This past January, when Basil moved from Gaffney to
Columbia to the C.M. Tucker Center or “Tucker Town,” as he quickly named it, a
large number of family members came with him to move him in and help him get
settled. His entourage filled three
cars. As we unpacked his Gamecock
blanket, his supply of cough drops and cashews, his military police ball caps
and his television, we saw a bulletin board on the wall across from the foot of
his bed. “We’ve got to fill this board with pictures,” we said. “We can
keep the faces of people who love him and snapshots of moments of joy in his
room and, hopefully, in his heart.” That two by three foot corkboard was soon
filled to overflowing with photographs, cards, notes—pictures of life and love
we hoped would make that strange new place feel more like home. We realized that one of the best things we
could do to help him through a tough time of change was to fill that room with
pictures for Basil.
About nine months later, we’ve gathered here because
we’ve moved into a strange new place.
We’ve begun a new chapter of life without Basil in this world with
us. This isn’t a journey any of us
wanted to make and it’s tough. Averi,
one of Basil’s great-granddaughters, put the challenge of this time into words
so well through this letter she wrote for him after his death.
Dear
Granddaddy,
I really miss you and was
heartbroken when you passed. I think about Thanksgivings and Christmases
without you there. I think about conversations in your living room and your
chair being empty. No one will ever be able to replace the man who once sat in
that now empty chair. But, I know that we didn’t show up to be sad. We showed
up to celebrate what a truly great life you lived. I know you’re watching over
all of us right now form heaven. I promise that our family will live life in a
way that honors your name and the legacy you left behind.
I really was lucky to have an
amazing great grandfather like you. You always made me laugh, you always let me
know how proud you were of me, and you always made me feel special and loved.
But it wasn’t just my life you touched, I know that you touched the lives of
every single person in this very room. I am eternally grateful for the years I
had with you, and I will cherish the memories forever!
Love you,
Averi
Since we find ourselves in our own kind of Tucker Town
today, a place that in some ways feels far from home, we need to take hold of
our opportunity to make it better, even make it beautiful. Just as we filled room 402 of Patton Place
with pictures for Basil, we need to fill our new place, our new chapter of
life, with pictures of Basil.
In one sense, this has already happened. Over the past week, I’ve been the gathering
place for cherished snapshots of Basil’s life.
The slide show some of you saw during the visitation includes about 200
pictures, each one evidence of a life well lived and beautiful memories
made. Every picture of Basil bears a
testimony, “He blessed my life.”
Each one of you has a unique set of pictures of Basil to
keep and cherish, some in your photo album and the best ones, the most
important ones in your heart. Let me
share of few of my own pictures of Basil as I remember and give thanks for one
of the most important men in my life’s journey.
The first I would call…
Welcome to Gaffney
Linda and I had been dating a few months when I made my
first trip to Gaffney to meet the family.
Everyone was intrigued and a bit anxious about this psychology student
preparing for the ministry. Debbie asked
Linda if I’d call on her to pray.
Mammy set me straight for being late. But at the dinner table, the first time I’d
eaten with Basil and Ann, our relationship got off to a great start. Basil, testing the waters of sarcastic humor
with me, told Linda, “Pass the tea
pitcher to me before Dee drinks it all.”
I intercepted the pitcher and, while Basil looked on, poured every last
drop of tea into my glass. He didn’t
throw me out, though he probably should have—many times. But that evening was my first experience of
one of Basil’s gifts. He treated me like
family. I believe I can speak for all
the in-laws who’ve married into the Clary clan that Basil embraced you, right
from the start, as one of his own. Only
two years after I met Basil, my own father suddenly passed away. The faithful family love of a man I admired
has been a star in my sky for which I’m very thankful today.
That dinner scene stirs in my heart another picture of
Basil at…
The Head of the Table
Basil, like many fathers of his generation, had his place
to sit at the table. The rest of the
family took its place around him. That
was true in ways much more important than the seating arrangement. For a long time, I didn’t know that the
Clarys were a blended family. I knew
they were mixed up, but not blended. I
didn’t know it because you couldn’t see it.
Basil loved all his children fully and deeply. He was “daddy” to you all. And that flowed out of the love he had for
Ann, a love story that took them through 58 years of marriage. If you want to know what love is, I wish you
could’ve followed my little mother-in-law around her house as she met Basil’s
every need every day for years before his condition demanded other care. During these past months at the Tucker
Center, Basil would often say, “I love
that little woman.” And in the
strength of the love they shared, the rest of us became a family.
I have another picture of Basil as a…
Football Hero
Though Basil’s roots are in Gaffney, his family lived in
St. George during his high school years.
During that time, Basil was a star, really the star of the high school football team and basketball team. Being a small school with a short bench,
Basil had to play both offense and defense.
