1963 - CHAPTER THREE - THE TURNING POINT

'
  Our happy world began to crumble around 1960. I can't point to a specific event but daddy started drinking a lot and acting weird. Some drunks are more tolerable than others. You know, the ones who drink themselves into a stupor and pass out in a corner somewhere or they just act silly or happy. Then there are the more obnoxious ones who drown themselves in self pity or they just transform into a monster. Daddy could be the latter. He would feel sorry for himself and he could be mean sometimes. We walked on egg shells around him and stayed out of his way when he was mean. Daddy could also drink so much that he would pass out and be semi comatose for days. He drank so much sometimes that mother was having to fill in for him at the store. Mother would leave us with Donna when she could. Other times we had to stay home with daddy. When daddy bought his booze he would stop at a liquor store on Charlotte Avenue called Wendell Smiths. Or a bootlegger that was on Charlotte Pike near White Bridge Road. If we were with him he would tell us to wait in the car. Usually within a few minutes he would walk out carrying a fifth of whiskey in a brown paper bag. If we asked what it was his standard reply was apple cider. I believe that his choice of booze was Seagrams 7. 

 People have asked me what caused daddy's behavior and personality to change. I don't know for sure but this is what I believe and what I have been told. He was not only drinking but taking pills and I didn't know this until years later. I have learned over the years that drug addiction is a common problem among pharmacists. This is because of the easy access to drugs. It is also a dangerous combination when you drink and take drugs which helps to explain his erratic behavior. I also learned that daddy never had a license to fill prescriptions. How this happened is a mystery to me. I have heard that during the 1940's it wasn't necessary for a druggist to attend a pharmaceutical school and you could go before a state licensing board to prove your competency. A formal education was not required, but at some point the law was changed and if a person wanted to be a pharmacist he had to go to school. This is what I was told by family members and if it was true daddy was breaking the law. Or it could be that he never had any intention of legally becoming a pharmacist. I am just speculating but this was the South in the 1940's, 50's and early 60's and both of daddy's stores were in black neighborhoods. Maybe he thought he could get away with not having a license to fill prescriptions in black neighborhoods. Who knows? Carolyn told me that he paid a thousand dollars for a fake license and it hung on the wall in the prescription department. 

 Donna told me a few years ago that Daddy was also heavily in debt to the IRS. I can see why he felt overwhelmed by it all. He was pushing the envelope. His assistant pharmacist, Dr. Nall, was licensed and I had always heard that he had worked on the Manhattan Project at Oak Ridge during WW2 building the uranium atomic bomb named "Little Boy" that was dropped on Hiroshima. I remember Dr. Nall as a very distinguished black man and very intelligent with gray hair. It came as as a shock to me in the early 2000's when I found out Dr. Nall had recently passed away. I figured that he had long since died because he had to be in his 50's or early 60's when I knew him. Dr. Nall had to be very old when he died. At least in his 90's. He was the only licensed pharmacist at our store. Daddy was not only unlicensed but he was allowing mother, Aunt Freddie, and Aunt Lillian to fill prescriptions. Mother filled prescriptions regularly. while Freddie and Aunt Lillian helped out from time to time. Aunt Lillian was helping daddy until she had a massive stroke at the age of 43. They could have all gone to prison for this. For years now I have believed that the police knew that he was breaking the law. He was friends with a lot of police officers. One plainclothes detective in particular came into the store on a regular basis. I can't remember his name but after a short conversation daddy and this officer would walk back to the prescription department where I believe Daddy was paying him hush money. I have heard that the Nashville police department was very corrupt in those days and this was a common practice.
This is the Nashville detective that was possibly taking money from daddy


 I hated the fact that mother had to be away so much. As long as I could remember she had been a stay at home mom but was now having to work at the store all the time. You could definitely call me a mama's boy because I worshiped the ground that she walked on. Between this and daddy's weird behavior I just wanted everything back to normal. One night daddy had been drinking but he wasn't drunk. Just a little buzzed I guess. I laid down beside him on the couch and we began to talk. He was feeling sorry for himself and I took this opportunity to encourage him to get help. I told him that I wanted my old daddy back. Mother and others had asked him to get help but he just kept refusing. I guess when your child comes to you and asks it is different matter. Daddy told me that he would try to change and he tried to live up to his promise for a while. A few days after our conversation he checked himself in to City View sanitarium and was there for about a week drying out. Upon being discharged Daddy seemed to be okay and even went back to work. This lasted for about a month or two until he eventually reverted back to his old habits. A pattern developed because he would fall off of the wagon and after a while he would check into City View to dry out again. 

 One day daddy was very drunk and standing in the kitchen next to our refrigerator. The door to the garage was open and he was standing in the doorway with his back to the garage. He suddenly fell backwards with a loud thud as his head hit the concrete. It was at least a two foot drop from the kitchen to the floor of the garage. The fall would have killed anyone else. I called mother and told her what had happened. She told me to check on him and if he was still breathing just let him sleep it off. Another time I was in my tree house in the backyard while my friend Frankie looked up at me from the ground. I did a really dumb thing and walked out on some long boards that I had nailed to the floor. Without any support I felt them give way as I tried to walk back into my tree house. My body along with the boards came crashing down and I landed flat on my back looking up just in time to see the boards falling over on top of me before I could get out of the way. Frankie said that I was knocked out for a few minutes but if I was I don't remember. When I woke up I had blood running down into my eyes from a small but deep gash in my eyebrow. Daddy was plastered when I reached the house and I can still remember him slumped over in a kitchen chair barely able to hold his head up. 

 Donna was fifteen and only had a learners permit. I needed to go to the hospital but daddy was incoherent when we tried to rouse him. Donna called mother and she told her to drive me to the store so she could take me to the emergency room. She put the car in neutral and let it roll backward out of our driveway and into the street. From there she started the car and drove us to drugstore. Mother was then able to drive me to the emergency room at Baptist Hospital. On another weekend daddy was driving drunk near 17th and Church. He was driving east on Church Street and I was in the passenger seat. Up ahead was a city bus picking up passengers at a bus stop next to an intersection. It was a warm day and I had my arm hanging out of the window. As we neared the bus I realized that daddy was veering to the right. Just in the nick of time I jerked my arm inside the car as he sideswiped the bus. I looked over at him and it was obvious that he had no clue that he had just had an accident. He made a hard turn to the right at the next intersection and sped away. Cars were not equipped with seat belts back then. I guess the Lord was looking out for us.

  In the Spring of 1962 mother picked me up from school early one day and as we walked into the front door of our house we noticed pills strewn all over the floor. It looked like someone had taken pills by the handful and had thrown them everywhere. We could hear the sound of moaning coming from the bathroom. Daddy was naked except for a white wife beater tee shirt and he was slumped forward on the toilet. He had attempted suicide by overdosing on pills. Mother asked him several times what kind of pills he had taken. She called an ambulance and they rushed him to the hospital. The pills had affected his brain and at the hospital he was hallucinating. Mother told me that he kept talking about a family of cats living behind a heater in his hospital room. This probably sounds bad what I am going to say but I have always wished that he had died. 

