(One more from my 'some people' chapter)
COLONEL TED AND THE GANG
Colonel
Ted wasn’t the first person I met at St. James in Charleston—he was the second.
The first person was an elderly, gangly black man with the improbable name of
Israel Goldman. When Bern and I got off the plane in Charleston, there he was
waiting at the gate. He introduced himself and added, “it always throws people
who’ve never met me when I show up for an appointment.” He was soft spoken and
polite, telling Bern she looked ‘radiant’ rather than mentioning she was
obviously pregnant and not mentioning the length of my hair or my full beard.
Though I objected, he insisted on carrying the one bag we’d brought for a two
day visit, though he was probably 75. He walked slowly, as many tall, thin men
seem to do.
“Colonel
Ted will meet us at the door with his car,” he told us, “he didn’t want you to
have to walk far.” Then, with a twinkle in his eye, he added, “and besides, Ted
really resents having to pay for parking.”
Israel
carried his hat in his hand until we were outside and then placed it jauntily
on his head. He was wearing what seemed to be a hand-tailored suit, a
blindingly white shirt and school tie of some kind. “Grambling,” he said
suddenly, “my alma mater.” I nodded
and smiled. “I saw you looking at it, wondering,” he added. I nodded some more,
wondering if he could read minds. “Here’s the Colonel,” Israel said, smiling,
“probably burned up more gas than the parking meter would have been.”
The
biggest Cadillac I’d ever seen pulled up to the curb and Colonel Ted exploded
from the driver’s seat, moving quickly around the car to shake my hand and hug
Bern. If Israel was laid-back and non-demonstrative, the Colonel was an extreme
in the other way. He talked fast, moved fast and was about the size of three
Michelin tires with thin legs in Bermuda shorts and a bowling ball shaped head.
They were Mutt and Jeff, Abbot and Costello, Laurel and Hardy, except they were
African Americans. Israel’s skin was the color of coffee with cream and Ted’s
was a light tan. I had grown up in a culture where all “Negroes” supposed
looked alike because white people didn’t see them very well. But two men
couldn’t have been more dissimilar in appearance and demeanor than the two they
sent to pick us up for my “interview” at St. James.
It
was an “interview” rather than an interview because I was convinced nothing
would come of it. We’d spend a few hours with the members of the parish and
sleep in a motel and then fly back home after attending church on Sunday and I
would have fulfilled my promise to Bishop Atkinson. I was in the last couple of
months at Virginia Seminary and had been offered a job as an assistant at a
wonderful church in Chicago, which I wanted to accept. I called Bishop Atkinson
to tell him the good news and after a half-hearted congratulations and an
awkward silence, he told me that Bishop Campbell wouldn’t release me to leave
the diocese. Had I paid close enough attention, I would have known that a
seminarian ‘belonged’ to the diocese and bishop who had sponsored them in
seminary. Had I been a little more astute about the ways of the church, I would
have realized I should have called Bishop Campbell—the diocesan bishop—rather
than the bishop coadjutor. Had I understood the ‘politics’ of such things in
even a cursory way, I would have had the Bishop of Chicago call the Bishop of
West Virginia to negotiate my release from my commitment to go and waltz with
the diocese that brung me to the
dance. But, of course, all those things were news to me. I thought I was a free
agent rather than an indentured servant.
I
handled it badly by getting angry with Bishop Atkinson (what is it they always do to the messengers?)
and complained bitterly about not being allowed to do what I wanted. He
listened patiently and promised to call me back right away. When he did, he had
a deal—interview for one job in West Virginia and if I didn’t like it, he’d
pull in all his chits and free me up to go to Chicago. So Bern and I flew to Charleston
at St. James’ expense to do a little ‘play acting’ and say “thanks but no
thanks” and begin our lives in the Windy City. On the way back to Alexandria,
somewhere over Maryland at 30,000 feet, Bern said, “You’re going to say ‘yes’
aren’t you?” And I answered, “I’m afraid I am….”
That
was because of Colonel Ted and the gang at St. James. They were people of such
remarkable character that I simply wanted to be among them for a while. And, I
must admit, I was fascinated by the profound paradoxes of the parish.
Ted
drove down the long hill from the airport into the bowels of Charleston. I’d
been there many times but I was surprised at how thrilled I was to the golden
dome of the state capital shining in the late April sunlight, skeptic that I am
about feelings of nostalgia, especially for ‘home’.