He also kicked field goals and extra points, so he was involved in
virtually every play of every game. In
one game, as he played quarterback, an opposing player delivered a dirty hit on
Basil and knocked him out cold. He lay
motionless on the field, but Mammy was moving very briskly in the stands. The legend goes that she had removed one of
her shoes with a pointed heel on it and was on her way to the field to deliver
righteous retribution on the player who hurt her boy. Ike intervened and Basil was the only
casualty of that play. Basil played
quarterback for St. George for three seasons and never threw a single
interception. He led his team to many
victories. He was quite a basketball
player too. When Linda and I lived in
Henderson, NC, we had a backyard basketball goal. During a visit, Basil came out in the yard to
shoot a few. A concrete well cap stood
about twenty-five feet from the side of the goal. Just to challenge himself, Basil stood atop
that well cap and hit three shots in a row.
He decided the time had come to go indoors.
Basil was always a gamer.
He knew how to figure out a strategy for winning anything he did. Linda and I played Scrabble with him
once. She and I impressed ourselves with
the big and strange words we formed.
Basil knew that Scrabble is about where
you form a word more than the word itself.
He double lettered and triple worded us into the ground. Then, to celebrate his victory, he asked
Linda about her educational pedigree, then asked me the same question. He ended his post-game interview by
remarking, “I just beat two Furman
graduates, one who’s about to get his master’s degree. I think I did pretty well.”
Late in his life, Basil loved to play Rook with a circle
of dear friends not far from his home. There
was no gambling involved, other than Basil’s driving there and back, but once
again, he knew how to play the game and win the game. And he made it fun for everyone.
Have you seen the picture of Basil in his uniform? The story of his life includes a picture of
his…
Military Days
Basil didn’t welcome the draft. Mammy didn’t either. The story goes that you could see her heel
marks all the way from Gaffney to Ft. Jackson as she tried to hold on to him
and keep him from going. But he went and
he served. Basil was a military
policeman who guarded some of our nation’s early nuclear weapons in Texas. We honor him for giving some of the years of
his youth to serve our nation. Out of
that experience, Basil was always a very patriotic American with a deep respect
for all who serve.
The next picture of Basil I want to mention illustrates
some of the fun he brought into my life and many of yours. I call it…
ESPN
I was visiting the Clary home. Linda had gone somewhere, leaving me in the
den with Basil. Being a sports fan, he
often watched ESPN in the early days when they featured a lot of kick boxing
and Canadian football. A kickboxing match
was on TV. The round ended and, as often
happens at such events, a beautiful young woman who was not, shall we say,
overdressed, stepped into the ring carrying a sign announcing Round 2 was about to begin. Basil and I sat there in silence for a moment,
the ministry student and the father of the young lady he was dating, when he said,
“That stuff don’t bother us preachers,
does it, Dee?” I think I answered, “Doesn’t bother me a bit, Basil.”
Basil could see and seize the humor in a situation, put
it into words, and brighten the day of everyone around him. But not even he knew what to say in the scene
I’d call…
A Short Ride in the Truck
Our son, Josh, was a toddler in a car seat. After we all met for a meal in Gaffney, Linda
and her mom went shopping, leaving Basil and me with Josh and his car
seat. We made plans for several stops we
would make, a guys’ afternoon out. We
walked out to Basil’s pickup truck in the restaurant parking lot to install
Josh’s seat and get on our way. That’s
when we made a discovery. Basil’s truck
didn’t have a center-seat seatbelt. The
only place we could strap the car seat down was the passenger side of the
truck. The car seat wasn’t so tall that
you could see it from outside the truck.
This left me only one place to sit—in the middle of the seat, right up
next to Basil. We wracked our brains for
an alternative, but no good options emerged.
So, we all crawled in the truck.
Basil cranked it with me sitting closer to him than a teenage
sweetheart, and said, softly, “Dee, why
don’t we just go home.” I quickly
seconded the motion.
Many of our heart pictures of Basil have him in the black
and gold of his Gaffney Indians. He was,
without a doubt…
The Fan
Soon after I married into this family, I learned one of
Basil’s preseason football rituals.
About August, he would say to me, “Dee,
I don’t think we’re going to have much of a team this year.” I’d answer, “Oh, that’s too bad.” “Yes,”
he’d continue, “we just don’t have much
of an offensive line. Those little boys
don’t average but about 285 pounds.” A
grin would come across his face and I knew football season had begun.
I tell people they haven’t seen real high school football
until they go to a Gaffney Indians game.
And you haven’t experienced Indian football unless you saw a game with
Basil. Most of the games I attended with
him were at the old Reservation. He
greeted people from the time he got out of his car, shaking hands on both sides
of the aisle has we climbed the stadium to his reserved seats. He knew everyone within ten seats of
his. And when his team took the field,
they had his full and full-throated support.
In fact, one time, I’m told, Basil cheered so loudly and
enthusiastically after a big play that his teeth flew out of his mouth and
bounced off the back of the fan in front of him. Basil’s smile would’ve been incomplete if he
hadn’t intercepted his top plate before it fell to the ground. That was the Allstate Good Hands play of the
game. Even when illness limited Basil’s
mobility, the coaching staff reserved a special parking place for him so he
could attend. And he and Ann were Thursday
night regulars for Tribe Talk Live at Chick-fil-A.
