by Jon Stafford
Claire DeValery Baines pulled the letter from the mailbox she was expecting from her eighty-two year old grandmother, Hannah Thurmond, very ill in the hospital in Raleigh sixty miles away. With the death of her father, Jimmy, Claire had called her several days before and the two had had a brief conversation.
“Is your Mama doing Okay, Claire? I talked to her last night.”
“No, not really, but I suppose as well as could be expected.”
Oh, Claire,” she had said, “it breaks my heart to have to miss your father’s service. I would give anything to be there, but the doctor says ‘No,’ and I must accept that.” She had gone on to say that she would write a few things. The letter had arrived just before the service and Claire opened it. Inside were hand written pages which Claire knew were not in her grandmother’s hand. Then she saw a note at the top in a wavering scroll: “Claire, Mrs. Patterson, a very nice person who is sitting with me, wrote this up. I just had to write something.”
Claire went in the house, smiled as she passed those sitting in the living room with her mother and sister, and went upstairs to her childhood bedroom where she had spent the last two nights, and begin to read it.
I have to say in my long life, it began, that besides the memory of my loving husband, Hermes, and my wonderful daughter, Margaret Ann, I am most grateful for my son-in-law, Jimmy DeValery.
He was the handsomest and nicest man I ever knew. You might think it odd, but his good looks were particularly hard on your mom, my dear and only child, Margaret Ann Thurmond DeValery. Once, in my hearing, in talking to her two daughters about their father, she blurted out something in great emotion.
“I thought myself too plain for him!”
It hurt my feelings for many years. I watched as she dabbed at her eyes with a tissue for a long while she was consoled by the girls.
I suppose most would have agreed that, like me, she was not thought to be any kind of a great beauty. She was short rather than statuesque, had average skin, and mousy brown hair which she admitted was “like straw.” I didn’t think so, but she always thought her nose was too big. Certainly, most thought it a mystery as to what her war hero husband, who might have charmed a fence post, saw in her. It was not made easier for her that her girls, first Claire and her baby, Helen, called “Bye,” both competed in the Miss North Carolina beauty pageant. But to Jimmy DeValery, she was the world and all of its treasures.
It certainly wasn’t that he could not function without her. He proved a very good and innovative executive in the tobacco industry, a good provider, and a wonderful father. In front of strangers, even large crowds, he could tell story after story, entertaining them thoroughly, and leaving them laughing. But he so much preferred being with his “Mara,” as he alone called her. And he did not have to be the center of attention. He preferred that she drive. He regularly went shopping with her and never complained even when he waited for long periods of time.
Generally, he deferred to her in all things from fashion to things for the house. When he left on a business trip on which she could not accompany, a number of times I saw him he noticeably ill at ease at the airport in Raleigh. He would look back at her when he was boarding, a worried look on his face, usually stepping awkwardly. Twice I saw the former gifted athlete either brush into a wall or actually walk into one. He and I often had long talks, and he told me that when he saw her his heart leaped and sometimes he felt faint.
It was a standing joke in our town, that he was just helpless near her. His first thought always was to be with her and to care for her, and he did so every day of their lives together until the moment of his death. Even when his health deteriorated and his heart had become paper thin, he waited on her, despite anything she or I or the children could say. There was simply no stopping him. On July 29, 1980, he went to the kitchen to get her a soft drink and didn’t come back. She found him on the floor dead of a heart attack. The look on his face was one of peace. He had been doing what he wanted to do.
Over the years people began to change their minds around my Margaret Ann. She projected an aura of goodness and kindness with which she could transform a room when she entered. She had had a great gift, a fairy tale love, which validated her and made her into a better person than she might have been. She glowed with a sense of happiness that was lovely indeed. People said, “She has light in her eyes.”
Theirs was a sweet love story which went on for nearly fifty years. The two became a couple when they were still in grade school. She had almost no choice in the matter at all. She told the story all of her life that one day on the playground in third grade she noticed a boy watching her. A day or so later one of her little friends noticed the boy and asked about him.
“Oh,” Margaret Ann said, “he’s always there at recess. I don’t know his name.”
The next day, the friend reported back.
“His name is Jimmy. He’s in fourth grade.”
Soon, he began to come to our house after school. I was won over the first time I ever saw him. He would knock on the door, and when I opened it there he was, an innocent look upon his face. His question was the same every time.
“Is Mara here?”
