High Shool Sweethearts Married in 1962

RACHEL DICKERSON/MCDONALD COUNTY PRESS Donna and Paul Brooks are pictured at their home in Noel.
RACHEL DICKERSON/MCDONALD COUNTY PRESS Donna and Paul Brooks are pictured at their home in Noel.

Paul and Donna Brooks of Noel were high school sweethearts.

They both grew up in Webb City. Paul was raised on a farm with cows and chickens and crops, and Donna was a city girl who enjoyed swimming and skating with her friends. They started seeing each other when he was 16 and she was 14. They both graduated from Webb City High School. They married in 1962.

Paul went to college at Pittsburg State University in Kansas and majored in accounting. He served in the U.S. Army from 1963 to 1968. He was working for a CPA firm in Joplin when he did an audit on Diplomat Homes in Noel in 1968. Later that year, Diplomat Homes offered him a job. He accepted the offer and the couple moved to Noel.

They recently shared their memories of how Noel used to be when they moved here in 1968.

"There were two drug stores, a clothing store, a movie theater, a go-cart track," Paul said. "There were two or three restaurants on Main Street."

Donna said, "We used to have such huge parades in Noel, and now they've dwindled down to nothing."

"Some of the old-timers made their money on bootlegging because Oklahoma was dry," Paul added.

Paul was on the Noel City Council for about 10 years and served on the Chamber of Commerce, he said. In 1978 he bought Holden Industries, a business that builds lowboy trailers and sells them around the world. From 1984 to 2004 Paul owned a restaurant bar, Jose O'Malley's.

In 2012 Paul sold Holden Industries. He was retired for a few years, then he repurchased the business this year. Holden Industries has plants in Southwest City and Neosho. They have done a lot of work for the oilfield industry, Paul said.

Donna is a housewife. She raised the couple's four children. She volunteered stamping Christmas cards at the Noel post office, serving as a chaperone on class trips, teaching Bible school and Sunday school. She was also a Girl Scout leader. The couple has nine grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

General News on 02/23/2017