(The following is the full text written as a eulogy for my dad’s memorial service on Monday, May 11, 2015 at Asbury United Methodist Church, Durham, NC. For his service, I edited it down and rearranged it for time and to avoid repeating ground wonderfully covered by my brothers, Lin and Page, who spoke before me. This contains what I wanted to say.)
When I think of my dad I think of joy. Joy in the living and doing. Joy in his friendships made and those in the making. Joy in his long love affair with his Martha. Joy in his family and work, the balance between the two, the raising of kids and watching them grow up to have kids of their own. Joy in winning the bid and building the job. Joy in the game of golf, a ball well struck, a fairway hit and a putt holed. Joy in the beginning of the morning and the ending of the day. Joy in worldly travel and arriving back home.
Joy in me, and joy in you.
Homer’s photo as it appeared in the Durham Herald Sun article for Veterans Day
I have been honoring my dad’s living all of my life. Now it’s time to honor his whole life, because, sadly for us, his life is done.
And boy did he live a good life. Raised in hard times he found the simplest of ways to build a good life.
He started by finding another life very early on with whom to enjoin his. He was 13 and she was 12. Since he and Martha both have lived a good long time, they have shared their lives together longer than most live.
Blessed with an easy style with people, a clear mind, a vision for today and tomorrow, and the wonderful capacity to let the trials of yesterday wash away with a good night’s sleep, Dad was always ready for the new plan for today.
Homer on Teer Company plane
He covered a lot of ground. Eight-four countries. Every state in the U.S. including Alaska before it was a state.
He’s been living on borrowed time since February 19th, 1945 when he first saw Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima at dawn from the deck of his troop carrier before hitting the beach.
He made it off of Iwo alive. It was the worst of many battles that gave him plenty to fear, but he came back home and put himself into his life with a passion knowing that the worst was behind him.
Homer was the epiphany of a self-made man. Just ask Mom…because she made him, her self. He wasn’t an extremely ambitious man for one who achieved so much in his time. He didn’t crave money, glory or the spotlight but he was often in it. It seemed that if something was getting done in Durham, Dad was smack dab in the middle of the doing.
For all of his great qualities and inherent capabilities, it was “Sha,” his pet name for the love of his life, who inspired him to see his own potential.
It was her, his new bride, for whom he fought his way through World War II.
It was Sha who begged him to use the GI Bill he earned through his service and attend N.C. State College instead of returning to his pre-war days as a plumber.
Sha, and their new baby girl, Marti, gave him the incentive and kept him focused on getting his degree.
Oh, he did do it all, make no mistake even if Mom lit the fire underneath him on occasion. Dad brought modern engineering practices to Nello L. Teer Company, accelerating a very good and growing company into a great company. From right here in Durham, Teer built out the US Highway system, dams in Oklahoma and Venezuela, an air base in Israel and roads in Africa.
He dined with heads of states, governors, celebrities, Saudi royalty, West Virginia farmers, Pennsylvania coal miners and African tribesmen. And he was comfortable in each setting.
He trusted his wife, close friends and God to guide him, his creative and spontaneous smarts to generate choices, his ability to decide and move on knowing that most wrong decisions could be course corrected if you’re observant enough to catch the error, and big enough to admit and alter the pathway to success.
When I nursed him over these last few months, as my brothers, sisters and Mom all did, sharing in the effort to help him heal from the infection, I woke up each morning thinking about him. And I’d lie in bed and feel those slow rolling silent tears, tears of sadness, hope and worry, slide down my face and drop to the pillow as I thought about his fight to get better.
Damn, I’ve never met a man with so much courage, courage to fight and survive in the worst of wars, courage to do what he thought was right, for others, and in the best and most difficult of times. Courage to give us all strength as he lost his.
At his weakest moment Homer had more courage than most men on their strongest day.
He knew the difference between God’s Plan and the plans of men – of everyday life. And he believed that a plan made things happen…good things. Progress.
And when folks needed stuff done, Homer was their man.
He didn’t do the work himself, nor did he ever claim it so, but man could he organize and cut through the clutter, focus and harness the power of willing, and sometimes not so willing, people.
He did it for Teer for 38 years starting in 1949.
He did it for the Exchange Club of Durham since 1954,
For the Child Abuse Prevention Center of Durham,
For Asbury Church, its pre-school and annual Christmas Tree Fundraiser,
For Willowhaven and Croasdaile Country Clubs,
And, for Croasdaile Village, his final home.
That strategy helped him focus his way through this life, to live up to his commitments to each of us and the community of Durham. And he relied on it to carry him through his battle for his health when he leaned on others because he could not plan the day by himself. He’d greet each us with, “Top of the morning. Good to see you. It’s a good day. I slept great. How are you? What’s the plan, son? I think it’s time that we made something happen.”
As you can tell, I don’t know how to put a bow on this. I guess that the best way is to end in thanks.
Thanks to the people of Asbury United Methodist Church who gave Dad a spiritual community.
Thanks to NC State College from which he gained an education upon which to build his life.
Thanks to Nello L. Teer Company and family for giving Homer his chance to start and finish his career and passion for building and to provide for his large family of five children.
Thanks to the Exchange Club that gave Dad and so many others the connection and energy to do so much good for Durham,
And the tremendous people living and working at Croasdaile Village who gave him a new home, new friends, and cared so deeply for him during his weakest time.
The amazing doctors, nurses and staff at Duke University Hospital who saved his life for a few more precious months.
The City of Durham for a lifelong home.
And, thank you, to each of you here today, and those who couldn’t come due to circumstance, for your love and appreciation of a man the likes of which don’t appear that often. Homer loved each and every one of you.
You made his day. His life. Every day.
A few weeks ago Mom asked Dad during a late afternoon at the hospital, “If you could wish for something, what would you wish for?” Dad answered, “I don’t deal in wishing.” “What would you change,” Mom asked. “I wouldn’t change a thing. Not one thing.”
“Do you miss me?” she whispered. “Honey, I beat this bed to death at night looking for you.”
That about sums it up on this amazing man who I had the honor and privilege to call Dad and you called husband, granddaddy, father, friend, uncle, boss, partner, or neighbor.
Rest in Peace Homer Lindell Riley. You enjoyed a Great Ride, drove most of the way and took us all along for the ride of our lives with you.
And as Homer often summed it up, the rest is history.
Homer, kissing his bride of 70 years, June 2013, at their celebration thrown by their kids and grandkids.
That was Coach Smith’s credo as remembered by Erskine Bowles during the public celebration of Coach Smith’s life held under the dome of the UNC Student Athletic Center. Bowles, a former UNC system president, is the son of Skipper Bowles and Smith family friend. Skipper chaired the charge for building the basketball arena working alongside with Smith.
It was a very moving day of storytelling, personal and fond memories shared, all to make sure that people now knew as much about their great coach, friend, mentor and father, as possible.
Many have remembered our legendary jewel of a coach, both before and after he passed away this month. He’s a coach who drew attention from the moment he stepped into the hot spotlight that was Carolina basketball. He took over a team that was in trouble not long after winning a national championship. Frank McGuire, his head coach, had left for the NBA. With his hands tied by self imposed restrictions by the university, Smith, as head coach, began to build what became the “Family of Carolina Basketball.”
