Drive to Ginger Roberts’s home east of Humboldt and a donkey brays announcement of your arrival.
A dog, tail wagging furiously, and a gaggle of cats tumble across a wooden deck looking for a friendly hand.
“I knew you were here,” Ginger says, thanks to the donkey’s keen surveillance.
She settles into a nicely appointed home for a pleasant conversation, from where she and husband Glenn pursued farm interests and many other activities. He died three years ago.
The contrast of stages of her life are sharply different.
GINGER WAS born Edna Kimzey in Stigler, Okla., before moving to Allen County.
Her education started in one-room country schools. By 13 she was at Iola Junior High, excluded from a copacetic home life by ongoing family feuds.
One night, in the midst of a rowdy dustup, Ray Emmons, an Iola patrolman, fetched Edna to shield her from the dysfunction.
They talked. He called wife Elzada to say he was bringing the girl home for the night. She joined three Emmons siblings, ages 7, 4 and 9 months.
“I stayed the night and never left,” Ginger said. “About a year later Mom and Dad (Emmons) filed an adoption petition.” She became an Emmons.
Her life changed for the better. She enjoyed herself and marched as a letter girl at the front of the Mustang band for three years.
At 17, “I did something stupid,” said Ginger, who picked up the nickname when the Emmonses allowed “no one that little should be so full of ginger.” “Stupid” was marrying so young.
Soon the marriage fell on hard times. She had two kids, Pamela and Vernon, and seven years later she was divorced and lost custody of the children.
Elzada taught at Zillah School five miles east of Humboldt. In late summer 1960, she needed help stocking her classroom. Ginger pitched in.
Glenn, a bus driver, noticed Ginger struggling to open a door with her hands full.
“He opened the door and said, ‘I’ll hold it open for a kiss,’” Ginger remembered. “I blushed and he didn’t get a kiss.”
