By KAYLEA BROWN, Student Reporter
Danny Bret Reeves likes to tell his all of his classes the story of how he wrecked his 1976 Camaro.
It all happened in June 1984, the summer between his junior and senior year of college. Reeves and his friend had spent the night in Oklahoma City watching the band Alabama in concert. After a night full of listening to musicians they love, the two headed home.
On the late-night drive home after the concert, Reeves fell asleep at the wheel. Without his direction, the car ran off the road. After rolling 2 ½ times, the car landed on its top, crushing in on him and his friend.
Every time Reeves tell this story, he ends it with his belief about life.
“Everything has its purpose, so I wouldn’t go back and change it,” he tells his students. “If you change anything, if you change a timeframe, if you change a sequence of events … things don’t happen the same. It’s the ripple effect.”
Reeves never set out to be where he is today. He did not set out to be a teacher in a small-town high school. Nor did he set out to be the teacher that encourages students on their journey to a higher education. But that is where he is now.
A 2020 graduate of Cleveland High School, Kaylin Blatchford said Reeves is the reason that she is at Northwestern, which is also Reeves’ alma mater.
“He took out his time and went out of his way to support me when other people didn’t,” Blatchford said. “He helped me find several scholarships and Northwestern itself.”
Reeves’ decision about where to attend college came down to two schools: Northwestern Oklahoma State University and Southwestern Oklahoma State University. Both schools were roughly the same distance from Sharon Mutual High School where he graduated from in 1981. Ultimately, he decided to choose NWOSU because of the friends he had at the school.
Reeves’ decision to attend the university led to the “ripple effect” of him meeting his wife of 27 years.
“We met through mutual friends,” said Holly Reeves, his wife. “We were just kind of incidentally together a lot.”
Dan Reeves said he remembers seeing Holly White in line paying a bill the day before classes started, but he did not formally meet her until later in the week. His cousin happened to have a mutual friend with her.
Throughout the years at NWOSU, it was always their different friend couples and then Dan and Holly, Dan Reeves said. Although the pair were constantly together, they did not become a couple officially until years after they graduated from college.
“We were just good friends throughout college,” Holly Reeves said. “When we graduated, we kind of went our separate ways. We kept in touch and got back together years later.”
Before Dan Reeves reconnected with Holly, he married his first wife, Leslie Taylor, and had two children—Tiffany and Geoff. Geoff died at the age of 27. Years after divorcing Taylor and after moving around for work, Dan Reeves found himself back in Oklahoma.
After reconnecting with Holly White at his sister’s wedding in 1990, the two started talking seriously and their relationship began, Dan Reeves said.
After roughly a three-year relationship, the two married on May 29, 1993, in Peckham. They had three children together—Derek, Eric and Jessica— all nine months apart in age.
They also have four grandchildren ranging from the ages of 5 to 15.
When it comes to his family, Reeves has an unconditional love for his children, and he can meet them where they are, Holly Reeves said. He will not categorize you, but rather he will be fully accepting of who a person is, she said.
After he graduated from NWOSU, Dan Reeves worked several different jobs.
“When the oilfield died, my dad [George Reeves] sold his business,” Reeves said. “To reinvest, he purchased a shoe store and then bought a video store. … We ran both of those out of the same business, and we did that for a while.”
Reeves moved to Houston after finalizing his divorce and started working at Foot Locker. Reeves spent four years traveling around Houston before it brought him back to Oklahoma. He then went on to work different jobs in the Tulsa area before moving to Lake Texoma.
After a bit of time spent at the lake mowing, Reeves decided to move back to Cleveland, where he worked for a tree trimming service and sold insurance.
Although Reeves worked in several different fields, there was one career that he never saw himself going into.
“He never saw himself being a teacher, and that didn’t happen until after we got married,” Holly Reeves said. “He was a part of my daily life and watched what I was doing [in my classroom].”
Dan Reeves said a degree in business management is not the typical route for a teacher, but this is his 25th year teaching at Cleveland. Spending a large amount of time with students and seeing how they grow up gives a sense of fulfillment, he said.
A past student and current co-worker of his at Cleveland High School, Zacharia Lehnus, said Reeves is a teacher who has high expectations. He also said Reeves is one of those teachers every student should have.
Lehnus had Reeves as a teacher his sophomore year of high school for a business ethics class. Lehnus said Reeves is one of the few teachers with an emergency certification who is more knowledgeable about teaching and education than people who went to school to be a teacher.
“He didn’t take the path that most teachers take,” Lehnus said. “He came in with a business degree, but he’s very passionate about teaching kids the skills they need to be a successful adult.”
Lehnus said Reeves is the “go-to guy” for any questions about Cleveland. If there is ever a question about when the next game is for the school, where to get something, or when the next town event is, Reeves is the person to ask, he said.
Reeves became involved in the town of Cleveland during his nine years on the City Council as the Ward 1 councilman. Always a person to find the fun and the meaning in things, he found his time in office a “nine-year educational course in how a city runs.”
Reeves said he enjoyed attending meetings, but one of his favorite memories is digging up a time capsule located under a monument at the old swimming pool.
Reeves explained that the City Council had the monument pulled up and taken down to the town’s fire department.
After spending one afternoon jackhammering the concrete off of the monument to get to what looked like the time capsule, the group looked inside only to find it empty.
“Watching me and my other councilmen take turns with the jackhammer was pretty funny,” he said. “That was probably the funniest thing I’ve seen is to see them working to break that concrete up, and it not working very well.”
Reeves stays involved in more than the City Council and the school district. Outside of the classroom, Reeves can be seen doing some of his favorite hobbies, which include mowing, fishing and photography.
Daniel Brimmer is a boys basketball coach for the high school, the director of the school’s blended-learning academy and is a friend and mowing partner of Reeves’. He said some of his most memorable moments with Reeves involved one of them getting their mower stuck.
“He helped me start my mowing business,” Brimmer said. “And as I grow older, I realize that he’s a friend for life. At the drop of a hat in the middle of the night, he would be there for me.”
Brimmer said that, of all the things Reeves does in his free time, fishing is what he is most passionate about.
When asked about his passion, Reeves said: “I love to catch fish, but that’s not the priority. It’s the being in nature. It’s the relaxation.”
While on Lake Texoma, he also enjoys taking photos, especially of the State Highway 70 bridge just south of Bridgeview where he grew up.
Of all the things Reeves is passionate about, one major passion is his faith. Reeves said that, when it comes to other people, he does not care about what denomination a person is. It is more about the fact that the person has a relationship with God in general.
Reeves said he believes the ultimate goal in life is to make it to heaven one day, but he does not think his time is anytime soon because he still has much to do.
“As far as the sequence of my life, where I’ve been and what I’ve done, I really wouldn’t change a thing,” he said. “It all truly leads up to this moment.”