 When daddy was out of danger he was committed to Madison Sanitarium. It was operated by the Seventh Day Adventists. He was supposed to stay ten weeks and while he was there he underwent electroshock therapy. Or as it is actually called electroconvulsive therapy. It was first introduced in 1938 by an Italian psychiatrist named Ugo Cerletti. Electroshock therapy was used to treat depression which is why they used it on daddy. They also used it on schizophrenia, mania, and catatonia. There has been an ongoing debate over the years as to the benefits of electroshock therapy. One of the side-effects of it is short and long term memory loss. I saw this in Daddy after he was released from the hospital. Daddy hated shock treatments and I believe he was traumatized by them. He talked about patients heads being swollen after taking ET. I don't know if he was imagining this due to his mental state or if there was any truth to this. ET was given in America under anesthesia and it usually caused the patient to go into convulsions.


This is a 1960 model of an electroconvulsive machine
This is a picture from a museum demonstrating how it was applied


  Mother and I regularly went to the hospital to visit daddy which was a real burden. We were still living in West Nashville and mother was running herself to death. She was managing the store, taking care of us, and going to see daddy on top of everything else. She was the only one allowed in to visit him and I always waited out in the waiting room. Didi told me later that daddy would beg mother to sign the papers to have him released from the hospital. Under this relentless pressure she finally gave in and had him released after about six weeks. Many in the family believed that she made a mistake doing this but I don't believe it would have changed the eventual outcome at all. If it had been up to me at the time he wouldn't have gotten out of that hospital. I loved my dad but I wanted to be happy again and the way he was acting I knew that wasn't going to happen. At least as long as he was around. Daddy was even worse after he got out of the hospital. This experience in my life has made me very distrustful of the mental health industry in America. He had memory problems and for a while severe back pain. One night we went to the Belle Aire drive-in theater on Charlotte Avenue. Daddy had hay fever and he was sneezing quite a lot that night. Every time he sneezed he would scream out in pain. The back pain may have been a side effect of the shock treatment. Daddy was acting weird most of the time. It was as if aliens had abducted my dad and replaced him with some creature that physically looked like him but that is where the resemblance ended. 

 I believe that families have generational curses. For some it is cycles of addictive behavior like alcoholism, physical and mental abuse of women and children. Pedophilia, co-dependency, sexual addiction, drug abuse, or in our case mental illness. My great grandmother, Hattie Vandergriff Swann, Aunt Margaret, and daddy were all victims of mental illness. I began having severe anxiety attacks in 1974. My daughter Melanie and my son Jon have also dealt with severe anxiety. Anxiety is a form of depression. I have an advantage because I am aware that our family may have a chemical imbalance. When the beast appears I recognize it for what is. Because of this I was able to beat some of my own problems and help my children get through their bouts with anxiety. The bottom line is that you must be a fighter in order to be able to overcome it and break the cycle. You can't defeat any enemy unless you properly define who or what the enemy is. Many people are in denial when it comes to family curses. 

 For my sixth grade year of 1961-62 I attended Charlotte Park Elementary school. It was a brand new school within walking distance of our house and I loved going there. My teacher was Mrs. Hearn and I passed with flying colors. For my seventh grade year in the Fall of 1962 I was enrolled at Hillwood Jr. High and I hated the whole experience. Unfortunately I was forced to ride the bus again which I absolutely hated. I was very modest and terrified at the thought of having to undress in front of people. Everyday I would make up an excuse so I wouldn't have to dress out for gym class. I would use the excuse that I had a stomach ache or I would conveniently forget my gym shorts. This went on for a while and the gym teachers patience was growing mighty thin with me. Hillwood and I just didn't mix because I didn't fit in. I joined the band and played the snare drum. One day I got into a fight with another drummer and got in trouble over that. I can't think of any positive experience that I had there. Daddy, however; was actually stable enough that he took me to a Hillwood varsity football game one Friday night. This was the last time that we ever did anything together.
Charlotte Park Elementary




    I have trouble remembering chronology during this period of my life. The events I am writing about from the day that daddy attempted suicide to his eventual death mostly happened in the last six months of 1962. Exactly when they happened I am a little fuzzy on. Daddy's attempted suicide had to have happened in the late Spring because I was still in school. He was released from the hospital probably sometime in July. In late November we were awakened one night to the sounds of a loud scuffle coming from mother and daddy's bedroom. The bedroom where we were sleeping was in the left front of the house and it was parallel to theirs in the rear of the house nearest to the back yard. The reason that I think that it was late November was because Donna was no longer living at home. The bedroom where we were sleeping had been Donna's bedroom and she married Larry Sircy on November 26, 1962. Our house only had two bedrooms and prior to Donna moving out Mark and I slept on a pull out couch in the den. Upon hearing the commotion we scurried into their bedroom and saw daddy choking mother with his left hand while trying to hit her with a nightstick in his right hand. He had her pinned against the wall and she was trying to break his grip on her neck with her right hand while fending off the nightstick with her free hand. 

 Mark and I were screaming and crying in terror, begging daddy to stop. Our screams seemed to jar him back to reality. He let go of mother and fell back on the bed landing in a sitting position. Daddy buried his head in his hands as the realization of what he had done seemed to take hold of him. Mother took us back to our bed and stayed with us until we stopped crying. She told us that daddy would never really hurt her and that she could easily handle him when he was drunk. I wanted to believe her and I didn't learn until years later that he was actually trying to kill her that night. Mother became afraid of him after this. He had left bruises on her neck. It was after this incident that she decided that we needed to move in with my grandparents. She couldn't trust us with daddy and she needed somebody to watch us while she ran the store. 

 My grandparents lived at 1300 McKennie Avenue in East Nashville. Granddaddy, mama, Aunt Arda, Didi and her two children Roy and Alton also lived there. Aunt Arda was granddaddy's invalid sister who besides being old, was suffering from a severe case of rheumatoid arthritis. We pronounced her name as Aunt Oddy. Now there were four more people living there. Daddy, mother, Mark and myself. Didi was primarily responsible for watching us when mother wasn't there and mama took care of us until Didi got off of work. The house was built probably in the late 1800's or early 1900's and had twelve foot ceilings. Mother, daddy, and Mark were sleeping in the living room. Didi, Roy and Alton were in the front bedroom. Granddaddy and mama slept in a bed in the corner of the dining room and I had a twin bed in the opposite corner. Aunt Arda slept in the only other bedroom on the side of the house that fronted 12th Street.

Aunt Arda
Aunt Arda's room circa 2015
Before remodeling
Aunt Arda
Aunt Arda's bedroom Circa 2020

Aunt Arda's bedroom circa 2020

Aunt Arda's bedroom circa 2020


 Our life was chaotic during this phase of our life. Mother would wake us up very early so we could get ready for school. Mother, Mark, and myself would hop into our white 1962 Ford Falcon station wagon and she would drive all the way across town to Charlotte Park elementary school in west Nashville where Mark attended 1st grade. I waited in the car while mother walked Mark to class and then she would drop me off at Hillwood jr. High School. That afternoon she would pick us up after school and then drive us back to McKennie Avenue in East Nashville. From there she would return to the store and stay until closing. This was hard on all of us but I enjoyed the fact that I actually got to spend some time with my mother on the long drive to and from school. 