My lips just have to tremble over this more than half a century later. He was the cutest little boy! I could have just picked him up and hugged him. You know, he was the only person who ever called her Mara, but no one had the heart to tell him not to. Why he called her that I never learned. In the Bible in the book of Ruth, Naomi tells her daughters-in-law to call her “Mara” which means “bitter” because her life had been so hard. So we didn’t want that, but that’s the way it was. Happily, I think they never had a bitter day in their married life. He never lost that innocence, even in the war. That’s why it hurt him so badly. My eyes just have to moisten thinking about that.
Hermes, who had no middle name or initial, was not so quickly impressed. Once, in the beginning, he called Jimmy “that little ragamuffin,” and his family “little better than beggars.” It went on for a while until one day, after church, I had to say something. Margaret Ann had cleared the dishes and gone to spend the afternoon with a neighbor girl. We were at the sink finishing up and I turned to my dear husband.
“I don’t want you to talk against Jimmy anymore.”
He was a thin, already graying man then, and I know I caught him off-guard.
He said, “What are you talking about?”
“You know very well what I’m talking about. It’s true his folks don’t have much, and that his clothes and things are plain, but he’s clean when he comes here. He’s a nice little boy.”
“He’s just not of our standing in this community is all I mean,” he said.
I’m sure he was wondering why we were having such a conversation.
“When we have him sit down to supper you know he’s had nice manners, saying ‘Yes, Ma’am’ and ‘No, Sir.’”
“Yes, well,” he said, still not clear in his mind what I was saying.
“Then give the boy a chance as father gave you and me a chance. Principal Gilford’s wife, Lorna, says that Bob says that Jimmy’s the smartest child in that school, as smart as that Jackson boy who went to Princeton. It will probably come to nothing between the two. But let Margaret Ann have someone wh
o pays her attention, like you did me. He really does help her with her school work.”
“Well, I sure can’t help her. It’s over my head.”
Thus little Jimmy was allowed to continue to come and was welcomed by all three of us. One day went into another, and then the years rolled by and he would come, in all kinds of weather, always with the same innocent look on his face, just wishing to see Margaret Ann. He brought her a present everyday he came! Oh, I can’t think of that without chocking up a little. They were just simple things, a flower, a dandelion, or a little figurine. Every day! He would hold it in front of him as I opened the door. Margaret Ann kept them in a drawer for years and years, until the dandelion petals had long since turned to dust.
His attraction to Margaret Ann was just the natural love God intended the male and female relationship to have.
“Mom,” as he lovingly called me. “I liked to see her, her form, her silhouette, how those old print dresses hung on her long before she had any figure at all, how she holds her head, how she leans forward ever so slightly when she walks. I like her hair, and how her face scrunches all up when she’s asleep, and how she holds the girls in her arms.”
They were lovers, and best friends, one of those lucky couples who grow closer as the years passed, can talk rather continuously about almost nothing, producing a contentment and joy in both. Their lives together were like an endless summer.
Claire had teared reading the narrative and was surprised as it ended so abruptly. Then she noticed a sentence at the bottom that explained it: “Your grandmother is tired now and needs to rest. I will send this on to you. Good luck with the service and all. Lou.” She nodded thanking her grandmother and feeling a little pressure knowing what was ahead of her. In only three hours she stood in the church where she had grown up, and walked to the podium on this very hot day to deliver her eulogy.
“As with everything else he did,” she began, “whether it was being a pilot or executive or husband, Daddy was a wonderful parent as well. He was always there for us girls. When we were sick, he would come and sleep on the floor next to our beds just in case we might cry or need comfort. When we were older and asked him if he was uncomfortable when he slept on the floor, he had a standard answer.
“‘It sure beats the cot I had at Nadzab.’
“It took me years to realize that Nadzab was a base he was assigned to in New Guinea during the war. Many a time he would pick us up unannounced from elementary or middle school. He would say, ‘I just missed you and wanted to see you!’
“We thought every daddy was like that.
“He scratched our backs almost every chance he got, a sweetness we have passed on to our own families. He called it ‘tickling’ but it was really caressing, running his right index finger over our faces. He had a real knack for it. He could caress Mama’s face and pretty much rid her of the migraine headaches she occasionally suffered. And always, he said sweet things to all three of us at every turn.
“He told Mama, ‘I never wanted to let a chance go by to be sweet to my sweethearts,’ and that was the way it was.
“He pursued no other interests for himself until we girls were grown. As his time permitted, he met our teachers, took us to Miss Farmer’s for ballet lessons, even went to play rehearsals, and anything else that came up.
“And he was very funny too. He always had jokes to tell us. We came to learn that he tested his material on us, and if we liked them, he would put them in his seemingly endless talks before groups or conventions. They were never pointed, or gender sensitive, just good wholesome jokes which never hurt anyone’s feelings. We never had any idea where he got them, or if he made them up himself. In my career as a writer of two novels on the World War II generation, I have actually used some of his stories for my main character, based on my dad. Here are two I heard him deliver which the audiences particularly liked. The first he told in Raleigh at a convention when he was introducing a candidate for political office.
