Gangy

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.