Fittingly, one of the first to speak was Mickey Bell, a former walk-on player. Bell said that Coach Smith “was the most positive man I ever met. In game defining moments, Coach said things like ‘When we make the free throw, not “if.”‘ He never talked about winning. He only talked about improving.
“Preparation leads to calmness,” continued Bell. “When the Heels were down eight points with 17 seconds to go against Duke, Coach Smith called a timeout. In the team huddle he said, ‘We’re in great shape. Isn’t this fun.'”
I want to share an important part of the Dean Smith story from an article written by John Feinstein and published last year on February 28th to honor Smith’s 83rd birthday. Knowing Dean’s declining health and diminished memory, John recalled and retold a 1981 interview with Smith in which he learned even more about the coach’s character and principals in the game of life. John, an alumnus of Duke, tells it like this:
There’s one story that — to me — defines him. I’ve told it in the past, but it bears re-telling. In 1981, Smith very grudgingly agreed to cooperate with me on a profile for this newspaper. He kept insisting I should write about his players, but I said I had written about them. I wanted to write about him. He finally agreed.
One of the people I interviewed for the story was Rev. Robert Seymour, who had been Smith’s pastor at the Binkley Baptist Church since 1958, when he first arrived in Chapel Hill. Seymour told me a story about how upset Smith was to learn that Chapel Hill’s restaurants were still segregated. He and Seymour came up with an idea: Smith would walk into a restaurant with a black member of the church.
“You have to remember,” Reverend Seymour said. “Back then, he wasn’t Dean Smith. He was an assistant coach. Nothing more.”
Smith agreed and went to a restaurant where management knew him. He and his companion sat down and were served. That was the beginning of desegregation in Chapel Hill.
When I circled back to Smith and asked him to tell me more about that night, he shot me an angry look. “Who told you about that?” he asked.
“Reverend Seymour,” I said.
“I wish he hadn’t done that.”
“Why? You should be proud of doing something like that.”
He leaned forward in his chair and in a very quiet voice said something I’ve never forgotten: “You should never be proud of doing what’s right. You should just do what’s right.”
In their first home game after Coach Smith’s passing , Carolina took on Georgia Tech. Julie and I were standing six feet from the TV expecting something special to happen. It did.
Coach Roy Williams honored his coach and mentor in the best way he knew how. On the first Carolina possession, he raised his hand calling the play. Four fingers signaling Smith’s famous “Four Corners” offense. Play by play announcer Wes Durham, son of legendary Tar Heel sports broadcaster, Woody Durham, caught on quickly as the camera cut to a shot of Roy with his four fingers held up high. I looked over at Julie, smiling through tears and said, “He’s calling for Four Corners!” I choked up as I said in all honesty, “I hated the Four Corners! I hated it. But I love this moment.”
Then Marcus Paige, playing Phil Ford’s position in the center, spotted Brice Johnson cutting to the hoop, threaded a pass to him for a reverse layout. It was one shining moment on the court and a fitting tribute for the coach and to the crowd.
And I did hate the Four Corners. See, I grew up in a family of die-hard NC State Wolfpack fans who shared their love of the Pack with their kids. We shared the common thrill of gathering around the black and white TV to watch the one camera, silent telecast of NC State games on UNC public television. We’d listen to play by play on the NC State radio broadcast. Yes, we loved the Big Red. So, naturally, we hated Duke and Carolina. Especially Carolina. It seemed like the whole state worshipped Carolina Blue except for the Rileys. And anyone except for UNC fans hated the Four Corners. It controlled the tempo, protected leads, and slowed the game to a snail’s pace. The shot clock took care of that. And yet, Coach Smith’s teams continued to win, year in and year out because he continued to innovate with his players and the game.
Even while attending UNC from 1971-75, it took me some time to warm up to my own school team. Hard to fathom probably for many of my friends today since I’ve swung full tilt to Carolina Blue over the years. But I still love NC State. It meant family to me growing up, joined in a passion and love for something special. It still means that today. I turned around and gave my kids the same unifying experience of yelling at the TV as my Tar Heels played and we cheered hard together for every victory and loss we could watch while living in Pittsburgh and Atlanta. Cheering for the Heels meant home. Home in North Carolina.
I want to share my own Dean story about when and how I actually met him. I didn’t meet him until I suffered through an embarrassing moment in my career as a fan.
I was working for WPXI-TV in Pittsburgh. Dean’s tradition of putting an early road game on the schedule against a school in or nearby his seniors’ home towns brought the National Champions to Pittsburgh in December of ’93. Kevin Salvadori, was the senior player and native Pittsburgher I had to thank for the Heels’ visit. We had been living in Pittsburgh for eight years. I can only say that a combination of homesickness and an overabundance of championship pride drove me to the depths of “fandamonium.” I secured tickets for the four of us way in advance. As the day drew near, I developed an almost desperate need to score team autographs from this opportunity. After all, they were the reigning National Champions.
Julie bought one of those little commemorative Tar Heels basketballs for me and I took it to the game. We got over to the Civic Arena early enough to see the shootaround. I took my ball and Sharpie courtside and went to the end where the team was warming up. It was me and about 10 kids under 12 years old, hanging around the basket shuffling for attention with our sharpies in our hands. A security guard came over, looked at me with sad acknowledgement before shooing us away. I moved around the corner to behind the team bench and recognized Phil Ford on the floor talking to some folks who obviously belonged on the floor. I yelled, in a whispered voice, “Phil! Phil!” I didn’t catch Phil’s attention, but I did raise the guard’s attention again. He moved over my way and with a look of “Are you serious?” and dismissed me with a wave that strongly suggested that he’d better not see me again.
We enjoyed watching our team play and defeat Pittsburgh that night, but being so close to the team and not getting many autographs drove me crazy. After the game, as we were leaving the arena, I saw the team bus in the loading dock area. I ushered Julie and the kids to the car in the upper parking lot and went back down near to the bus. There were a few other people standing there where a chain link type gate kept us out of the huge passageway. As I waited, I recognized Eric Montross’s father standing in the small crowd. I had seen him numerous times on TV, watching Eric play. He, like his son, was quite tall. I spoke to him for a minute and he said that the kids would be coming out shortly. Finally, the gate rose and out walked the team. I did get a few autographs which have faded to be almost unreadable. I remember Pat Sullivan took the time to write his name on the ball as did Montross. When I finally got back to the car I met a very unhappy family. How could I leave them to be the last car in the lot? And, it was December and cold. How could I? Only one explanation. I’d become pretty darned invested in my Carolina Tar Heels while living away from home for so long.
Next time up came two years later. Dante Calabria, a sharp-shooting kid from Beaver Falls, PA was the senior. This time, I worked the inside route, asking Sam Nover, our sports director, for advice. He told me to show up at the press entrance. He knew the team was practicing in the early afternoon. He’d leave word at the security gate to let me in.