“The old backroom politician died and went up to Heaven where he saw St. Peter at the gate.
“‘My son,’ the Heavenly One said, ‘we would like to give you a chance to see if you would like to remain here with us, or would rather live in Hell. So, take a few moments here to look about.’ The politician looked around very carefully, noting that everyone was wearing white, playing harps or flutes, reading books and doing a lot of skipping.
“In a few minutes he took the elevator down to Hell. It took a long time. When the door finally opened, he saw a lot of voluptuous women scantily clad, the finest Canadian liquor free for the asking, and lots of gambling. He seemed to fit right in, and in the short time he was there having lots of fun, laughing and carrying on.
“Later, when he went up to see St. Peter, the old gentlemen asked where he would like to wind up. ‘Well, Pete, you have a good thing going for you here, but I think I’ll take my chances in the other place.’
“Again he entered the elevator and in a few minutes the door opened in Hell. All he could see was a desert of unspeakable heat. People were suffering terribly, moaning, sobbing, and pulling on his clothes, begging for a drink. The Devil happened by just then. ‘Hey,’ the politician asked in shock, ‘what had happened to the all of the things I saw a few minutes before?’
‘Oh,’ the Devil said, ‘those were just our campaign promises!’
“This last one he told to a group at women’s club:
“A woman went to the doctor for her annual checkup.
After all of the tests, the doctor came in and said, ‘Well, Delores, you’re in fine shape for a woman your age, but there is one thing I should tell you, you’re pregnant!’
In shock, the woman burst out of the room, rushed to the phone in the outer office and dialed a number.
“I can see him right now, a wry smile on his face, and an occasional lifting of an eyebrow.
“‘Are you sitting down for this one?’ she yelled into the receiver.
‘Yes, I think so,’ he answered timidly.
‘I’m pregnant!’ she screamed.
His tone changed.
‘That’s impossible!’ he said determinedly.
‘No, I’m serious. I’m pregnant!’
Just as determinedly, he said again, ‘That’s impossible!’
‘I’m here in the Doctor’s office,’ she said, talking down to him, ‘and he says I’m pregnant!’
‘Who is this?’ he asked.”
“Of course, there was another side to Daddy that we came to discover. The war had been very destructive to him. As children, Bye and I had no idea of the damage it had done. When they were old enough to understand that he had been a pilot in the war, we were intent on asking him all about it. We wanted him to fly us places on great planes, or at least see him fly, but we never did. Flying was still new enough then to be magical in itself for most people. The harsh aspects of people he loved being killed in the war comp
letely eluded his daughters.
“The war was fascinating to us: a desperate foe defeated by my daddy and other men. Good versus evil. These men were uncompromising heroes on the order of the Knights of the Round Table. It has been my lifelong wish to read as much as I could about that generation to aid me in my writing.
“Father’s plane was of great interest to me and in time I came to read about the plane’s proclivity to go into a ‘flat spin’ which fascinated and puzzled me. I could not imagine what it was. It remained in my mind until one day when I was home from college I came right out and asked Daddy about it.
“‘Oh,’ he said. He sat in his chair in the living room for a long moment and then began. ‘The P-38 was a very hard plane to fly. At high altitude, it was such a delight!’ His face brightened. ‘Your vision was just wondrous; its maneuverability was like that of a dancer. But lower,’ and his voice flattened, and he paused and shook his head. ‘Lower it had many faults, like in diving and in that spin. I told you of diving to get away from Zeroes one time.’
“‘At Dobodura,’ I chimed in.
“‘Yes. It was so heavy that it didn’t do well diving at lower altitudes. It was so heavy up front with those two big motors that it was hard to pull out of a dive. It was sort of like maneuvering with a cement truck.’
“He laughed weakly and so I thought it was okay to press him about the flat spin. I asked and he nearly cut me off.
“‘It was very bad,’ he said.
“My heart sank with a serious look on his face that I might have brought bad memories back to him. But it was too late and he went on.
“‘The plane was sort of rectangular is probably the best way to explain it,’ he said. ‘It had the two fuselages with a motor at the front of each, both hooked together by a nacelle which held the pilot. Fifty-two feet wide but almost forty feet long, I forget the exact length. Anyway, at low altitude, in maneuvering around, the plane could get out of control and begin to spin flatly. I know that sounds crazy, a plane spinning like a Frisbee. But unless you could get out of it, the plane would continue to spin, losing altitude, until you crashed.’