 Sometime in December 1962 she decided that this routine was just too hard. She enrolled us at Bailey on Greenwood Avenue. The school was just a few blocks away from my grandparents house. Bailey was an old school that had grades one through nine. The school was nearly destroyed by the East Nashville tornado of 1933. The tornado was one of those events that the older people would tell me about when I was growing up. Much like the Blizzard of 51, the East Nashville Fire of 1916. and the Nashville train wreck of 1918. Just at the bottom of our back porch was a storm cellar as we always called it. It was useless to us in the event of a tornado because the previous owner, for reasons I will never understand, filled it in with dirt. I would love to have one today as sturdy as this one was. The entrance was covered by two wooden doors set at an angle. After digging out the dirt we found brick steps that led down into a brick lined room that was probably 10ft x 12 ft. We dug it out because we wanted a clubhouse and decided that the storm cellar would make a good one. The four of us, along with the neighborhood kids did the work. We placed a table and chairs down there and it made a great clubhouse. It never occurred to me why we had a tornado shelter until I learned years later that many people in East Nashville had built them as a result of the deadly East Nashville Tornado of March 14, 1933. The tornado followed about the same path as the East Nashville tornado of April 1998 and more recently the March 3, 2020 tornado. The 2020 tornado was even more deadly than the 1933 tornado, however. Both the 1933 and 2020 tornadoes occurred at night which led to a higher fatality rate.

 Far fewer people lived in East Nashville in 1933 but eleven people died in that storm. Twenty-five died in the 2020 storm as opposed to two in 1998. There was no advanced warning in 1933 like there was in 1998 and 2020. March,14, 1933 was a mild day in Nashville. A warm moist air mass covered most of the southeast. A powerful cold front lay to the northwest. On March 13th the high was 73 degrees. By the morning of the 14th it was 61 degrees. Although it was cloudy the temperature rose to 80 by 3:00 pm. The cold front was fast moving and dumped 0.81 inches of rain in a short time. The tornado touched down near 51st Ave. and Charlotte in West Nashville. The storm was weak in intensity until it hit downtown but it blew out windows in the Capital building and intensified as it hit the north side of the square. It crossed the Cumberland River above the Woodland St. Bridge and widened from about 400 feet feet to 800 feet. For three miles it tore through homes, churches, schools, and stores. There were 1400 homes destroyed, 16 churches, 36 stores, five factories, four schools, one library and a lodge hall. Eleven deaths occurred along with 2,000,000 million in property damage. The storm weakened as it went through Donelson but strengthened as it hit Lebanon. It traveled a distance of 45 miles. 




What was left of Bailey school after the 1933 tornado

 The socioeconomic level of the kids at Bailey was a little lower than I had been used to at Hillwood but I was much happier there. I began to develop long lasting friendships and I even worked up the courage to dress out for gym class. Going to the same school as Mark and my cousins Roy and Alton was helpful to my adjustment there. I was still very unhappy with the status of our family and living with the uncertainty of it all. Daddy was working some during this time. As I stated earlier Donna married James Larry Sircy on November 26,1962. We called him Larry. Mother and daddy were not happy about their marriage. They eloped to Sparta Tennessee. Larry was twenty and Donna was sixteen. After they were married Larry asked the Justice of the Peace if he owed him anything. The man said "just pay me what you think she is worth". Larry walked away without paying him anything. Since we weren't living at home mother told Donna they could stay at our house on Henry Ford Drive. Mother and daddy liked Larry at first but Larry was a charlatan. It wasn't long before they realized this and by the time Donna married Larry their eyes were opened to him.




Donna about the time she was married



  After moving to East Nashville I missed my mother terribly. I hardly ever got to see her because she was working so much. I saw her in the morning when I got up for school but I was usually in bed when she came home from work. One Saturday night I was really lonely and I felt an overwhelming need to be with her. I walked to Daniel-Hoppe Rexall drugstore on Gallatin road and used a pay phone to call a taxi. When the taxi arrived I told the driver to take me to our drugstore on Charlotte Avenue. I was very stubborn, some would say hardheaded and I still am. Once I make up my mind to do something I am hell bound to go through with it. Mother relished telling me the story about when she took me to see Dr. Koenig about my hearing. After the examination he told her "He's not hard of hearing he's hard headed".

 When I arrived at our store mother was shocked to see me. AfterI told her how I got there she was angry and told me that she was going to send me right back. She walked me out with her to pay the taxi driver and to tell him to take me back home. I was determined that I was not going back. I fooled her into believing that I was going to cooperate but as soon as she opened the door I ran away. Mother was screaming at me as I disappeared around the corner of the building. I ran south down 17th street to the alley at the rear of the store. I found a hiding place there until she sent two boys, who worked at the store, out to find me. They eventually talked me into coming back inside with them. When I got there the taxi was gone and I talked her into letting me stay with her until closing. She was angry with me but I guess she finally realized how determined I was to stay there.  As stubborn as I am I would have never done anything like that if my life had been normal. I have never regretted what I did that night because it would be the last real time of any consequence that I spent with my mother in the days before she died.

 Meanwhile, back on McKennie Avenue Didi was searching for me and had everyone else looking for me. Mother called to tell her what I had done and she was furious. Didi chewed me out over the phone but I didn't care because I was where I wanted to be and I was gladly willing to face her wrath when I got home. For years Didi would tell people at family gatherings after I was married that she came right down to that store and marched my butt back home. That was not true. Mother drove me home after closing the store for the night. When Didi told that story I would just grit my teeth and bear it. I never challenged her because I didn't want to embarrass her and it just wasn't worth the drama it would have caused. I would always make sure to tell people what really happened after she left. 






Mother and Dan


 My grandparents house had seven rooms. Two bedrooms, a dining room, a living room, and a kitchen. On the back side of the house next to the kitchen was a small room where granddaddy had an easy chair and we called it the back room. Next to it was the bathroom and it had two doors. One opened into Aunt Arda's bedroom and one opened into the back room. There was also a hallway that connected the back room with the living room. A dial telephone sat on a small table in the hallway near the entrance to the cellar. As a child the cellar was always scary to me and I wouldn't go downstairs unless someone was with me. It had a dirt floor and in the winter there was always a pile of coal in the corner. A coal furnace sat at the foot of the stairs. Granddaddy followed a routine on cold winter mornings. He was the first out of bed and the first thing he would do was get the furnace fired up. It would be freezing in the house because the furnace would go out during the night. We would sleep under three or four quilts and be warm as toast but I hated getting out from under those quilts in the morning because the cold would hit you like a ton of bricks. Placing your bare feet on that ice cold wooden floor was no fun.

