his speech  really lessened, Tim and I found 
that, though he could speak very little, he  could sing “Amazing Grace” 
through several verses.  We were always sorry  that we could not afford to provide 
him with on-going funds for physical and  speech therapy after the short 
period of time that was funded by Medicaid.  Meanwhile, Kay, even though 
divorced from Hubert, cared for him through  visits, organizing transportation to 
holiday celebrations, medical and dental  appointments and graduations, and 
recruiting friends to visit to offer  massages and “light” for Hubert.   
She never gave up on him.  Dara  became his legal guardian, visited often, 
cheered him up and saw to his  medical needs.  In the final few months of 
Hubert’s life, he was able to  see his new grandchild Marcus Mikala Griffith.  
So begins a new life as  his ended.   
So what does one say about such a life?  Did  I mention that he contracted 
malaria while in Nigeria and suffered several  malaria attacks throughout 
his life?  At almost every turn he was slammed  against a wall (sometimes 
literally), and yet he laughed, shrugged his  shoulders, loved and served the 
people around him, and went on.  I have  this vision of everyone’s life being 
like living in a giant pen with a  rampaging bull.  In some people’s life 
the bull is off merrily munching  on grass in a faraway field and only 
occasionally brushes their shoulder,  perhaps while they sleep.  Finally, at the 
very end, the bull comes over,  gently knocks them on their butt and they die. 
 Everyone says what a nice  bull that guy had.  But Hubert’s bull was a 
more attentive bull.   “You think you’re going to go to good college and 
become a great  mathematician?  I’m going to knock you down.” Bam!!!  “You think 
 you’re going to get out of prison unscathed.”  Bam! “You think you can  
keep a job…a wife…your speech…your sense of wonder and humor?”  And yet  he 
did retain that wonder and humor.  I picture the bull, exhausted, in  awe, 
finally bowing in homage and love to a worthy opponent.  


=

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