Bern told one of
our friends the other day that she thought I could live anywhere. I had
mentioned that Bern’s brother was going to move to Morgantown, West Virginia,
where the three of us had gone to college. I’d said out loud that I would
consider moving to Morgantown.
“Oh, you couldn’t
live there now,” our friend suggested.
That’s when Bern
said, “Jim could live anywhere.”
“He couldn’t live
in Mississippi, I’d bet,” our friend said. “Oh yes, he could,” Bern replied. He
ran through a list of places he and Bern could never live and she
assured him about each suggestion that, “Jim could live there.” All this was
terribly awkward since I was sitting with them on our deck, all of us drinking
coffee, but they talked about me as if I were away—living in Mississippi,
perhaps. The truth was, she was right.
“So
he’d find something to like about anywhere he was?” our friend asked.
“No,
that’s not it,” Bern told him, “he would end up ‘liking it’ without any
reasons, ‘liking it’ just because he was there. In fact, he wouldn’t even need
to ‘like it’, just him being there would be enough.”
“That’s
really strange,” our friend observed.
“Isn’t
it?” Bern replied.
“More
coffee?” I asked, just to see if I was really there. They both said they would
like another cup and I went off to make it.
It’s
not like me to get attached to places
or things. And I’m pretty satisfied
wherever I am and with whatever I’ve got. So, seeing the gold dome of the
capitol of West Virginia moved my heart, but not much more than seeing anything
beautiful anywhere would. “Home”, for me, is truly where the heart is.
Ted
and Israel and the two of us had lunch at a Shoney’s restaurant next to the
motel where we’d be sleeping. Colonel Ted talked non-stop and Israel laughed
ironically at some of the Colonel's unconscious mild profanities. Ted was
called 'the Colonel' because he was one. He had beenn one of the highest
ranking African-Americans in World War II. Of course, back then, he would have
been called a 'Negro'. Ted never objected to that discription and few of the
older members of St. James Church objected either. It was a generational thing
for them—maybe, having grown up in the world they grew up in, “Negro” was a
huge step up from 'colored' or worse. After 20 years as a soldier, Ted started
working for the U.S. Postal Service, or whatever it was called back in the
50's. He worked there long enough to get a pension and finished his working
life with the Veterans Adminstration. He was the only person I ever met who had
three federal pensions.
Ted
was the Senior Warden when I arrived. He'd been Senior Warden (the highest lay
office in an Episcopal Church) for years before that. A small church like St.
James hangs onto good people in high office. Ted, like several of the older
members of St. James, was extremly light skinned. He once told me that 'back in
the day'--before integration—he always carried a turban in his trunk so that
when he and Susan wanted to stop for the night in the southern states they were
assured a room. He'd put on his turban and speak broken English and registered
without a problem. I remember asking him what he felt about having to do that.
He drew a serious look on his broad face and said, “it was embarrassing, in a
way....But lots better than sleeping in the car!” Then he laughed. Ted laughed
a lot. He was a gentle, large, round man—about 5'10 and at least 270 pounds.
His mouth was almost always twisted into a crooked grin He had seen enough of
life and pain to know the best defense was a good offense. So, he spread
laughter wherever he went.
Even
though I'd grown up in a town that was half African-American, I didn't know
much at all about Black folks—none of us White folks really do. And so Ted and
the gang were my kind, patient, good-humored professors in the study of race.
Ted more than anyone. For example, I remember that Ted and I were on the way to
lunch at the Charleston VFW when the Veteran's Day Parade passed by. Ted and I
stopped and watched it—him waving at some of the Vets as they passed by. When
the parade had ended, he taught me a great lesson.
“You
know one thing that makes us different, Jim?” he said. I must have shaken my
head because he continued...though Ted didn't need response to keep talking.
“When you watch a parade you can decide if you like the next band when you hear
them coming around the corner. I have to wait until they are in view. If I see
some black kids in the band, then I can enjoy the music.”
Ted
was correct, although it came like a bolt of lightening to me. I could appreciate the music before I
saw the band. Liberal that I am, I thought it was open-minded of me not to care
about the racial makeup of the band. I
attempted to tell him that—but for Ted it was a more complicated, marrow the
bone issue. “Thought like a White Man,” he said, then laughed.
One
thing I know for certain—something I learned from Ted and the Gang at St.