There was a front door which opened from the living room on to a large concrete front porch that circled around to the side of the house. I can't remember when this happened but one night Donna and her then boyfriend Larry were standing on the porch near aunt Arda's room. This side of the porch faced 12th Street and the back of Eastland Baptist church. Larry decided to leave for the night and drove away in his car. It was a warm night and Donna lingered awhile there on the porch. Suddenly a strange man walked up to her out of the shadows and she passed out from sheer terror. When she came to the man was standing over her but just then Larry drove up and the he ran off. Luckily, Donna had left her purse in his car and he was bringing it back to her. He helped her into the house but she was hysterical. The police were called and a report was taken but nothing ever came of it. The house was white clapboard on the outside and there was a fairly large front yard and back yard. At the end of the back yard was a barn that granddaddy built around 1960. It served as both his work shop and storage. He also used as a single car garage.
Happy times in the dining room


Roy, my mother, mama and granddaddy in the dining room
Dining room circa 2020 - The wall has been removed between the dining room and kitchen

Dining room circa 2020

Dining room circa 2020
From the dining room looking into the kitchen circa 2020

The kitchen 2020

The kitchen looking into the back room where granddaddy's chair was


The kitchen in November 2015


Granddaddy in the kitchen
Aunt Arda in the kitchen


Area where Didi was standing in the above picture

2015
2015
2015
Didi on the front walk





Granddaddy and Alton

The tree in 2015
Roy, Alton & Donna

Roy, me, my cousin Judy, Donna, Alton and my cousin Jenny





Billy Fitts and Alton
This deck is where the above picture was taken circa 2020

The back yard circa 2020

The back yard circa 2020

The winter of 1960

The winter of 1960

The winter of 1960

The winter of 1960

Roy and Alton

Alton with a snow man
The backyard in 2015

The backyard in 2015


1300 McKennie Ave. in 2015

The spooky cellar in November 2015 - The furnace was in front of the steps
 As a family we spent our last Christmas together at my grandparents house. It was December 1962 and I can't remember anything about that Christmas except that it snowed 12 inches on Christmas Eve. I was delivering papers on West Greenwood Avenue that night. During that time my cousin Roy had a paper route. I was helping him deliver the afternoon newspaper which was called the Nashville Banner. When I reached my Uncle Doug's house near Hattie Cotton Elementary school I saw my mother standing just inside the front door of their living room. She waved at me as I walked by. There were a few inches of snow already on the ground and the flakes were huge and really coming down. Snow in Tennessee at Christmastime is very rare. There is a picture of my father that is possibly the best picture ever taken of him and as far as I know it was the last picture ever taken of him. It was Christmas day 1962 and he was wearing a hat and a trench coat. Daddy has a big smile on his face and looks perfectly normal. There is nothing in that picture that would betray the fact that daddy was a very sick man. In just about three weeks he would cause the death of my mother, his unborn baby and himself.
Last picture of my father


Nearly the same angle in November 2015
Aunt Freddy Daddys youngest sister

My brother Mark

Granddaddy & Gigs
The living room in early 2000's 

Living room circa 2020
Stairway from living room in circa 2020

  After daddy tried to kill my mother in late November 1962 she decided to have him committed to the state mental hospital in Nashville. Mother needed the signatures of at least two doctors to commit him. Didi told me that she walked the streets of Nashville looking for doctors willing to sign the papers. I don't know if she was successful. People have asked me over the years why my father decided to kill my mother and no one but daddy could really answer that question. Relatives tried to console me by saying that he was a sick man and wasn't in his right mind. I can accept that. Anyone who would kill their wife and the mother of their children can't be in their right mind. Some have told me that daddy loved mother so much that he couldn't bear going by himself. This is twisted logic to me. That is a heck of a way to show your love for someone. Apparently he didn't love his children that much. He left us orphaned and here to fend for ourselves. Maybe I am being too harsh and it is because I can't wrap my head around mental illness. Relatives and friends have meant well but I have my own theory. which makes much more sense to me. 

 Daddy found out that mother was trying to have him committed. Didi told me that he and Aunt Viola were fishing one day when she told him what mother was trying to do. In my opinion daddy was determined not to let that happen because he was determined not to be institutionalized again. From what I know about Aunt Viola I can see her telling daddy this. In fairness, I don't believe she would have told daddy this if she actually thought he would harm someone or himself. Nobody could have predicted that or intended for that to happen. It was, however; irresponsible of her to tell a man with a history of mental illness something like that. Even more despicable, Aunt Viola spread a vicious rumor about my mother after she died. Mother was five months pregnant when she was murdered and supposedly daddy killed her because she was pregnant with a black child. According to Viola a Nashville police officer told her this. The story goes that he saw mother riding around with a black man before she died and supposedly daddy killed her because she was pregnant with his baby. I have no doubt that the baby belonged to daddy. There is no way to prove that without having her body being exhumed which I have no legal authority to do. 

 It was common practice for white business owners to drive their black workers home after work. Many blacks didn't own cars and they either walked, rode a bicycle, hired a taxi or used city buses back and forth to work. Blacks owned cars but nothing like they do today. Many whites didn't own cars back then. My grandparents didn't own a car and Didi never owned one until she was in her 40's. Mother and daddy drove Dr. Nall home many times after work. The year was 1962 and the South was full of racist cops. I can only imagine what a white cop might think at seeing a white woman, with bleached blonde hair, driving black men home late at night. Secondly it would be out of character for my mother to do something like that. This was a woman who wouldn't allow us to use words like darn or call someone a liar. She was a woman who prayed with us each night before going to bed. Mother lived a Christian life in front of us. She made sure that we were always in Church or in Sunday school. The idea of mother having a relationship with a black man doesn't bother me. I have always been open-minded about interracial relationships. I just don't believe that mother was cheating on daddy and If she had been I know that it would have been wrong but mother was going through hell at that time. I can understand why a woman in a similar situation might fall to temptation but I don't believe that she did. 

 There are reasons that I wont bring up here why I believe the baby belonged to daddy. In 1993 my Air Guard unit was deployed to Hickam AFB Hawaii. My sister Carolyn lives in Hawaii and was very angry when I asked her what she knew about this story. She had heard this rumor before and Carolyn blurted out "that bitch, that bitch" over and over again, in reference to Aunt Viola. She claimed that mother wrote her a letter just before she died. Carolyn's husband John Kemper was stationed at Ft. Hood Texas and the letter arrived right after she heard the news that my parents were dead. Carolyn said that mother told her in the letter that she was pregnant. She also said that it couldn't have happened at a worse time because of all that was going on with daddy. Carolyn told me that mother would never have told her about the baby if it hadn't been daddy's. 

  Carolyn said that both Faye and herself loved my mother more than they loved their own mother. I can't prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that mother wasn't pregnant with a black child but regardless of what might be true it would never change the way I feel about her. I think that Aunt Viola spread this rumor because she was in denial about the fact that her brother committed such a heinous act. She once told my sister-in-law that the only good thing she could say about my mother was that she kept us clean. This is the only negative thing that I have ever heard anyone say about my mother and Aunt Viola was the only one likely to say it. Mother was loved by everyone. Whenever I met a relative or friend that knew her they would always tell me how good she was and how much they loved her. My daughter Melanie's temperament reminds me of my mother more than anyone. Everyone loves Melanie because she is such a gentle soul and her children's temperaments are very similar. My mother lives on through them. The following pictures are some of the black men that were working at our store in those last months.