Although it was not without a moment of pause when the security guard wasn’t so accommodating. This was pre-cell phone days so I couldn’t raise Sam’s attention. He was inside. I was facing an unbelieving guard who didn’t seem to want to go out of his way to verify my story. Thankfully, a more customer service oriented employee stopped by, and took me in. I walked through a long dark hallway that came out right on the Igloo’s floor. It’s an amazing way to enter a building like that. The rows of chairs were laid out filling up the end zone area. I walked down the aisle leading to court from behind the backboard. I came up on a few folks talking in the aisle. One man turned my way, saw me, smiled and said, “Why hello. I’m Bill Guthridge.” I had recognized him in the instant I saw his face and before he spoke. And now it was my turn to explain myself. “Nice to meet you, Coach Guthridge. I’m Steve Riley, class of ’75. I work here in Pittsburgh for WPXI-TV, the NBC affiliate.” Guthridge gave me a very warm handshake. “Well how about that. That’s great. Hey Coach!” he said turning and walking me right up to Coach Smith who was standing nearer to the court where the team was scrimmaging. “This is Steve Riley, class of 75. He works for WPXI-TV here in Pittsburgh!”
“Why hello Steve. It’s great to meet you. Thanks for coming down.” That’s what I remember Coach Smith saying as he gave me a warm handshake. “Hey fellas,” he shouted to guys as they were walking off the court. “Come over here and say hi to Steve Riley, class of ’75. He lives up here in Pittsburgh working for the local TV station, WPXI-TV.” And that’s how I met Coach. And Antawn Jamison, Vince Carter and, of course, Dante Calabria. I had a Sports Illustrated with me that had the Tar Heels on the cover and a Sharpie. Those guys gave me their autographs. Dean gave me something that meant so much more, his hand and recognition.
All through his life Coach Smith did what was right. He honored the game, our school, our team and the boys who became men all at the same time.
As the Riley Family prepares to gather for Christmas in Greensboro, my sister-in-law, Maggie, the co-host with my bro, Page, sent out an email to all about sleeping arrangements, cooking assignments, etc. She laced references to song titles from family favorite, John Hiatt, throughout her email. That started what became a long chain of emails between our family members adding more and more references back and forth.
I started to join the fray and remembered this posting from 2008 on my old blog site. I am sharing it once again with the family and whomever wants to read it along with a few links to live performances. If you too have a John Hiatt story or favorite song or album or concert, leave a comment below and share with all.
(July 2008) I’m ripe with new music from Clark’s Father’s Day gift and Julie’s anniversary surprise and I’ve been listening pretty intently, either while riding to work during my Atlanta summer commute or while writing.
Here’s the first of five new selections that I’m throwing out there for those of you who share an interest in music, new and old, from bands in their infancy to singer/songwriters in their second life.
Let’s start with the venerable Mr. John Hiatt and his new release, “Same Old Man.” (2008)
John has become one of the musical loves of my life. One of my interns at WPXI back in the early 90’s gave me “Slow Turning” as a parting thank you gift. At that time I used to play music in my conference room on Fridays for those in earshot so she had a sense of my musical taste. “I think you’ll like this guy.” As often happens in the land of opportunity, we let great things languish. I took it home, set it aside for a while until one day, seeing the CD and remembering the gesture and intrigued by the cover photograph of this craggy faced, oil-slick hair musician, I popped it in the player – the first digital player of our lifetime. Out of my old Advent speakers came this incredible sound that picked me up and took me places in rhythm and rhyme and story telling phrases that licked the essence of life experiences. As they say, I was transported.
(Click here to experience “Drive South” the title track and first cut on the first Hiatt I ever heard. You’ll see what drew me to him.)
Later, at lunch with a local Pittsburgh radio executive, I dropped Hiatt’s name. His eyes lit up. He had found someone else who knew the guilty pleasure of John. “Do you have, “Bring the Family”? Nope. “Slow Turning” is all we have at the moment. “I’ll make you a cassette.” He did. We played it on a trip down to Beech Mountain. I fell in love with “Memphis in the Meantime” and spent the majority of our visit in the mountains figuring it out on the guitar.
I won’t take you through the many concerts of his we’ve seen but I must say that the first two set the stage for a love affair lasting through today and his new release.
The first thing that hits you is the difference in his album photograph personae and his stage presence. In the photos he’s cool, edgy and thoughtful. On stage, I’ve never watched someone enjoy himself or herself any more than Hiatt. He wears 50’s style clothing, laughs and jokes his way through the sets and cracks himself up all through the night. He tells stories in between his songs in a self-deprecating fashion.
Our first opportunity to see him live was at Graffiti in Pittsburgh in a standing room only crowded house. Later, we talked him up enough to convince a couple of friends to go see him at Metropol, a new hip hot spot in the historic Strip District. It was this concert tour playing most of the just released “Walk On” album that took us to an incredible pinnacle of personalized hand-crafted musical experience. “Cry Love” live finished in this brimming over the top cascading of perfect harmonies of acoustic instruments and human voices singing the “Cry love” refrain until we, well, almost cried tears of joy. After the final crescendo, the four of us – again standing in the pressed together flesh of shoulders four rows from the musicians craning to see it all from the open floor – looked at each other with “Damn that was unforgettably good!”
Often we’ve traded his name and CDs with others who enjoy looking for new entrees into their musical revelations. My little brother, Page, took to him and turned some friends in Knoxville on to his music. Clark and Blair grew up with the tunes and traveled with us to many a concert here in Atlanta, a frequent stop on his touring path, only four hours from his Nashville area home.
Back in 1997 I was in a Nashville recording studio on Music Row working on new theme music for WPXI. During a break in the session I turned around and looked at these boxes housing two-inch wide recording tape reels for the 16 track decks in use at the time. On the rib of one it said, “John Hiatt”. My heart skipped a beat. I was feet away from a master of tracks of the guy I idolized and whose music made me come alive. I said to the session engineer that I didn’t know what the protocol was, I assumed these were private tapes, but was there anyway possible that he could string it up and let me listen? He just shook his head and said, “No way man.” Still, I was that close to maybe “Little Head.”
So buy it and any other in Hiatt’s discography, and if you see that he’s performing in your area, please go to see him. He may be alone or with some amalgamation of his almost lifelong band of brothers, The Guilty Dogs or The Goners. You’ll love his love of music and the little things that can make music. You’ll also enjoy his sense of humor in his songs. Here’s the track that started it all for me, Memphis in the Meantime.
(Thank the world for YouTube! You can see and hear almost any song video recorded “live” and see John’s joy in performing with kick ass band mates.)
Remember, leave a comment in the box below and let’s keep the Hiatt chat going!
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas!
Left to right in chronological order, separated by Pittsburgh years and Atlanta years, starting with “Bring the Family.” I had to get out a magnifying glass to read the copyright dates. We have more on digital only inlcuding 2010’s “The Open Road” and 2011’s “Dirty Jeans and Mudslide Hymns”
He finished everything with a flourish. Even eating a piece of hot buttered corn on the cob fresh out of his garden ended with a grand finale. After he had gnawed all around the cob, he let it drop from his hands, bam! onto the plate, his lips alive with butter, his hands out waiting for someone to put a napkin or dish rag in one of them.
Oh he loved the finer and simpler things in life. And he did love the show. Whether it was a barbecue, a fish fry, a dust up on the job. You name it. He made it more spectacular. Like taking Mom and Dad and Nell to the NC State at Penn State football game…by helicopter. Simple stuff like that.
He was a surrogate father figure of sorts in my life. The summer after I turned eighteen I think my dad sent me up to West Virginia to work on Cam’s road job on I-79 around Burnsville just to give me a taste of a special brand of basic training. Like a drill sergeant, Cam found the perfect job to humble me and test my mettle: the fence crew. Next time you’re riding down the interstate, look for the fence. It usually runs off in the woods. In West Virginia, it ran way up on the hillside above the job. We had to haul all of our tools and concrete up the hill.