James—no Black priest in a White congregation would have experienced the love
and acceptance, patience and support I received from them. When my pregnant
wife and I arrived at St. James, we made up 2/3 of the White membership of the
parish. The other White member was married to a Black man. She was, by the way,
the house cleaner for several of the Black members. Don't tell me Irony doesn't
reign on earth....
Our
family—both our children were born in Charleston—were accepted completely into
the 'family' of St. James. I never ate in as many parishioner's homes in the
other two parishes I served combined. We were wined and dined. And, to be
honest, we had much more in common with most of the people at St.
James—education, culture, tastes, opinions—than we didn't have in common. The
one thing we did not share was race—skin color.
It's
astonishing how skin color so dominates the psyches of people around the globe.
My son has been to Taiwan a few times with his wife's Taiwanese parents. He
tells me that island has some of the most beautiful beaches he's ever seen and
that almost everyone on them are tourists. The Taiwanese middle and upper class
carry umbrella in the sun. Lighter skin is valued. And consider the geishas of
Japan: they powder their faces to typing paper white and are considered the
embodiment of beauty and sensuality. The Hispanic congregation of St. John's in
Waterbury are divided by many distinctions—nation of origin, accent, class,
education—but many of them told me over the years that lighter skinned folks
had advantages. Ironically enough, it seems only Caucasions seem to value
darker skin. Until the last decade or so of skin-cancer fear, many white people
tried to see how tan they could get in the summer. And even now, in the Era of
Sun Block, there are products to artificially give your skin a brown glow.
Blacks have a different view of skin color than White folks.
I
learned, in my Black Studies with Ted, the saying aboout skin color among many
African-Americans of a certain age and culture. “If you're light,” it goes,
“your're alright. If you're brown, stick around. If you're black, stay back.”
The “Black is Beautiful” movement changed that for younger African-Americans,
yet, as I learned from Professor Ted, skin color is an essential part of
describing a Black person to another Black person who hasn't met them. There is
as wide a range of distinctions in coloration to some blacks as there are
Eskimo words for snow.
One
distinction Ted taught me well is the distinction between 'African-Americans'
and 'African-Africans'. Mind you, his opinions may have said more about his age
and class than about what all Black people think of Africans. It came about
when, for the third time, the Bishop had called me to see if someone at St.
James would like to host a visiting African priest and his wife. The third time
was the last straw for Ted.
“Tell
him 'no!',” Ted told me, clearly exasperated by the request. “Nobody here wants
to have Africans in their home....And when you tell the bishop that, remember
to ask him for a damn Range Rover for St. James.”
Something
I have found interesting about the Episcopal Church is how enamored we often
are with African Anglicans. When I was a priest in West Virginia, some thirty
years ago now, the struggling Diocese would go head over heels about a Bishop
from Tanganyika but did next to nothing to involve African-Americans in the
power structure of the church. That really burned the older members of St.
James, especially after some deep pocket people around the state gave an
African visitor a Land Rover the same year some mission church grants were
reduced.
So
I called the Bishop and suggested that there must be some White folks who would
enjoy the exotic pleasure of hosting an African family for a week or two. The
Bishop—a sweet and good man—was shocked that not all Black people would be
ecstatic to have a chance to talk with someone from their Motherland. I
patiently explained, using Ted's logic if not his profanities, that many of the
folks at St. James found the African clerics arrogant and dismissive since
their families had never been slaves in America. I also told him that families
of the members of St. James had been in this country longer than the Irish side
of my mother's family and that very few African-Americans, descended as they
were from slaves, had no idea what part of Africa their ancestors came from.
“Besides,” I relayed from Ted, giving him credit for this insight, “Africans
don't understand our culture and smell funny.”
The
Bishop was silent for a long time. He might have been considering what people
would think of him if he dared comment on the odor of an African visitor. He
thought, as Ted had taught me, 'just like a White Man.”
Just
before we hung up, I made the request for a Range Rover, thinking he would be
amused. I don't think he was.
Ted
taught me many things. He taught me 'tolerance' wasn't the great and noble idea
most White people thought it was.
“If
you say you 'tolerate' me,” he said slowly, trying to get around my
White-Think, “the implication is that tolerance is a choice you're making and
you can take that choice back if you decide to. 'Tolerance' leaves White people
in the dominant, oppressive position.” He waited until he decided I had
somewhat dimly understood that subtlety before continuing. “Negroes...Black
folk...don't want racial 'tolerance', we want equality.”
