A Tribute to Daddy

On this day, in 1911, he came into the world, the sixth son, the tenth child of twelve; there would be two more sons. He came from two generations of Baptist preachers, was schooled in a one room building, and when eight grades were completed, with no money to pay tuition and room and board, he worked along side his father and brothers, learning the tasks of a farmer.

He enjoyed the games of basketball and baseball with the young men in his community.

In 1932 he married Easter, the skinny schoolgirl who had run the bases for him on the baseball diamond at school.

By the summer of 1941 they were the parents of two little girls. His father had died, and now he and his brother had taken over the farm, growing sorghum cane and making molasses.

Day after day, in the hot summer sun, they worked in the fields; he walked behind the horses as they pulled the plow along the rows of glistening cane plants, and she worked with the hoe. After the crops were harvested in the fall and the long winter nights came, he sat with his Bible and read by the dim light of a kerosene lamp. On other nights he and his brother might take the hounds and hunt for raccoons on the hillsides around the farm.

Sometime in the mid-fifties he took the Bible lessons he had learned and began preaching. He kept a little book with the names of the couples he had married and those he had baptized.

Easter died in 1987, and after living alone for nine years, he moved into a retirement center. At the age of 86 he remarried; a union that proved to not be too happy for either of them, and by the time she passed away, his condition had deteriorated to the point that he didn't realize she was gone. He passed away on July 27, 2010, and had he lived a mere six more months, he would have been 100 years old today. He always said he wanted to live to see Jesus return.