  I asked my cousin Roy to tell me everything that he remembered about mother and daddy in those days leading up to and the day of their death. He remembers the Sunday night before they died when daddy, Didi, mama, granddaddy, Alton and himself were eating supper at the kitchen table. I don't know where I was because I have no memory of this event. Roy said that suddenly, out of the blue, daddy very nonchalantly said that he was going to kill my mother and himself. Didi supposedly responded "Bill, you know that you don't mean that". Daddy repeated that he was going to kill mother and himself. The next day mama was looking in the big wardrobe chest that sat in the back room and she noticed a pistol in the pocket of daddy's trench coat. She took the pistol out and hid it. On Tuesday she found another pistol but was afraid to take this one out of his pocket because she didn't want to anger him. Mama suffered a lot from guilt because she didn't take the gun when she had the chance. 

 Wednesday January 16, 1963 is a day that will forever be etched into my memory. There have not been too many days since that I have not thought about that day and it's consequences in some form or another. We woke up as usual that morning and dressed for school. Daddy was sitting in the back room facing the kitchen in a rocking chair. He was dressed in his work clothes which were dark pants, a long sleeved white shirt and bow tie. I will never forget the look on his face because he sat there lifeless, expressionless, with eyes staring straight ahead. Much like you might describe a thousand yard stare. The look on his face stopped me in my tracks. As I was walked through the kitchen I paused for just a moment to gaze at him.
Just beyond the open door on the left was where my father was sitting when I noticed the 1000 yard stare
My grandfather sitting in his easy chair in the back room

The room where granddaddy's chair was circa 2020

 I was irritated at mother that morning over something very minor. So minor that I can't remember today what I was mad about. Mother was lying in my bed next to the dining room door. She looked up and told me goodbye as I walked by the foot of the bed. I never failed to kiss her when I left for school but I didn't kiss her that morning. This was something that would bother me for a long time. I try to tell my wife and kids that I love them on a frequent basis. We are not guaranteed anything and life can end in an instant. Daddy, Roy, Alton and Mark were already waiting in the car when I walked out the front door. The front passenger seat next to daddy was empty as I hopped into our white Ford Falcon station wagon. Daddy was quiet as we drove the few blocks to our school on Greenwood Avenue. Roy remembered him absentmindedly driving past the school entrance. He said "Uncle Bill, you missed the school". Daddy turned the car around and according to Roy drove past the school again. Roy said that he told him a second time that he missed the entrance to the school. Daddy turned around and this time he finally found his way into the school driveway. If it happened this way I don't remember it.
The last time I saw my mother alive was on my little bed to the right of the door
Almost the same angle as above circa 2020

  The only class I remember that day was band class because I was sitting in the drum section when I heard the school secretary, Miss Greer, make an announcement over the school intercom. She asked for everyone that had a transistor radio to bring them to the office immediately. Laughing, I turned to the boy next to me and said something like "Yeah, I'm sure everybody is going to do that". It never occurred to me that this announcement was meant for us. Mother and daddy died around ten o'clock that morning and it was all over the news. Miss Greer didn't want us to hear about it that way. At lunch I walked down to the cafeteria in the basement. I ate at the same time as Roy but he wasn't there. Jerry Perry was standing in the lunch line and I asked him if he knew where Roy was. Jerry and Roy were good friends. With a smirk on his face he said that Roy was in trouble because he had hit a little girl and that he was in Mr. Wades office crying about it. 

 Mr. Wade was our principal and was a small slender bald headed man who reminded me a lot of Harry Truman. Miss Greer was our school secretary and she was a young, full figured blonde, who was very popular with the students. Jerry was always cutting up so I wasn't sure if he was kidding. I ran up to Mr. Wades office and as soon as I walked through the door I saw Roy sitting in a straight back wooden chair. He was crying with Mr. Wade and Miss Greer standing behind the chair trying to console him. A feeling of panic rose up in me because I knew something bad had happened and I asked him what was wrong. Mr. Wade and Miss Greer were not prepared to see me. They told me that Roy wasn't feeling well and I needed to go back to the lunch room. I begged Roy to tell me what was wrong but he was too upset to talk. Miss Greer had heard about my parents death on the news and she called Roy to the office and this is how he found out. Which explains why she was asking everyone to turn in their transistor radios.

Our principal Mr. Wade is on the top left and one of my favorite teachers Mr. Norwood is on the right
 
 About this time I felt a presence behind me. I turned and saw daddy's 1st cousin, Howard Wilkinson and I knew then that something was very wrong. There was no way that he would be at my school in the middle of the day unless something bad had happened. Howard told me that he was there to take Roy home. Roy was the oldest and I guess the adults thought that he could handle things better than the rest of us. Howard wasn't expecting to see me and he told me to go back to class. I was determined that I was going home even if I had to walk. We argued back and forth until he realized that he was fighting a losing battle. Howard turned to Mr. Wade and told him to dismiss Alton and Mark because he would be taking all of us home. I don't know what they were thinking. Did they really think that I wouldn't find out about my parents at some point before the day was over? The news was already out. I was told that after we left the teachers were crying as they told their students the news about my parents. Teachers and students were crying and hugging each other all over the school.

 When we reached Howard's car Roy, Alton, and Mark sat in the back seat and again I sat in the front. As we were driving away I was begging Howard to tell me what had happened. Without saying a word he drove to the end of the school driveway and stopped. He was staring off in the distance and I asked him if something had happened to daddy. I am sure that he was trying to think of the best way to tell me the terrible news. I then asked him if something had happened to mother. He finally he looked at me and said both. I was feeling sheer panic at this point. He then asked me if I could be a man. Hesitantly I said yes, I guess so. Again, with more firmness in his voice this time, he asked me again if I could be a man. Almost shouting I said that I could. He then told me that daddy had shot my mother and killed himself. Fearing the worst I asked if both of them were dead and he said yes. Howard's words hit me like a ton of bricks. I lurched forward with my head resting on the dashboard wailing like a wounded animal. The whole situation was so unreal to me that it seemed like it was happening to someone else. It was as close to an out of body experience as I have ever had.

   As we pulled up to our house a crowd of people ran toward us. The only one I remember was Aunt Catherine who was the first to reach me sobbing as she hugged me. The yard and house was packed with people and almost everyone was crying. There were relatives that I had not seen in ages and relatives I didn't even know. There were also neighbors and people I had never seen in my life. Mama was walking aimlessly through the house weeping and talking out of her head. Every now and then she would say something I didn't understand what she was talking about and Didi would tell her not to talk like that. It might have been about the fact that mother was pregnant. My mothers side of the family was very private about their personal lives and things like that were not discussed openly. I couldn't quit crying and mama would say, "listen to that poor baby crying for his mother". Mark was ten days short of his eighth birthday and I don't think I saw him cry at any time. I just believe that he was so young that he really didn't grasp what was happening. He looked lost. Mark would ultimately pay a higher price because he was so young. Our life was chaotic after mother and daddy died and he would have to put up with the chaos a lot longer than I did.