The
little town where I grew up—Anawalt, WestVirginia—is in the southern most
county of the state. Anawalt was roughly 50% Black. Yet I knew only a few of
the Black people's names and some of the elders of their community called me
'Mister Jimmy'. There was no bad blood, for the most part, between the races.
But we went to different schools and different churches and different beer
joints. The Black folk were 'tolerated', and, in many ways appreciated for not
making more demands—but there was no thought that they were equal. We had
'racial harmony', not 'racial equality'.Even when things appear to be just and
fair, it is often the 'justice' and 'fairness' granted by the dominant and
oppressive group.
Even
today, I fear—God bless Ted's soul—even today.
(At
the 2009 General Convention of the Episcopal Church in Anaheim, there were
changes made to the calendar of feasts. One of the new commemorations was to
honor the poet Langston Hughes and the writer, W.E.B. Du Bois. In one of the
collects written for that Holy Day the term “Black folks” appeared.
Some
White-Thinking deputies rose to amend the collect to say “African-American
people” instead of “Black folks”. Never mind that DuBois' seminal work is
called The Soul of Black Folks and never mind that “Black folks” is a
term Black Folks use. To be politically correct, these White folks were trying
to change the very language of the people being honored. It was a half-hour of
madness...nobody listening to the string of Black deputies who rose to explain
the reality and how it would be an offense to change 'Black folks'. Black folks
couldn't even call themselves what they wanted unless White folks approved!
Somewhere in that I heard Ted laughing and Israel chuckling and Harris fairly
screaming with irony.)
Harris,
by the way, was a vice-President of West Virginia State College, a historically
Black college pretty much ruined by integration and white commuter students.
Harris was a devout Episcopalian who would give me tips on liturgical details.
Many Black Episcopal Churches are quite high-church...St. James was
Anglo-Catholic as long as they could attract Black priests. But economics
caught up with them and most every priest in the Diocese was White and attended
Virginia Seminary, the Evil Twin of Anglo-Catholicism. I was the 3rd
White priest after an 80 year run of Black priests and I had attended Virginia
Seminary!
So
once Harris asked me politely and with much apology if I would mind
're-vesting' the altar after the Eucharist. I had no idea what he was talking
about but agreed to do it if I could. It was after a Sunday service and I had
left the chalice and paten on the alter with the purificator beside them. All
Harris wanted me to do was wash the chalice and reassemble the whole mess with
the burse and veil and whatever that little hard, square thing is called. That
was easy.
“I'm
on my way to High Church,” I told Harris the next Sunday after leaving the
altar reassembled.
“Not
in your lifetime,” he said.
Harris
also told me once, “any Black man who isn't a Baptist or a Methodist has had
some White man messing with his religion.”
I
thought for a minute. “Your religion would probably be Muslim or Tribal if the
slave traders had never messed with it.”
He
smiled at me—he was one of the most charming men I ever met—“Ted may be wrong
about you,” he said, “you don't think half like a White man.”
Since
I was the priest of a Black Church, I was invited to join the Black Ministerial
Group made up of the Black ministers of the Baptist, Methodist, AME and AME
Zion churches. (A White priest of an Episcopal Church was more welcomed than
the self-appointed, self-ordained Black preachers here and there around
Charleston.) So I joined. They received me graciously and generously. I went to
many of the monthly meetings but skipped the one when they all took a trip to
Cincinnati together to buy suits and, from their jokes the month before the
trip, to drink and smoke a bit.
I
told Ted about the trip to Cincinnati that I turned down. Then I asked him if
he thought I should have gone along for solidarity's sake. He was fairly
falling over from laughter.
“Do
you even own a suit?” he asked, gasping.
It
was a Sunday so I looked down at my khaki colored suit and shook my head.
“No,
Jim,” he said, “I mean a SUIT like those boys wear every day?”
Black
or navy blue or pin-stripped costing over $100. No I didn't.
“You
are such a White man,” he said, walking away to tell Israel or Harris or his
wife Susan or Remitha about how I might have gone to Cincinnati with the Black
Ministers to buy suits....He was snorting with delight.
Susan,
by the way, was Ted's life. His Life, capital 'L'. There were two loves in his
life: Susan and St. James. His devotion to both was beyond question. The way
Ted looked at Susan made other women long for such looks from their husbands.
To say he adored her would, I think, be drastically understating the reality.