On the farm, he included me in with his son John, like the brothers we were, ordering us around with the comfort of a father. “Hey, you boys, get over here,” he might yell from the front porch of the farm just as we finally settled down on a chair by the pool after a full day of odd jobs on the farm. “I need you two to go down to the lower barn and bring the red tractor up here.” And off we’d go on a 20 to 30 minute run that led to more work later with the tractor.
I met him sometime around 1965 to 1967 when I was 12 or 14 years old. He, like his dad, Charlie, worked for Nello L. Teer Company, and my dad was his boss. Cam and John came through Durham to pick up Dad, Lin and me to go hunting at his father’s camp at Lake Mattamuskeet. His eyebrows were as wild as they come, arching up to the sky on the outside tips. His eyes twinkled underneath them like he knew excitement few men did. I wanted to be around that. Catch some of that fire. That spirit. That energy to command other men who could move mountains with bulldozers, motor graders and scrapers.
Turns out I wasn’t much for killing. I wasn’t a bad shot. I just didn’t like the result. After we opened fire from our blind on a gaggle of Canadian geese coming in for a landing in our corn field, the barrage left a few on the ground. Cam sent John and me out to fetch them back. The bird I picked up by its feet turned out to be just stunned and came back to life as I was running back to the blind. It was damn near as big as I was and started swinging its neck around trying to bite me, honking and snapping for dear life. I’m sure it was a sight. Cam looked at me with a kind of manly disgust and grabbed the bird by the head, gave it a twirl and that was that in one pop. Goose for dinner. That cured me of hunting.
The rest is a long story of a love and sometimes not so much love affair with a man who could be as soft and gentle as they come, especially to his three daughters, and as rough and tumble as you’d ever want to meet. There really was only one way with Cam. That was his way. And he definitely had a vision of what and when he wanted some doing done. It was always an unfolding mystery to the rest of us, and not usually on the same schedule as you were thinking. He could redirect John and his buddies in ways that seemed, well, almost calculated to frustrate a bunch of young men and show them exactly, unmistakably, who was in charge, and it wasn’t any of us.
That said, he could not have been more generous a man with what he had. He shared it all with pride. He enjoyed the having, but he enjoyed sharing it even more. Just know that there was a price to pay in how he could affect your enjoyment of the moment and you just never knew when you would end up in the middle of a work crew.
Well, through all that unpredictability, I loved him and his family. So much so that, with Julie’s approval, we named our son after him and John. On February 28, 1984, Cameron Clark Riley was born into this world.
Cam, with his namesake, our son, Cameron Clark Riley, at the farm under the picnic shelter near the lake, 1984.
Cam, I didn’t see you enough these final years. The last really fun time together was when you and Nell drove over to visit the whole Riley clan shacked up in a cottage on the beach at Emerald Isle, NC. We put together a shrimp boil in your honor, iced down some beers, covered the table in plastic, crowded all in around it and ate us up a mess of shrimp. I can still see you sitting there, big smile on your face, telling stories and laughing at your own words, as the shrimp peelings piled higher and higher, then holding your hands out for someone to put a napkin in them. It wasn’t going to be Nell. She was wise to that move, but she loved you for and in spite of it.
Back in 2005, on your 83rd birthday, I sent you a letter. Do you remember that? I had found this photo I took of you in 1984 on the farm and it stirred me to write you and tell you just how much you mean to me. If you don’t mind, I’d like to share it now with your friends and family, as we’re all starting that very sad part of our lives, the part without you in our midst. Everything that I wrote below I mean today. You were a man among men and one of the great influences on my life. Rest in peace.
June 2005
Cam,
Happy Birthday a bit belatedly. And now that I think of it, Happy Father’s Day!
This is just one of many photos in my collection that captures you quite well: a man in thought, enjoying where he is at the moment, and with whom he finds himself spending that moment. And we had some moments together for sure. I learned a lot from you although I’m not completely sure you meant to be teaching me what I was learning.
There are so many things that I know how to do and how to figure out because of the years I spent around you, the jobs and The Farm. One thing that I took from the entire practical on the job experience stays with me still: witnessing common men doing uncommon things in the face of necessity. In our case, it was figuring out how to get the job done by overcoming one challenge after another.
Unknowingly I absorbed the values of working hard and then sitting back for a minute and admiring your work, relishing the time spent changing something into something else.
I witnessed the remarkable character of the men like you drawn to construction, where you applied your vision and leadership, your tenacity and almost fearless presence on the job to literally and figuratively move mountains.
The more I look at this photograph, the more I’m thinking that you’re looking out over The Farm conjuring up some work you think needs some doing. Any minute now you might say, “Steve, let’s go take a ride in the pickup. I got something I need to check into. You drive.” And off we’d go, your scotch tinkling in your glass as we bump along the back road angling up behind the house while the golden hour of the sunset purifies and confirms the glory of it all.
I love you man. Thanks for sharing all of those times with a snotty little skinny kid from the big city of Durham.
The details of how they met are important, but even more important than the circumstance of their meeting is the full life they’ve lived together for 22 years and the celebrating that life with an eternal promise to one another.
They announced their engagement to the family at large last Christmas. Marti came over to me after our big Christmas Eve extravaganza dinner while I had my hands in dishwater cleaning up. I could sense that she really wanted to tell me something and I picked up a hand towel to dry my hands.
“Steve, Susan and I are getting married this summer,” she said while looking me in the eyes. “We’ve been together for almost 22 years.” And with that, joy washed over both of us. Joy in the telling. Joy in the knowing. Joy in the freedom from 22 years of not.
I immediately gave her a hug, towel, wet hands and all. I put my hands on both her shoulders and we continued to look at one another, the way you do when you really want to communicate.
“Marti, what awesome news,” I said. “I couldn’t be happier for you both. Just tell us when and where and we’ll be there.”
“We’re looking at sometime in June, probably in P-town. We know that it isn’t the most convenient place to get to, but it’s really amazing there.”
Okay, I’ll go on the record and admit that I thought she meant, “Bean town” for Boston. “B-town?”
“No, P-town,” she corrected me. So, I’m thinking “Providence.”
“Hey Julie, Clark, Blair, Aunt Marti has an announcement.”
And that’s how Marti presented us all with a great Christmas present: a long awaited announcement and an event to which we could all look forward. I did have to learn that I was mistaken twice. “P-town” of course was short for Provincetown, Massachusetts, long known by all but me as the place where gay women and men could go and be themselves, free from the shackles of the judgment of others. Family member after family member shared in the news and put their names in the hat to attend. The response overwhelmed my sister.
And so the months flew by and we all booked flights and rental cars and made plans to go to a part of the U.S. we’d never been, Cape Cod. What an adventure it became. And, as a bonus, we flew into Providence and got to experience the long time home of our nephew, Kelly. He has continued to make that his home base since his college days.
Clark and his best girl, Ashley, and Blair joined Julie and I on the trip. Marti recommended a place that they had looked into and it turned out to be remarkably beautiful. A four-bedroom log cabin at the end of a long private gravel road overlooking a huge bog on National Park land. Our niece, Claire, secured the place for a four-day weekend and we were all set.
