Ray's Way of Life: Becoming a (great,grand)father

The beauty of hearing about my grandpa’s life as he grows old is realizing the many different people one gets to be or roles one gets to play in a lifetime. He’s been a father to four, a grandpa to eight, and a great-grandpa to two. Fifty-six years of fatherhood is the quite the achievement. I’ve mentioned the stories of how the kids came about before in the blog, but I thought it was worth another go-round in grandpa’s own words.

Pam came on December 11^th, 1957. Ethel, well, she had nicknames for all of her kids. It was Panacoranacobana. Then comes the winter of 1958, and Ethel is very pregnant. Of course, my dad always did say that Ethel was looked big enough to have twins this time around. She even felt like she was feeling twins, but Dr. Gaddy said, “One head, one heartbeat”. It’s gonna be a biggun.

So it was the 9^th of December, 1958, two days shy of Pam’s birthday, when I needed to take Ethel in to the old Georgetown hospital. The baby was going to be delivered by two doctors, Dr. Gaddy and Dr. Benold. Ethel’s sister Mimi was a nurse there.

That morning, I wasn’t allowed anywhere close to the delivery room. I had to wait on the front porch for the report from the nurses that later came out to tell me that I had a real cute little daughter. Well, good, that makes two daughters. Then, after a bunch of talking, they finally said about 30 minutes later you had a big boy.

The rest of the story takes place inside the hospital. They were wheeling Ethel in with Dr. Gaddy still saying, “One head, one heartbeat.” Cindy was born first. Her nickname was to be Cindy-Lindy or Cinny-Minny-May. Dr. Gaddy’s cleaning up and told Mimi to take care of the mother. Mimi hollered out, “Dr. Gaddy, there’s another one in here!” He said, “Oh my god, get Benold! We’re going to need some help.”

After Tim was born, Ethel hollered out, “But what am I going to do in church?” She’s worried about three babies in church. After all, Pam wasn’t a year old until two days later. Dr. Gaddy’s only reply was, “If it was my wife, she’d say to hell with church.” So Tim was born, also known as Timbo or Timmy-Limmy.

Finally, August 17, 1962, here comes Danny. He would be called Wanny-wo and, for a bit, Lupeshawn. For the longest, it was, “How’s my little Lupeshawn?” That was until we went to a Jarrell basketball game and asked, “Well, did you enjoy the game?”

Little Danny said, “Yeah, but there’s a little girl there, and she’s got the same name as I do.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, her name was Lupe.”

It was a little Mexican girl. Ethel didn’t call him Lupeshawn anymore. He always wanted to know if she was one of our kinfolks.

Ray is the patriarch of our family. When he clears his throat and tells us to gather around, we all stop what we’re doing. When we grandkids were little, he was the ultimate authoritarian. It seems that carried on from when my mom and her brothers and sisters were growing up. After a family trip, the girls wanted to rush to get home for an event. But Grandpa had other plans.

Getting home quickly was the priority for Pam and Cindy because of a special event going on at the school. Like their mother, they couldn’t miss anything. On the way out of St. Louis, I noted the advertising for a play called The Shepherd of the Hills close to Branson, Missouri. After seeing the advertising, I thought that might be something for the kids to remember this trip by, so I pulled over. I was with the boys in one car, and the girls were following behind us in another car. They pulled over and I walked back to their car and said, “Y’all want to turn off and go down toward Branson and see this play? It’s an outdoor theater.” I had never been to one. It might be really good. It’s called The Shepherd of the Hills.

Well, they didn’t know. Let’s stop again in a little while. The girls weren’t really interested, but I had the boys talked into it. After a couple of stops, we still hadn’t decided what to do. Mom told the girls, “Next time we stop, we’ll have to tell dad one way or the other. Remember now, daddy, said this time when we stop, we’ll vote on it.” The girls’ answer was, “What’s the use of voting when you live under a dictator?”

Sure enough, we turned off and headed toward Branson. We took in The Shepherd of the Hills that night, and never forgot it. But we also drove back all night through Arkansas, most of the time behind trucks loaded with chickens and turkeys—feathers flew everywhere. It was morning when we got into Bryan/College Station area and got on home safely, thank the Lord. Just barely home, and the girls had to make a trip to Georgetown with the boys to see what’s going on. That was really important.

He still is our patriarch, but he has grown a little softer now. Time, babies, grandbabies, and great-grandbabies have a way of doing that to a person. It was already almost 30 years ago, Grandpa became “grandpa” for the first time. My sister Lauren was born in Dallas on February 12, 1984. Ray went on to be blessed with 7 more grandchildren. Now Ray is a great-grandpa to Ava Phillips and, as of last November, Harrison Hodgkins. As he would say, “That’s pretty neat…and a story for another time.”