  I remember my Aunts Viola, Margaret, Lillian, and Freddie, all of daddy's sisters, huddled together at our dining room table holding each other and crying on each others shoulders. Uncle Doug and some other men were still cleaning the front bedroom where my parents had died. Curious, I opened the door and walked in. Luckily they were finishing up and there was no blood left on anything that I could see. They were putting a mattress on the bed and when they saw me I was shooed away. There was a constant flow of people carrying tray's, plates and bowls full of food. We had enough food to feed an army over the next few days. Grief can be a strange thing. One minute you are weeping from the very depths of your soul and the next moment you are laughing. Or you just feel numb and devoid of any emotion. I would run the full gamut of grief over the next few days and weeks. One thing that stands out in my mind was how beautiful the day was. The sky was a deep blue without a cloud in the sky. For some reason bad things seem to happen on pretty days. In addition to the death of my parents, there was the Kennedy assassination, September 11th 2001, and the near death of my daughter Misty. These things all happened on beautiful days.

  This is what I have learned talking to my grandmother, Didi, and from other sources over the years about the sequence of events that day. After we left for school mother got up out of my bed and got into Didi's larger bed in the front bedroom. Before lying down she placed an Elvis album on the Hi-Fi, as we called a record player in those days, and was listening to it as she fell asleep. Mother loved Elvis and she had probably seen all of his movies. She had taken me to see several of them with her over the years. Mama told Donna that she looked at my mother lying there listening to Elvis as she walked through the bedroom that morning and she had a smile on her face. My sister Donna remembered the bed being at an angle in front of the fire place hearth. She said that mother liked to lay on the side of the bed nearest the large window facing McKennie Avenue. After returning from dropping us off at school daddy undressed and lay down next to her. After a while he got up, put on his pants, and walked to the back room to get his pistol out of the pocket of his trench coat. It was a Saturday night special .22 caliber, nine shot revolver. He had given this gun to mother because she had to make night deposits at Third National Bank on Church Street. For whatever reason she gave this gun back to him just before she was killed.

 Daddy walked through the bathroom into Aunt Arda's bedroom and then walked through the living room. As he walked through the big wooden doors into the front bedroom he closed the doors behind him and locked them. There were two sets of these doors. One set opened into the dining room and the other opened into the living room. Daddy left the doors to the dining room unlocked. He then sat down at a dresser on the right side of the bed where mother was sleeping. How long he sat here Is not known but there were a number of cigarette butts left in the ash tray. Which means he probably sat there for quite a while building up his courage. At some point he stood up, leaned over on the bed and fired three bullets into the left side of mothers head, just behind the ear. Almost immediately daddy shot himself in the right temple and fell backwards across the fireplace hearth.
Roy standing in front of the wooden doors that were locked by daddy
Wooden doors circa 2020
 A .22 caliber bullet can produce a devastating injury to the human brain. I have heard that this is the preferred weapon of mafia hit men because the bullet is of such small caliber and low velocity that it penetrates the head but doesn't create an exit wound. It simply bounces around inside the skull, ravaging the brain in the process. On top of that, daddy was using hollow point bullets. For those who don't know, a hollow point makes a small entrance wound and a large exit wound. As a security officer I am supposed to use hollow points because the bullets disintegrate inside the body. Ball ammunition will pass through the body and can hit an innocent person in the line of fire. Police officers also use hollow point ammunition for this reason. So you can imagine what the death scene looked like. Didi told me that the bullets blew my mothers eyeballs out. I am being graphic in order to illustrate the horror that my grandmother encountered when she walked into that bedroom and found my parents.

 Mama, granddaddy, and Aunt Arda were in the kitchen when they heard the shots. Mama turned to granddaddy and asked if the kids were home. She told me that the shots sounded like firecrackers and she thought that maybe one of us had not gone to school that day and we were making the noise. Granddaddy was almost totally deaf and didn't hear the shots. Mama walked through the dining room to the the big sliding doors that opened into the front bedroom. She told me later that she didn't see daddy when she opened the doors. This was strange because she would have had to walk over or around him to get to where mother was. Mama said that she walked to the foot of the bed and shook mothers foot but she was probably in total shock by this point. She ran into the kitchen and tried to tell granddaddy what had happened. Granddaddy told me that he thought that daddy had hurt my mother so he grabbed a chair to hit him with. Of course he put it down when he realized what had happened.

 Didi was taking her 10:00 AM coffee break at Southern Bell telephone company about three blocks away. It was at the corner of Douglas Avenue and Gallatin Road. Southern Bell was the forerunner of South Central Bell. She said that a powerful feeling of dread suddenly came  over her. Didi said that it felt like all of the blood drained from her body. She ran to the phone and called home. When mama answered she told Didi that my mother wouldn't wake up. Didi told her to try again and waited on the phone until she came back. When mama returned she said that she still couldn't wake her up. Didi then told her that she was leaving work and coming home. Unknown to Didi, in her haste to get home, she left the receiver off the hook. Didi couldn't drive and wouldn't learn how until she was about forty years old. She told her supervisor that there was an emergency at home and he gave her a ride.
Didi working at Southern Bell Telephone company

 When they pulled up in front of the house Didi jumped out of the car and ran through the front door into the living room. Upon entering the house she tried to open the big wooden doors to her left but daddy had locked them. She then ran around to the other doors leading in from the dining room where she saw daddy lying on the floor in a pool of blood but she didn't see mother. Didi tried to call the police but was unable because she left the phone off of the hook at work. She then ran next door where she was able to get in touch with the police and an ambulance. In those days there was no 911. Each emergency service had their own numbers. Ambulances were owned and maintained by private funeral homes. The ambulance attendants only had a basic knowledge of first aid. The idea was to quickly transport the patient to the nearest hospital before they died. The profit motive led to some dangerous situations when rival funeral homes would race each other to the scene of an accident. This could result in some pretty bad wrecks involving ambulances.
Phillips-Robinson & Pettus-Owen & Wood were probably the biggest funeral homes and providers of ambulance service in Nashville at the time.


Vernon Wilkerson at Pettus-Owen-Wood Funeral Home, Charlotte Pike West Nashville Tn in 1959.


Death room - Mama entered from the right
The bed was directly in front of the fireplace
Same room as above Circa 2020

Circa 2020
 Our house quickly became a crime scene. The police and the news media descended on our house. Didi was never fond of Nashville's police department. She would disgustedly tell me how many police officers seemed to be there for no other reason than to gawk. An article was released on the front page of the Nashville Banner that afternoon about my parents. I was shielded from the news over the next few days but I was told that the story ran on the three local news channels that evening and it was on the radio. The story was on the front page of the Tennessean the following morning with a picture of my Uncle Doug being led away weeping by two friends. The murder-suicide occurred around ten o'clock and we probably got home sometime between 12:30 and 1:00 PM. The police, coroner, and news media couldn't have been gone long when we arrived. The case was pretty open and shut. Later that afternoon I was composed enough that I walked to Daniel-Hoppe Rexall drugstore to buy a cherry coke at the soda fountain. They only cost a nickle then and I just felt like I had to get away for a moment. While I was sitting there two strangers were sitting next to me talking about the death of my parents. I never let on to them who I was.

