It Was All About The Home Kids...

In 2008, Matt and Mike Barr began working on taking the story based on Jim Dent's book, Twelve Mighty Orphans, to the Big Screen. They went to New Mexico to interview Betty Russell Morton of Albuquerque about her father, H.N. "Rusty" Russell, one of the characters in the story, and also about life at The Masonic Home and School. Pictured above, left to right, is Russell Morton, Betty's son and a principal in the newly formed 12 Productions, LLC, Betty Russell Morton, Matt Barr and Mike Barr. The Barrs, principals of 12 Productions, realized the potential of Dent's story for film, obtained the rights to the story and assembled the team for 12 Productions. Ryan Ross, the fourth principal in 12 Productions, is not pictured.

In an interview this week at her home in Albuquerque, Betty talked more about her memories of The Masonic Home and School. She lived in an apartment in the back of the Dining Hall on The Home campus when she was a small girl and remembers her parents having life-long relationships with the students, going to all of the annual reunions that they could.

"It was all about The Home Kids," she said, adding that the students never, ever, referred to themselves as orphans, nor did anyone affiliated with the school. "It was one big family," she added.

She remembers her mother, Juanita "Nita" Cravens Russell, taking a deep and special interest in the kids, especially Dot Moseley (now Mrs. Dorothy Kellam), who came to the orphanage when she was barely five years old, which was the youngest age that children could be admitted, although Betty was there with her parents as a baby and has memories of toddling and playing around the entire school.

Betty's mother spent a lot of time in her rocking chair with Dot, loving and doting on her. Her mother realized Dot needed extra special attention in adjusting at such a young age. Betty's mother, Nita, was just a few months old when her own mother died. Nita was sent off to boarding school at age six. Betty didn't know this about her mother until Nita celebrated her 90th birthday, because her mother never talked about her own childhood.

When Betty's parents were older, she said they just reveled in talking about their "home kids" and all of the great things that they had gone on to do. "My parents always felt that they got a lot more out of the home themselves than they ever gave," Betty said.

The story, in the 1930s and early '40s, captured national attention for a team of winners that drew state-wide supporters to watch the football games, but it wasn't until she was grown that Betty realized how uniquely special The Home was and what it meant to the kids who grew up there. When she saw Dot Moseley at the book signing, where they sat beside each other signing their photos in Dent's book, they shared the memories they each had of their early years there and of Betty's mother who rocked both girls. It wasn't until Betty was in her 80s, read Dent's book and reconnected with The Home students at the book signing, that she realized how her own mother was orphaned and how she could identify with the kids.

Her father thought his calling was to be in academics and child guidance; little did her parents know that their years at The Home would be the largest, and probably very most important and meaningful (to them), career block of their lives. Her father's brilliance with the strategy of the game of football would become his legacy to the larger public. However, his relationship to the kids and how he taught them to be winners in the game of life was what meant the most to him.

To each other, the students were "home guys" or "home kids" and they thought of each other as siblings, for life. Others outside of "The Home" may have called them orphans, but as Dent's book brought out, they were "Mighty" no matter what they were called.