Arriving on Thursday gave us Friday to enjoy P-town and we started it off with a boating adventure out to see the whales hanging out off the coast. And sight whales we did after we made it through the chop created by winds of 15 knots blowing inland, nothing a little Dramamine couldn’t handle. After we got eight miles from shore, the seas lay down and we saw what we came for. First, the explosive grey mist of water and air as the whale broke the surface and blew. Then, the roll of the back showing the dorsal fin. And, then the majestic tail, rising up out of the water as the humpback prepared to dive.
On our trip we saw all humpbacks, except for one Fin whale off in the distance, the second largest creature on Earth. We saw mothers with calves and singles. We were even lucky enough to catch one calf in a playful mood, breaching the surface head first three different times. According our guide, Chad, it’s a real treat to get to see that. It proved difficult to capture on camera however. The breach is a total surprise. The boat is wobbly. You’ll see how I clipped the upper most part of the head off. Still, amazing sight to see.
Back at the dock we swapped seats with Lin, Sylvia, Claire, Kelly and his girlfriend, Kia. They were off for their own unique adventure. Every trip is different according to Chad.
Friday late afternoon, our niece Peyton, finally made it in on the ferry from Boston having started her journey that morning before the crack of dawn. A quick refresh and she was good to go and off we went.
That night, Marti and Susan put on a dinner at a wonderful place on the water. Nothing formal. No agenda. Susan welcomed us all and invited us to enjoy the evening, the wine and the food. Then Lin uncorked the toasting, joking that we’re celebrating a really long engagement, and that it’s about time. Then, friend after friend spoke, mixing good-natured, over the top, roasting with heartfelt love, affection and happiness. The more the wine flowed, the more involved the storytelling, about how they first met Marti and Susan, how long they’ve known them and how meaningful they were in their lives. It was all beautiful. Marti tried to say something, but she, like me, have our mother’s characteristic trait of sobbing instead of speaking during emotional moments. So, she sat back down.
Having roasted Marti pretty well for her 50th and 60th birthdays, I took a different approach, following Lin’s lead about the length of time they’ve spent together.
I don’t remember exactly what I said, but it went something like this. And if wasn’t exactly like this, this is what I meant to say:
Listening to you talk, I’m so impressed with the long term friendships so many of you have shared with Marti and Susan. For me, well, I’ve never known life without my big sister Marti. My brothers and sister say the same. She was the first of five. For three years, the one and only child. Her birth started the family of Homer and Martha. They had nothing but each other, a scholarship to NC State on the GI Bill and Marti. Pennies, nickels and dimes were their currency. Marti was their pride and joy.
Being the oldest, she played a major role in raising us. She led the way in so many ways. I have nothing but love, admiration and respect for her.
Lin said it has been a very long engagement. While this wedding, like most, celebrates the commitment of one to the other for the future, most weddings announce a start for a couple, and are based on hope. Hope that they can manage their love and life through the wonderful and trying times ahead. In Marti and Susan’s case, they have 22 years of solid proof of their commitment to each another. This wedding isn’t about hope, it’s a celebration of their lives already together. And to that I raise a glass to the two of you and say we love you. We’re proud of you. We’re so happy to be here with you, your families and friends and share this moment in time with you.
God bless the state of Massachusetts for recognizing the rights of all to enjoy privilege of marriage! May the great and shameful state of North Carolina crawl out of the age of darkness and do the same. Although I’m really glad to be in Provincetown.
Saturday morning, 9:00 a.m.
Beautiful blue-sky morning. Cool enough for slacks. Warm enough for shorts. We all dressed up and found our way to the shoreline where the nuptials were to take place. We ran into the minister waiting in the car with her husband, Hugh, for Marti and Susan. We crossed the dunes, barefooted, onto the wide expanse of beach, and saw a crowd gathered around a few coolers a hundred yards into the sun up the beach. As we approached, Marti and Susan came out of the crowd to meet up with Hugh. We blended in with the folks there as more trickled in. We bid our time taking shots of each other, grouping friends and families together.
Twenty minutes or so later, with cameras clicking and iPads rolling, we gathered around Marti and Susan and the minister in a semi-circle with waves and sky as backdrop.
The reverend had the copy on pages in a black three-ring notebook. The wind whipped up as she started and the pages went flying. She regrouped, started again, and again, the wind gusted. She tried to control the pages but the wind was winning out. Susan, never turning from Marti as they faced each other, reached over to the notebook and clamped down on the pages. It was one of the moments every wedding seems to provide that makes each unique in what doesn’t go exactly according to plan, often harmless, but enough to help all remember that day in later years.
I was in front, shooting photos and almost as soon as they began saying their vows, one of their Charlotte friends (and you know who you are Linda) appeared with her iPad directly behind them so that I could hardly get a clean shot without her in them until I went down on my knees and shot up. You’ll see Linda in the photos though, along with Kelly, who was tasked with capturing the moment on video – he is a documentary filmmaker for goodness sake.
When Susan said her vows, she spoke up clearly for all to hear, as is her nature. It’s the Ohio in her. Straightforward, to the point and clear.
Marti, on the other hand, whispered through a clutch of emotion and was no match for the wind and surf. I will have to read the transcript in order to find out what she said. I know that it came from the heart, filled with compassion and sincerity. But quiet. I am sure that Susan could hear it.
They exchanged rings, kisses and that was that. They turned to us and we all clapped. Champagne flew out of the coolers. Glasses raised in celebration. They thanked us for coming so far to be with them and we went right into shooting big group shots. Them with Susan’s sister, brother and nephews. Then with the Riley clan. Then, the Charlotteans, their brothers and sisters of different mothers.
After all of that, I found a moment where they were looking at each other like, “What’s next?” I went over, put my arms around them and walked them away from the crowd towards the surf. I congratulated them both and suggested taking a few shots of just them and the sand and ocean.
With that, the beach wedding was over. We drove into town to Victor’s for the reception. Food walked around on trays. Beer and wine poured out of taps and bottles. Their Charlotte friends all disappeared and reappeared singing Broadway songs with feather headgear and boas, marching past us all and forming a chorus line in the most open area of the bar. It was camp, funny and fun.
After that cooled down, I asked Marti if it was a good time to call Mom and Dad knowing that they were at home and wondering how things were going. I called, gave Marti the phone and left so she and Susan could talk outside the noise.
All was complete. It was midday. Champagne and beer was bringing on drowsiness. We all parted with plans to gather the families for burgers and hot dogs at our place.
Our little party came off well. That night’s sunset, which by the way, comes really really late, was magnificent. We all turned in early with a full day of travel on Sunday.
The event was over. Their new journey begins. We all have the memory of being together as one taking meaning in our own ways back to our lives in different cities.
We welcome Susan officially into our family although she’s been a sister for two decades. We love her and their union. They know that now and for evermore.
Bless them. Bless our wonderful family and friends. Bless us all. And once again, bless the state of Massachusetts and the other 19 citizenry of states of these not always united United States setting the path forward, holding to the core belief of our great country that we are a nation of individual rights and freedoms, of goodness and kindness, leadership and forward thinking, and of inclusion not exclusion.
Thanks for reading. Leave a comment for Marti and Susan if you choose.
I am so fortunate never to have lost a friend or relative to war. Today, though, as we remember the many who have fallen, I must honor the memory of Lewis Hutchins. “Hutch” was Dad’s best friend in the Marine Corps in which they served during WWII. If you study the headstone above you’ll see that Hutch died on February 19, 1945, just shy of his 23rd birthday.
