My 91 year-old Grandfather passed away on Friday, and this is the eulogy I wrote wrote for him and gave at the service. I managed to slip in a nice depression-era baseball anecdote into it.
Gangy
It’s an honor for me to be up here today talking about my
Grandfather, I have always been so proud to have the same name as he does. All
my email addresses start with some form of Oswald, OHK4 or OHK IV because that
is who I am. However, OH King, Jr. is known by us in the family as “Gangy,”
because that he is who he is to us, simply “Gangy” a one word name that means
so much.
I have been thinking over the last couple of days what I want
to talk about, and even though this is sad occasion I have often found myself
smiling at the memories I have of Gangy, and I know all of you hear today have
similar memories of him. I know Gangy had positive influences on us all, I saw
it through the years on me, on my siblings Kelly, Elizabeth and Hamilton, and
on my cousins Dee, Tom and Phil. I wish Greg and Charles could be here today,
too, but I know they are all together now with Gangy aggriavating them like he
always enjoyed doing. Telling them “don’t break my floor” when they fell down
or just saying “Bamalam” like he always did to get our attention in a playful
way. Charles would have been up here today speaking to you all, and I will
attempt to do his memory proud.
On Friday, I took the cross country route from Upstate South
Carolina to South West Ga that I have taken hundreds and hundreds of times to
get to “home”- from Athens to Madison to Monticello and Forsyth, Roberta,
Butler, Buena Vista and then on to Preston, Weston and Cuthbert before getting
on 27 and heading to Blakely, where I was born. It is a part of the world, Early
and Randolph counties, Blakely and Cuthbert, that has defined my life. It’s a place,
it’s red clay dirt, it’s the farm, the soy beans, the cattle and the peanuts
and at the center of it all was Gangy. He was what held this family together,
not with force, but with his mere presence that inspired so much love and
respect. So many of my friends in South Carolina and in Germany know my
Grandfather by what we called him – Gangy. And they also know “Mama King” even
if they never met them. Their influence on me and many of us here was so strong
that to know me you knew them as well. The most concrete example of this is
Peanut Brittle, or as Gangy called it, simply “candy.” They couldn’t get
enough, and I would tell them the secret is in the stretching on the marble
slab. They then would ask “why aren’t yall millionaires with this stuff?” Well,
we never became millionaires, but we can all be happy to know that there are
many, many people who turn their noses up at store-bought peanut brittle
because of Gangy’s “candy.”
There are so many memories of the times I spent with Gangy,
and at the center of so many of them is the farm. You might have seen the
picture slide show last night, and to see him driving the truck in his khaki
shirt and pants with one of his many hats on is a memory I am sure we can all
call up immediately. And he loved to give tours of the farm, slowly driving
around the bumpy roads from one corner to the other telling you what you were
looking at then but also who might have been there and what they were doing 50,
60 and 70 years ago. I spent last summer in Cuthbert and had the privilege of
spending every Monday with Gangy and Mama King. We ate lunch together, we
watched TV together, especially the Braves, and I made sure they took their
medicine. Mama King is a good medicine taker, but Gangy was a little ornery at
times. He enjoyed having me there, but when I would insist on him taking his
pills, he would give me a sly look and say, “you sound like you’ve been talking
to them women folk (meaning Aunt Gail and Aunt Joan), they have gotten to you.”
But mostly, we talked. He loved to talk about the farm and
one of the best stories he told me was about baseball, how he would listen to
games, the NY Yankees then, at Davenport filling station where he would get
repair work done on his truck or car while I am sure he was drinking a co-cola.
And he told me about the baseball games they played out of the farm. As he was
talking I was busy typing away on my phone to make sure I could record as much
as possible while he talked. Gangy was the pitcher for both teams and this was
how he described it:
“Most of the ball playing was Saturday evening
and most of the ball players were older than I was. Yeah those boys out there
would be called rough players because they played kinda rough. We had a pretty good slope down from
the catcher’s mitt to third base, second base too. Wasn't like fields now.
Pitcher to catcher was uphill and you had a pretty good base running area … They
wanted me throwing for both teams. I didn't throw at anybody. I was clean in
that matter. Other people would throw at people no matter what. I wasn't all that big, but I knew what
a day's work was.”
I asked him how he pitched and he said: “I guess
I memorized the way they batted because I tried to throw it where they couldn't
hit it. I reckon I did okay, they didn't do a whole lot of walking and they
didn't do a whole lot of hitting." I
can just picture him out there in field where they played with him being a
crafty left-handed pitcher who was smarter than the bigger and rougher boys he
played with. It’s a great image and I often think about it when I am watching
the Braves today.
We all know Gangy was a farmer for his entire life, and he
was good at it and it shaped his identity. But as Daddy and I were talking
about recently, he was a misplaced educator. As the oldest son, he was called
back from the University of Georgia to run the farm when WWII broke out, and I
know he never looked back with any regrets. But he remained a teacher his
entire life. He enjoyed every moment with his Grandchildren, Great
Grandchildren and Great, Great Grandchildren, which luckily are all mentioned
on the program because I don’t think I could have kept all the numbers straight
in my head. He taught us all by example, he taught us that you pronounce the “g”
in “fishing” and that “fixing” was what you do to a bike, not what you are
getting ready to do. Ultimately, he taught us how to live, and he did so with
patience and love. I am a German teacher, and teaching kids in the classroom is
very rewarding to me. I know it was for Gangy, too, which is why he spent his
retirement years as a substitute teacher at Early County High School. He would
tell stories about his interactions with the kids there with his glint in his
eye and you could tell how much he enjoyed it.
We are gathered here today to celebrate a life. O.H. King Jr.
was a great man, an outstanding farmer, an amazing husband, father, and
Grandfather, all of which can be summed up by the one word we called him. He
was Gangy, and I am going to miss him.