Susan
was, I believe, a year or two older than Ted (though one didn't ask such
questions in the polite culture of St. James). For both of them in was a
late-life second marriage. Ted never mentioned his first wife and their
divorce. Susan was widowed and her son, daughter-in-law and two granddaughters
lived across the street from her and Ted. Peter, the son, was devoted to his
mother only slightly less than Ted was. And Ted had a great relationship with
the family, especially the youngest granddaughter, Emily. While her sister was
beautiful and brilliant, Emily was large, plain and moderately retarded. She
did very well in a caring community like St. James or the town of Institute
where so many of the St. James gang lived. However, I didn't believe she'd ever
be able to live on her own. She and Ted were magic: Emily would start shrieking
with joy as soon as she saw him and his round face would light up. A full bird
Colonel and a gangly, slightly out of control adolescent who would never be an
'adult' in a full way would play together like children. Ted would pretend she
annoyed him sometimes, but that ruse was easily seen through.
Susan's
son, Peter, was a kind but rather sardonic guy. I would sometimes get his jokes
an hour later. But he was a faithful father to both is daughters and a doting
son to Susan until one day he was driving from Institute to Charleston on the
Interstate, pulled his car to the breakdown lane and died of a heart attack.
When
I got to Ted and Susan's, I walked into a space of palpable grief. Susan rose from the chair where she
was sitting and said, “Jim, oh Jim, did they tell you? My baby died....”
That
was the moment that I realized what I should have known all along: the death of
a child is the hardest death to take. It is monstrous and unnatural, so out of
time and space as it should be, that to lose a 'baby', even one who is 60 years
old as Peter was, is the unkindest cut of them all. That's also the day I recognized
that the role of a priest at the time of death is simply to be present. There
are, really, no words that are adequate, all aphorisms are devoid of integrity,
nothing you can do makes a difference. All a priest can do is sit quietly and
listen to the words and tears of the living and hold them in your heart and
arms. That's what I did most of the rest of that day for Susan and Peter's
little family.
Emily,
not quite clear what had happened, was deeply disturbed by the enormous emotions flowing around her. So Ted
took her for a long walk through the neighborhood, informing people along the
way of Peter's death. By the end of the walk, after circling the campus of the
college, Emily had become to bearer of the bad news. “She'd stop total
strangers,” Ted told me later, “and grab their arms the way she does and say,
'daddy dead'.” He smiled, shook his head and pretended a gnat had flown in his
eye and he had to get rid of it with his handkerchief. “It seemed to give her
comfort,” he said, “that's the damnest thing....”
When
people die, everyone has a story to tell. Henrich Ibsen said something like,
there is no suffering so great that we cannot bear it if only we can put it in
a story and tell a story about it. Emily's story was a simple one--'daddy
dead'--and it got her through the next few days with less stress and more hope
than any of the rest of us.
Could
it have only been a year later when Susan called me in the early morning,
apologized for disturbing me and asked if I could come. “Ted fell in the bathroom
and I can't get him to wake up.” I called Clara, Peter's widow, and Harris and
then rushed to my car. When I got there, just before the EMTs, Emily met me at
the door. “Ted dead,” is all she said then she grabbed me and almost squeezed
me in two with that wondrous strength so many retarded people have.
I
could hear the ambulance coming in the distance, hurrying to the scene. They
could have saved the siren; the Colonel had left the house. Ted dead....
The
wake was going to be a problem. Neither of the two Black funeral homes were
large enough for the crowds Susan knew to expect. And in one of those events I
can only call 'inspired'--like the Spirit got entangled in the moment—I said,
“Let's do the wake at the church....”
There
was no question about it—it was perfect. Ted could lay in front of the altar
where he often served as a chalicist, in the parish church he so loved and the
ambiance would be already dignified and somber, unlike the way things get at
funeral homes. When Harris and Scottie and Israel and young Mark, the next
generation of leadership for St. James, heard that the mortician planned to
drive Ted's body back and forth to Charleston between the wake and the funeral,
they took things into their own hands.
So
it was that Ted lay in state in that little A-frame church in a practically
deserted part of north Charleston all through the night. And he was never
alone. At first the men were dividing up the shifts, but the truth be known, I
think that most of the stayed the whole night, sitting with their friend,
telling stories about the Colonel, telling stories to keep away the chill of
night and of death. Just as it should have been, the gang spend the night with
Ted. The whole thing was gentle and sweet and lovey...just the way it should have
been....