 Mother and daddy died on Wednesday and their bodies weren't ready until Thursday. On Wednesday night mama and I had a sleepless night. She sat next to my bed holding my hand as we comforted each other. Although my grandmother was not my mother she was the closest link I had to her. We talked all night. Mama sat in a chair next to my bed staring into the darkened bedroom where my parents died. She would do this night after night. She told me that she saw an angel standing over the spot where mother died one of those nights. On Thursday I refused to go to the funeral home for the visitation. Everybody tried to get me to go but I couldn't bring myself to do it. One of my adult female cousins, who was part of Hughes side of the family, tried very hard to talk me into going to the funeral home. She was granddaddy's niece and the daughter of my uncle Elmore Hughes, who was a railroad engineer. He married one of granddaddy's sisters but she died before I was born but I remembered Uncle Elmore very well. Many of the Hughes lived on Cahal Street in East Nashville and the whole family was very religious.

  My cousin kept telling me that my mother was very beautiful and I would regret it if I didn't go. Mama was my champion because she came to my defense. She told her and everyone else to leave me alone.  She refused to go to the funeral home herself because she didn't think that she could handle it. I wont lie, part of the reason I didn't want to go was my fear of death and the sight of dead people. The other reason was that I just didn't want to see my mother like that. I wanted to remember her in life. Didi took pictures for my benefit and it would be years before I could bring myself to look at them. In the pictures mother doesn't really look the way I remember her. Her head appears to be very swollen and daddy looks like a mannequin.








  Didi told me that when she arrived at the funeral home that afternoon to make arrangements both sides of the family were there. Gale Robinson, who was Didi's lawyer, and an owner of Phillips-Robinson Funeral Home, told everyone that before anything was done a decision should be made about Mark and I. In other words the decision needed to be made about who was going to take custody of us? There was silence in the room until Didi spoke up and said that we would probably be more comfortable staying where we already were. Mama told me that she wanted to become our guardian but the court wouldn't let her because of her age. I will always be grateful to Didi for taking guardianship of us. She was an attractive single mother with two children and was only thirty-five years old. There was plenty of life ahead for her. Now in one senseless tragic moment she had two more children to raise.

 In 1963 it was a man's world because most white women were housewives. Black women, for the most part, didn't have the luxury of staying home. It took both the man and the woman in a black family to make it. Divorce wasn't as common back then so a single divorcee like Didi had it rough without a man in their lives. Didi was fortunate because she was able to live with her parents and she had a good job for a woman. Although she still wasn't paid the same as her male counterparts. If women worked it was in the traditional jobs reserved for them. Such as clerical jobs, nursing, teaching, or retail. I didn't know until I was twenty-one years old that Didi raised us on her own income and was putting our social security and daddys veterans checks into a trust fund for us. After all of daddy's debts were paid there was only 10,000 dollars to be divided between his four biological children. Unfortunately daddy never adopted Donna and she was left out of the settlement. A trust fund with 2,500 dollars each was set up for Mark and I. We were to receive it when we reached the age of twenty-one. Because of Didi I had almost 9,000 dollars and Mark had well over 10,000 when we were finally eligible to receive it. Twenty five hundred dollars was worth a lot more in 1963 than it is today. There are not many people on this earth that would have done what Didi did for us.

 Unfortunately the relationship between Didi and I was never what I would call warm or close. It was pretty turbulent and we never had good chemistry. She tried to make it work but I was determined that no one would ever replace my mother. Years later Didi told me of an experience that she had one night just after mother was buried. She was sleeping on a pullout couch in the dining room. Didi said that she was lying there awake and staring into the room where mother died. The big wooden doors were open about twelve inches. Suddenly mother appeared in the opening between the doors. She was standing there in the gown that she had been buried in. Didi said that she wasn't frightened but instead it gave her a feeling of peace. It was as if mother was telling her everything was okay and there was nothing to worry about. I was shocked when Didi told me this story. She was the last person in my mind that would ever have had a supernatural experience and she was always so skeptical of things like that. This is what gives the story a feeling of authenticity to me.
My mother was standing in the doorway - My bed was in the left corner - My grandparents bed was in the right corner
 
 The funeral was at 10:30 AM on Friday morning January 18 and burial was at 11:30 AM. My parents were buried side by side at Nashville's Woodlawn cemetery. I was told that the funeral home was packed. There was even an overflow crowd in the yard during the service. My parents had plenty of friends and relatives that came to the funeral along with people that came out of respect for Mark and I such as our teachers and fellow students. There was even a celebrity there by the name of Moon Mullican,. He was a country music singer that daddy had somehow befriended. Many Black people who loved and respected my parents were also there. They stood in the front yard of the funeral home during the service. The funeral procession extended as far as the eye could see. I was told that it was one of the largest funerals, as far as crowd size, that Phillips-Robinson funeral home had ever had to that point.

 I have never had any regrets about not going to the funeral and I have only been to their graves a handful of times in my life. Most of the times it was because of a relative, or friends burial in the cemetery. Or we were at Woodlawn Funeral home to pay our respects to someone who had passed. Anybody who has lost a loved one will probably agree with me on this. The worse time in the grieving process is when everyone leaves and you are left to grieve alone. During the three days from the time of their deaths to the day of their burial the house was full of people and distractions. Most of the people were no longer around the day after the funeral. Relatives and friends would come by to check on us from time to time but I never felt as lonely in my life as I did during those days and weeks after they died. Mama was my pillar of strength. Every night she would sit by my bed and we would talk until I fell asleep. On Saturday morning I woke up and mama was gone. I asked why she was gone and was told that she had had a heart attack during the night. She had been rushed to Baptist hospital but I was told that she would be okay. Little did I know that this would be the first of five heart attacks. The fifth would kill her. She was diagnosed with heart failure but I think she simply died of a broken heart.

 On the first Monday after mother and daddy died I was back in school. Almost everyday I would tell my teachers I wasn't feeling well and I would ask to go home early. I got away with this for a while until it started getting old because at first I was playing on their sympathy. I was depressed and I felt like I didn't fit in anywhere. The whole year of 1963 was a blur to me and I really don't remember much about it. 

  In May 1963 I skipped school to see president John F. Kennedy He spoke at Vanderbilt before 30,000 people and was there to initiate construction on the Cordell Hull Dam by pushing a button on the podium. It was the signal for a gigantic explosion that could be heard over the stadium speakers. This was six months before his assassination. When I see color news footage of Kennedy on that day in Dallas, November 22, 1963, I am reminded of that day in Nashville. Just like Dallas, it was a beautiful sunny day and the only thing missing was Jackie Kennedy. His route took him from the airport on Murfreesboro road down to 8th Avenue where the motorcade turned right on to 8th Avenue and then it would make a left on to Broadway. Back then newspapers posted the motorcade routes. My plan was to stand on the corner of 8th and Broad so I could get a good look at him as he made that left turn on to Broad headed toward Vanderbilt.