I first posted this story in 2010. Now, four years later, this piece of history rings as true a bell of American fortitude and courage as anything with which I’ve been personally associated. I’m reposting the full story, now 69 years after the invasion on that little island, 650 important miles away from Tokyo. Even if you have read it before, read it again. Not because I wrote it, but because of the debt we owe today to those men and women who saved our country for us and reading and imagining this real account in honor of those who served, lived and died. They are dwindling in number. My dad lives on to carry on the flag. It will be raised today at 16 Aldersgate Court, in Durham, NC. Of that I am sure. And of that I am surely proud. Thank you Mom and Dad.
Steve, Memorial Day, May 26, 2014
FIRST PUBLISHED February 20, 2010
65 Years Ago He Was Staring at Iwo
I was upstairs last night in between a late Friday night dinner and a movie that Julie and I were about to start up. I hadn’t checked my personal email all day and did a quick scan on my iPhone. I saw the message from “Homer Riley” with an scanned attachment.
Now, Mom and Dad live in a retirement community in Durham, NC. The whole place has been under quarantine for weeks after an outbreak of a virus hit 85 or so of the residents, including Mom and Dad. So an email from them grabbed my attention even more than usual.
The email subject line read, in all lower case, “iwo jima”. I opened it, thinking the old marine and Iwo veteran had passed on someone else’s pass-along about that historic battle. So I opened it. Written in all caps were these words:
Corporal Homer Riley, USMC
IT WAS 65 YEARS AGO, FEBRUARY 19, 1945. I WAS STANDING ON THE STARBOARD SIDE OF AN LST WHEN I FIRST OBSERVED THE SILHOUETTE OF THAT PACIFIC ISLAND KNOWN AS IWO JIMA. WE HAD COMPLETED SIXTY-FOUR DAYS SAILING THE PACIFIC SINCE DEPARTING PEARL HARBOR AND WERE ANXIOUS TO COMPLETE OUR MISSION …
THE SCHEDULE INCLUDED CHOW DOWN AT 0300, AMPHID TRACTORS IN THE WATER AT 0600 AND FINAL RENDEZVOUS AT 0700. THE UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS’ FIGHTING FOURTH DIVISION WAS PREPARED TO MAKE PERMANENT FOOT PRINTS IN THE BLACK SAND OF AN AREA KNOWN AS BLUE BEACH AT 0800. THE AMPHIDS CHUGGED ALONG WITH HER PASSENGERS WHO WERE SEASONED MARINES MOST OF WHOM HAD EXPERIENCED ACTION AT ROI NAMUR, SAIPAN AND TINIAN. THIS FOUR SQUARE MILE, HEAVILY FORTIFIED ISLAND WAS OUR NEXT STEP ON THE ROAD TO TOKYO.
WE FELT FAIRLY SECURE KNOWING THAT THE AIR FORCE AND THE PACIFIC FLEET HAD BEEN BOMBARDING THE ISLAND FOR FORTY-FIVE DAYS. BASED ON THIS FACT, OUR MISSION WAS SCHEDULED TO BE COMPLETED IN SEVEN DAYS. AS WE APPROACHED THE ISLAND, ONLY A MODEST AMOUNT OF ENEMY FIRE WAS ENCOUNTERED, BUT WHEN WE TOUCHED THE BEACH ALL HELL BROKE LOOSE.
THERE WE FOUND AN ENEMY FORTIFIED IN CONCRETE ENCASEMENTS PREPARED TO FIGHT UNTIL THE LAST MAN DIED.
TWENY-SIX DAYS LATER THE ISLAND WAS DECLARED SECURE AND THE ENEMY HAD BEEN DEFEATED. HISTORY TELLS THE REST.
No attribution. No explanation. Just a scanned document from Dad.
I had little sense of Homer’s narrative writing style since he rarely writes more than a few paragraphs at a time, but I felt in my bones that he had written this.
I stood in the bedroom, stuck in place, reading it over again. I was struck with the immensity of meaning lying in wait inside of each short sentence. The opening put me standing on the side of that ship in his place. I felt the incredible sense of mission and duty which he stated in such a matter of fact manner. Its poignant but clipped ending summed up the force, courage, fear, death, survival, and victory, almost as if to say, “That’s all there is to say about that.”
Almost as if on queue, my phone rang. It was Dad. I told him that I had, at that moment, just finished reading his email.
“Well,” he said, “Today is the 65th Anniversary of Iwo. No one has mentioned it anywhere; not on the TV, not in the papers or radio, so I just decided that I would write about it.
“There are more details that I could put in there but I decided to leave them out. It might be too much for most to read.” And then he went on to tell me more.
“One thing I remember was what the captain said that morning before the assault. ‘Men, we’re serving you steak and eggs for breakfast today. You might wonder why steak and eggs. Well, for many of you it will be your last breakfast. We want it to be a good one.’
“How’s that for optimism?,” Dad chuckled.
“Dad, I can’t tell you how glad we are that it wasn’t your last breakfast,” I countered.
“Well, I just wanted to make sure that you got it because I was getting a kickback on your email address. I tried your .mac account, then your gmail, then Julie’s.”
“I didn’t know you could scan stuff,” I said.
“Never have, but I wasn’t sure how to get the document into the email, so I printed it and scanned it. It seemed to work.”
That’s my dad in a nutshell. When he needs to, he figures stuff out because he’s just built that way.
I told him how much I loved him and appreciated what he and his fellow soldiers did to save the world. He said, “Well, I just thought someone should write something and maybe it was my turn.” That’s a marine for you. They don’t wait around for others to act. They “do”.
We hung up. I couldn’t move. For years Dad would not raise the subject of the war. He talked only about the Corp, the unity of mission, the boot camp hard lessons learned that he’s lived by for the rest of his life. But not about the war, not until he’d been retired for a while and was given more to reflection and storytelling. That’s when I heard about his friend, Hutch, who died on Iwo, shot in a foxhole a 100 yards away from him.
And now, he’s writing about things. And I thank God and Country for him every moment, and for the 65 years of sunrises he’s witnessed since then. Maybe it’s that appreciation of living that gets him up so early every morning. Or maybe he’s just built that way. Whatever. History tells the rest of the story.
Then, the night that I posted this story, the phone rang. It was our Atlanta friend, Vicki Lockhart. She’d just finished reading it. She knew who Hutch was!
The Coincidence of Living and Dying
It was one wordin the very last part of the Saturday, February 20, 2010 posting about the 65th anniversary of Iwo Jima that sparked a connection that raised Dad’s remembrance of the day to a new level of “small world inside of the biggest of wars”.
That’s when I heard about Dad’s friend, Hutch, who died on Iwo, shot in his foxhole 100 yards away from him.
I sent out the email link to my posting at 5:59 p.m. on a self-imposed deadline to get it out that day, one day after Dad reminded me of the anniversary. Julie and I were rushing to leave for a charity event in town, but I kept working the effort it takes to publish to the website in between showering and shaving.
I verified that it was up and all square even while Julie waited with a slight amount of impatience, sent the link to my blog list of semi-subscribers/conscripted list of friends and colleagues, and off we went.
Two hours later Julie saw that she had received a voice mail from our friend, Vicki Lockhart. Julie listened to it as we walked to the car on our way to the second event of the night, Val Ashton’s surprise birthday party.