I love the fan Basil was because he didn’t just cheer for
his Indians (who gave Byrnes a whipping
the night before Basil died, by the way).
Basil cheered for us. He was our
biggest fan. He cheered for us in
whatever we did. We saw it, even in his
days of illness at the Tucker Center. Linda
or I would say,“We’re leaving, but his
grandson is coming by later.” “Would
that be the state champion wrestler grandson or the physical therapist
grandson?” Or Linda might comment “Daddy has to behave with a minister in the
family.” “Do you mean his son-in-law the
minister or one of his grandsons-in-law who are ministers?” Trust me—the Tucker Center staff and residents
knew our family very well. The Gaffney
Indians never had a greater fan than Basil.
And neither did we. He’d ask us, I’m sure to keep cheering for each
other.
Attending games with Basil brings another picture of him
to mind. Basil was a great…
Friend-Maker
I often joked that Basil would go to Walmart and come out
with a new wrench and two new friends.
He had an uncanny gift for connecting to people. He would find a way to start a conversation
with anyone anywhere that would usually result in finding common ground and
starting a friendship. I’ve seen Basil make
friends with millionaires and with the down and out. He connected with people with whom he had
much in common and people who were vastly different. He saw every stranger as a friend he hadn’t
yet met. In this impersonal age with so
many people living their lives through their smart phones, we need to walk in
Basil’s footsteps and rediscover the gift that awaits us in every person God
sends across our paths.
I also have a picture of Basil…
In the Workshop
Basil was a gifted craftsman who built wooden furniture
for his home and his family. We cherish
several things he built for us. He and
Ann were guilty of industrial espionage more than once as he would take his
tape measure to a furniture store and, when no sales staff was looking, call
out the dimensions for Ann to jot down. Then
he would hurry home and create a reproduction.
He shared his heart and his gifts through every one of those
creations.
Giving reminds me of Christmas and my heart picture of
Basil as our family’s…
Father Christmas
Basil loved Christmas more than anyone I’ve ever
known. He loved to decorate, right down
to spraying snow on the tree. He loved
the magic and mystery of waiting for Santa to come. He loved the Clary rituals of him going to
the tree before anyone else to see if Santa had come. He loved opening his gifts, especially those
he had left subtle hints about, like item and page numbers from catalogs. Among these many Christmas memories, one
stands out in my mind that revealed so much about Basil’s heart.
We were gathered in the basement on S. Petty Street on
Christmas morning. The Wright girls were
very young, but Basil had decided Jennifer was old enough to receive one of the
new-fangled digital watches. She opened
her watch and was thrilled with it. Happy
Hallmark movie ending, right? No. Natalie saw Jennifer open her watch and came
to Basil, lip trembling and big eyes pooling up with tears and asked, “Do you have a watch for me,
Granddaddy?” A look of horror
flashed across his face. He didn’t think
Natalie was old enough to care about a watch.
He couldn’t stand the thought of her feeling left out. So, in a moment of generous genius, he
answered, “Of course I do.” He took the watch off of his own wrist and
gave it to her. And we all saw
granddaddy’s beautiful giving heart. We
gained yet another glimpse of what I think was the secret of Basil’s wonderful
life, what made him so precious to so many.
Though he was a great athlete, a veteran, a hard worker, a big strapping
man, Basil was always a….
Joyful Child
I believe one of the secrets of life is experiencing the
joy of the journey. Basil never lost the
childlike gift of finding great joy in simple things.
·
The taste of a Gaffney peach.
·
Teasing a grandchild.
·
Riding the sled down the driveway and the hill
on a snowy day.
·
A game of cards with good friends.
·
Barbequed wienies in the crockpot at Christmas.
·
A weekend camping trip with Ann.
·
Spoiling one of the little animals in his life.
·
Rolling down the car window as he returned to
Cherokee County to breathe in some of the air that smelled so much better than
the air anywhere else.
Basil rejoiced and was glad in each day the Lord
made. What a gift and example to us
all.
This journey began at the Tucker Center. I want to take you back there for one last
picture of Basil, one of him…
Surrounded by Love
When we learned that Basil’s body was wearing out and
that his earthly life was coming to a close, his room at the Tucker Center
became a sanctuary of love and gratitude.
Ann was at his side. All the
children spent time with their dad.
Brother and sisters came to him. Grandchildren and great-grandchildren
looked at him, talked to him and held his hand.
Hymns were sung. Prayers
raised. Stories told. Laughter shared. Tears shed.
Love expressed.
That, my friends and family, is a picture of what a life
well-lived is all about. In those
closing hours of life, Basil didn’t ask for his trophies or medals, none of the
things we so feverishly pursue, but only to be surrounded by the people he’s
loved into the fullness of life, people who tearfully gratefully saw him off on
his final journey home.
You and I are blessed.
We have these pictures of Basil to keep.
We have this example to follow.