 After he passed I boarded a city bus out to Vanderbilt Stadium where I would heard the speech in the stands. There was a nice young married couple that I struck up a conversation with. They were very impressed that a kid my age would be interested enough to skip school in order to see a president. We sat together during the speech. I have had the opportunity to see several Presidents and Vice Presidents since 1960. The first president to be was presidential candidate Richard Nixon in 1960. Then I saw Lyndon Johnson in 1964 standing on the corner of 7th and Charlotte. I was so close to him that I could have reached out and touched him. In the military I was involved in the security of Ronald Reagan and Air Force 1  in 1984, and George H.W. Bush and Air Force 1 in 1992. Vice Presidents Walter Mondale twice in 1979, and later Dan Quayle and Al Gore Jr. On the 50th anniversary of J.F.K.'s assassination in 2013 a local television reporter had read my account in my blog about seeing John Kennedy in May 1963. He wanted to interview me but I missed his call and when I heard his message on my voice mail the anniversary had already passed and he was no longer interested in doing the interview. Drat and double drat. Missed my 15 minutes of fame.
The Kennedy motorcade passing through Nashville

Kennedy speaking at Vanderbilt stadium


KENNEDY'S VANDERBILT SPEECH - MAY  18, 1963
https://youtu.be/OZpmRd0_oHw
 
 The year 1963 stands out in my mind as being the saddest and most eventful of my life to this point. I would dream that mother had taken a long trip and when she returned I would just throw my arms around her and sob. Then I would wake up and realize that I was dreaming. I dreamed that dream a lot over the next few years. If I dreamed about my father it was a nightmare and he was trying to kill me. Even today the rare times that I dream about my dad he is still trying to kill me. In September Aunt Arda got very sick. An ambulance came to the house and took her to the hospital but I never saw her again. She died on September 12th 1963 at the age of 78. I hate to say it but I was pretty mean to Aunt Arda. She didn't like Roy, Mark or myself because we would pick at her. It would make her mad if we even got close to her. She would take a feeble swing at us with her cane but she loved Alton. Alton was always good to her and helpful. She sure didn't like the rest of us, however. We thought it was funny that she would get so upset and that just made us pick at her more. If I had that part of my life to live over I would have been more loving and respectful to her. I could have learned a lot from her but youth is wasted on the young.

 On November 22, 1963 I was walking to Mr. Warren's English class just after lunch and was running a little late. I saw a group of teachers talking in low tones and it was obvious that something serious had happened because I overheard bits and pieces of their conversation. The best I could tell was that someone had been shot. When I got to class the room was buzzing with rumors until Mr. Warren walked in and announced that the president had been shot. A collective gasp went up in the room. About this time Mr. Wade started talking on the intercom and repeated what Mr. Warren had just told us. He then put the microphone next to the television in the principles office and for the rest of the afternoon we sat and listened to Walter Cronkite. It wasn't long before it was confirmed that President Kennedy was dead. Kennedy wasn't universally loved in the South because of his stand on civil rights. A few kids seemed to be happy that he was dead but they were in the minority. Most of us were genuinely upset over the assassination. I heard reports on the news of a few idiots cheering at the news of his assassination. 

 Kennedy was shot on a Friday and for four days we sat around the television watching news coverage. School was canceled for the funeral on Monday. The night of the assassination I was an usher at my cousin Judy Brown's wedding. I had an embarrassing moment when I was lighting candles and accidentally fell off the edge of the stage. Everyone had a good laugh at my expense.. The weekend was kind of rough for me because it brought back a lot of the pain of losing my parents. Mama cried the whole time. Every time she would walk by the television set she would start sobbing. The Kennedy assassination is when the prime time news media came of age. There was twenty four hour news coverage which was unprecedented in those days. Normally television signed off late at night with a rendition of the Star Spangled Banner.

 On Sunday morning we were at Grace Church of the Nazarene on Gallatin road when Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald in the basement of the Dallas jail on live television. This was the first time that a major news event was video taped and we watched the reruns of the Oswald shooting for the rest of the day on Sunday. Little did I know the impact that the Kennedy assassination would have on this country. Lyndon Johnson would expand the war in Vietnam causing the death and wounding of many young men of my generation. It would also lead to the radicals taking over the Democrat Party. The Party that is ravaging our country today. Johnson's War on Poverty and the Hippie, or counterculture movement, together have done more to destroy the American family and the American culture which will ultimately destroy America unless we can find a way to change the trends we have followed as a society since that time. The Johnson administration and the counterculture movement have badly damaged the family and church through the welfare state, the sexual revolution, and the drug culture. All of this can be traced to the Kennedy assassination in my view. 
Arriving in Dallas

Moment just before the head shot

Zapruder film of Jackie reaching for JFK's skull and brain fragments

Painting of the moment when the kennedy's arrived at Parkland hospital

Carrying the casket on Air Force One

Administering the oath of office to LBJ

Lee Harvey Oswald

Lying in state in the capital rotunda



The murder of Oswald




The graves of John and Jackie Kennedy

 Like the Christmas of 1962 I don't remember much about the Christmas of 1963 other than it was very sad. I do remember that Didi gave me a book called the Golden Book of the Civil War which I still have today. We were right in the middle of the Civil War Centennial and I read everything I could get my hands on about the war. It has been my experience that many people who are dying will suddenly get better just before they die. This was the case with mama. On the last day of her life mama was very happy. She was like a different person. Mama worked around the house all day doing housework and was in very good spirits. Later that night I was in the living room when I heard a commotion coming from mama's bedroom. After the death of Aunt Arda mama and granddaddy moved their bed into her old bedroom. Donna was hysterical and it looked like Roy and Donna were fighting about something. I looked in the bedroom and saw mama holding her chest. She suddenly fell back on the bed. I freaked out because I thought that she might be dying and I ran outside to the back yard and sat in the swing. That swing sits in my back yard now and every time I sit on it I am reminded of that night.

 I began praying as hard as I have ever prayed in my life. After a short time an ambulance arrived and they placed mama in the back of it and rushed her to the old Baptist hospital. I listened to the siren until it faded off in the distance. Uncle Bud, Didi, Donna, Roy and others went to the hospital while I stayed at home with Alton, Mark, and granddaddy. He paced the floor and I began to feel hopeful as time went by without hearing anything that mama might be okay. Later that night I heard cars drive up and I held my breath until suddenly I began to hear wailing and crying. I knew then that she was gone and just buried my head in my lap and began to shake violently. There were no tears. Only a feeling of numbness but I was shaking as If I had hypothermia. I sat there and shook and I couldn't stop for a long long time. Mama died exactly one year and ten days after my parents died. She died on Mark's 9th birthday, January 26, 1964. In my mind daddy killed four people on January 16, 1963. My mother, the baby she was carrying. my grandmother and himself.

Granddaddy and Mama on their fiftieth anniversary





A group picture the end of January 1963












































































































Comments

Popular posts from this blog

THE DEATH OF JAYNE MANSFIELD

NASHVILLE AND JESSE JAMES

CHARLIE PARKHURST