“Wow!” she exclaimed. “You’re not going to believe this but Vicki read your blog and says that Hutch was Dave’s uncle! We’ve got to call them.” We jumped into the car and I quickly checked my email before we pulled out. There were two from Vicki.
7:58 p.m. Hutch is David’s Uncle (his Mom’s brother)! His last name was Hutchins. All the marines called him Hutch. He died at Iwo. His brother (another Hutchins) was on the ship as well. He survived. The family is from Hillsborough, NC – they had 10 children. Betty Sue Hutchins is David’s Mom.
7:59 p.m. David’s Dad was on USS Fayette. They have been trying to find out what ship Hutch was on. See if your Dad knows.
I can’t begin to describe how excited the prospect of this connection made us all. If it turned out to be true, it would make Dad’s remembrance even more special. We called the Lockharts. Vicki’s husband, Dave, got on the phone and retold the small fragment of information that has become the family lore of Hutch’s death in combat.
Hutch and his brother were both Marines and in the attack on Iwo. All the family knew about how Hutch died was that “he got it” on Iwo. Dave couldn’t wait to call his mother to tell her. He said that we needed to get her and Dad together.
After I got home I checked a newspaper article from Veterans Day 2008 in which Dad told of the loss of his buddy, Lewis Hutchinson, not “Hutchins”. And the article said that Hutchinson was from Durham, notHillsborough. Too close not to be the same young man, but still, I wasn’t completely convinced. Not yet.
With some mild feeling of disappointment I sent an email to Vicki copying the information from the article with the seeds of doubt.
Sunday morning I found more emails from Vicki. She had been working it already.
7:44 a.m. His first name WAS Lewis – the other brother was Herbie. At first I was writing Hutchinson as Betty Sue’s last name – then David reminded me it was Hutchins so that is an easy mistake to make.
A call to Dad erased any doubt. First, I told him that I had shared his memory in my blog and that it taken quite an interesting turn. I asked him if Hutch’s name was “Hutchinson” or “Hutchins”. Dad said that the newspaper got the name confused. His buddy was Lewis “Hutch” Hutchins. That’s when I told him about the direct link to Hutch’s family and our friends, the Lockharts. He remembered that Hutch had a little brother serving as well who was in the battle but Dad couldn’t recall his name. I asked if “Herbie” rang a bell. “Yep! That’s it all right. Herbie Hutchins.”
“Well,” he said. “My little story has unraveled something hasn’t it.”
“Yep, it sure has,” I replied. “Dave wants you and his mother, Hutch’s sister, Betty Sue Hutchins, to get together.”
“We’ll have to do that,” he replied.
“I’ll let you know what develops next,” I said. “Meanwhile, check your email and read the blog.”
We hung up and I started to write this update to, as we call it at Channel 2, a developing story.
Then, the phone rang and it was Vicki.
“You are not going to believe what I just found out!” she said.
Shink, Joe, Hervey, Hutch & Homer
“Remember that Dave’s mother, Betty Sue, is one of ten children in the Hutchins family,” said Vicki. “She and Hutch have a sister who lives here in Atlanta and I just got off the most amazing phone call with her. Her given name is Ophelia, but everyone has always called her ‘Shink’.
“I phoned her this morning and before I couldbegin to tell her about your father’s story and Hutch, she told me that she was watching Clint Eastwood’s film, ‘Letters from Iwo Jima’, on AMC. She always watched anything that was about Iwo Jima because of her two brothers, Hutch and Hervey, even something from the Japanese point of view.
“She said that watching that movie made her remember her brother, Hutch, and, are you ready for this? His best buddy in the service, Homer Riley!
“I about flipped when she said that,” Vicki exclaimed, so totally caught up in how this whole story continued wrapping around our families. “I was writing down everything Shink said on scraps of paper, napkins, anything I could find, just to keep up with her conversation. I’ll type it up shortly and send it to you, but I just had to call,” Vicki said like a full pot of coffee.
And now I was the one scribbling down everything Vicki was telling me. I was also fighting back the tears that welled up the instant she said that Shink was thinking of my father. It was like a cosmic connection between people going on without any of them knowing…until now. All that I could muster was a sobby, “You’re kidding me.”
“And,” Vicki continued, “Shink said that hearing about this old friendship so many years later was just a treasure. She repeated it, ‘Just a treasure’ as if she was saying it to herself deep in thought. She often wondered how Homer and Martha were doing.
“Steve, Shink is just so sweet, so calm, so Southern, with so much to share,” Vicki reflected. “I just loved listening to her talk. Your dad must call her. She remembers your mom and worked with her at Duke Hospital in Durham during the war.”
From what Vicki said, Shink clearly remembered that Dad had returned to his hometown of Durham after the war to his wife and childhood sweetheart, Martha. They had married before he shipped out.
Then Vicki told her all about the story that Dad had written to recognize Iwo on its 65th anniversary and how the brief mention of Homer’s friend “Hutch” who “got it” on Iwo caught her attention, how she and Dave knew Julie and me, of our friendship over the last decade, and that I was Homer’s son. Vicki read the information from the 2008 Durham newspaper article detailing Dad’s life to Shink.
“That’s so nice,” she told Vicki, “So nice to know that he was able to go on and live such a wonderful life, and to know that he’s still alive and well.”
She said that she had always worried that Homer would not have forgiven her for an act of a teenager. The reason boiled down to a change of heart.
“After my brothers had left for the Marines, I started dating a young man named Joe Cassidy,” Shink explained to Vicki. “Joe was from New England. He was a medic in the Marines and our paths crossed at Duke Hospital. He was very interesting. I liked him but I was too young to really know my feelings. All of those boys wanted a sweetheart or someone back home who would care. We dated until Joe shipped out to serve in the Pacific.
“One day in the Philippines, during R&R, Joe was showing some service buddies the photograph that I had given him to carry and remember me by. Someone said, ‘Hey, what are you doing with a picture of my sister!’ Joe, who was all of five foot seven inches tall, looked up and met my brother Hutch for the first time. Hutch, a strikingly handsome fellow, 6’ 2” tall, towered over Joe and I don’t think Joe was quite sure what would happen next.
“‘Well, your sister is my girlfriend,’ Joe said. Hutch flashed that smiled that we all loved so dearly and said, ‘Well now, if you’re my sister’s boyfriend, you’re now one of my best buddies.’
“From then on, Hutch included Joe in his circle of friends and that’s how my Joe met Homer Riley,” Shink continued, reaching back into the story she had thought about so many times over the years, remembering just how small a world at war could be. “Those boys watched out for each and did everything together.”
“And that’s why Homer comes to mind when I think of Iwo. He and my brother were such good friends.”
So why would Homer harbor a grudge against Ophelia?
“We were just kids,” she told Vicki. “Teenagers. And while Joe was overseas I broke up with him. I sent him a “Dear John” letter. I don’t think Homer appreciated the fact that I would treat his buddy that way. I still have a little charm bracelet tucked away in my jewelry box that Joe sent to me from Iwo Jima. I see it each time that I open up that box.
Lewis “Hutch” Hutchins was 19 when he signed up.He was 6’ 2”, kind of thin and very handsome. He was known as an exceptional young man. The family expected great things of him because he was so highly regarded.
Shink remembers him as seeming to never make a mistake. He was always caring and thoughtful. Hutch performed a lot of military service before he went into combat. He was chosen to represent the Marines in recruiting and at funerals.
The family remembers with pride that he was one of the men raising the American flag on Saipan. He was 23 when he died on that first day on Iwo Jima.
Hervey, Hutch’s younger brother, signed up for the Marines when he was only 17. At first his father refused to sign the papers since Hervey was underage. Eventually he relented to his son’s insistence that he was going to serve with Lewis.
So Hutch, Homer, Hervey and Joe became tight friends as they served in some of the roughest battles in the Pacific together, until Iwo took their strapping brother and brother in arms from them.
“As the story goes, Hervey was wounded that first day on Iwo,” Shink recounted. “Recovering on a hospital ship just off of the island, the word got back to him that ‘Hutch got it.’ Hervey immediately left his ship against protocol and went back to the island to find his brother.While he was wandering amid all of the chaos of battle looking for his brother he ran into Joe Cassidy. Joe convinced him to let the medics take care of things and that he needed to get back to the hospital ship.Hervey’s original ship was headed back to the States with the wounded but he missed that one. He later boarded another hospital ship that stayed in the Pacific until it eventually sailed home to California.
The Marines offered to give him a medical discharge and he refused it.The family is not sure of any wounds but believe it was shellshock/trauma.Hervey stayed in the Marines and was in the reserves when he died.”
This was the only account of what happened to Hutch that the family ever knew. It was all by which they were given to remember their son and brother; a lifetime boiled down to three words that have lasted 65 years. “Hutch got it.”
It was years later, but the men reunited briefly after the war when Hutch’s remains came home to North Carolina.
“It meant a lot to my family,” Shink remembered to Vicki, “that Homer and Martha, Joe Cassidy, and another friend in the service, Billy Dickerson, all attended the memorial service at Pleasant Green.” It meant enough for her to carry that memory for 60 some years.
I called my dad again later that Sunday afternoon and told him about Vicki’s conversation with Shink. He remembered meeting her at the funeral. He thought it sweet that she remembered him and Mom. After a quiet moment on the phone he broke the pause, “Hey, I’ve got a funny story about Hutch. We were on liberty in Honolulu, and a bunch of us went out to have lunch. The little girl at the soda shop said they had really good apple pie.
“So I ordered the apple pie a la Mode. All of the other guys said they wanted the same. Hutch was the last to order and he said, ‘I would like that apple pie too but would you add some vanilla ice cream on top of mine?’”
I thought, what a bunch of cut ups, out for a burger in a diner in Hawaii. All just being the young men that they were. All thinking about something as American as apple pie, and laughing at a silly joke a la Mode. None knowing what was to come, but each one knowing that hell lay 45 days away from Honolulu on a seemingly insignificant island call Iwo Jima.
As Vicki suggested, Homer and Martha put in a call to Shink. Dad called me afterwards to say that he’d completed the circle. “She was very sweet,” said Dad. “We enjoyed a pleasant conversation remembering old times.
“Hey, I just might write something else,” he said and chuckled. “That first one worked out pretty well.”
I wrote this note to Mom seven years ago. The same is true today, seven years later. The difference now from then lies in the fact that I am seven more years in love with you, Mom. I hope that you don’t mind me going back in time for a thought. I frankly can’t say it any better even if I’m now 61 “damn years old,” to quote my Uncle Grover!
I set up the photo shoot for the pictures accompanying this post Mother’s Day two years ago. We gathered available family to celebrate Mother’s Day with Mom and Dad at Page and Maggie’s home in Greensboro, NC. We had a blast shooting the pictures in the backyard. I’m including the raw images too showing the behind the scenes and photo bombing going on with Clark, Blair, Peyton and Russell, my not always trustworthy sheet holders. Included in the photos besides Page and the kids are mothers Julie and Maggie.
Happy Mother’s Day to one and all.
Mother’s Day May 2007
Mom,
I love talking with you.
You spread a smile on my face with your quick laughter,
Often at yourself. I mean, you make you laugh, and that’s funny.
And you can just as quickly well up
Thinking some sweet and tender thought
That stops you from talking for just a few seconds.
And then, your smile returns,
And you tell me about some other something or another
That you heard or watched or did,
And I let it all wash over me,
Feeling cleansed by your love
Like I must have felt as a baby,
Washed up bright and shiny
Ready to return your smile with my own,
Before you tucked me in to bed.
And I’m so grateful to, at 54 damn years old,
Write this 2007 Mother’s Day note for you to read
And know how much I love, respect, admire and adore you.
Happy Mothers Day sweet Momma,
Your Son, with your Daughter-in-Law, grand son and daughter
The one thing that I remember from the study of sociology in college, one man’s tidy is another man’s mess.
Keep that in mind. It really sets the understanding for the differences in how we all see the world.
My brother, Lin, fell in love with Sylvia in college. She is one of the most spirited people in my life and has inspired my thinking in uncountable ways. Sylvia officially joined our family when I was 19, marrying Lin in her hometown of Richmond, VA, so I’ve known her for most of my life.
I watched her create a family from scratch and raise two great kids. I watched her become so many things: a great cook, an artist at the potter’s wheel, a doting mother, a caring wife and loving sister. One thing that she has maintained through all of this is her free-spirited ways and her constant interest in the uniqueness of the world around her. She finds almost guilty pleasure in the tiniest of things; their monetary value meant little if they attracted her.
Over the years Sylvia started collecting more and more, snatching up things that struck her fancy and represented cultures other than her upbringing echoing the varied and interesting places she and Lin lived over their lives together.
From deep inside of West Virginia to three years in Venezuela to a decade in Tennessee and, now, Florida, pieces began appearing on their walls and floors and in outside gardens.
While in Knoxville, Sylvia began to get deeper into the collection business. Picking up items that she imagined for someone other than herself, unsure for whom sometimes, but sure that it would please someone she loved sometime in the future.
At our Christmas gathering, Sylvia would bring out items and work the room to find the right person to match to the right piece.
Their basement slowly crowded in with the excess of things yet given away, a point that caused Lin to lament the fact on occasion that he’d lost room for any storage of his stuff. He humored her until their move to Florida called for downsizing. They spent a good deal of time culling through the piles in preparation.
I imagine the difficulty of that process. The article by article decision that meant in letting go of a piece of clothing or artifact, she had to let go of the story behind it, the reason it attracted her attention in the first place. A heart wrenching process for sure.
Remember one man’s tidy is another man’s mess.
Sometimes, when you wait, you see what appeared as a mess to you turns into a full-blown work of art before your very eyes.
That’s the case, as it turns out, when Sylvia’s collection and my eyes came together during our visit to their home in West Palm Beach this spring.
All about their Florida ranch home, positioned in just the proper place, appeared item after item of collectibles. I have grown to know many of them over the years, but many were new to me and all perfectly placed.
I took pictures all throughout their home, focusing on each individually, from small carpets, to wall hangings, framed and unframed, to small sculptures. Later, upon opening my photo library on my phone the photos showed up as small icon-size images inside my iPhone gallery. As I saw them integrated together as one image it revealed the patchwork of combined beauty as a holistic vision that inspired a wonderment of the human spirit of design reflecting a life.
I now see the result of her lifetime of collection raised to the level of its ultimate purpose. The true art behind her mission turned collector into treasure hunter.
Life of Riley 