My father-in-law, Homer Ray Boggs (he hated “Homer”) was more than a father-in-law. He was one of my best friends. We had a lot of great times together with and without Maureen and Sarah.

Ray died September 12, 1992 after a year-long bout with cancer of the esophagus. Being Mister Mom, i had the time to walk with him through most of that year including his treatment. i spent his last coherent night and day with him before the morphine gave him a painless end.

He and i were about as close as two men connected by one’s daughter and one’s wife could get. i also was the executor of his estate and with the help of Maureen and his son Danny, made all of the arrangements for his cremation and life celebration.

Because of my duties immediately after his death, i held it together: too many things to get done and too many people to tend to.

Danny and i went to Singing Hills golf course to arrange for spreading Ray’s ashes on the hole where Ray had gotten his first of six hole-in-ones, Oak Glen #6. Danny was walking ahead to the pro shop when we passed the 18^th on the executive Pine Glen course where Ray played his last round with our friend Jim Hileman and me two weeks before he passed

i felt a lump in my throat, could feel the tears welling up with the emotion coming over me. i stopped, looked at the fairway, and it was like a voice talking inside my head. The voice told me to deal with Ray’s passing as Ray would want me to act. i knew how Ray would have wanted me to act. Crying and becoming emotional were not what he would have wanted me to do. He would have wanted me to rejoice at the time we had together, to laugh and share fun and warm memories.

The tears never got outside. i regained my composure and made it through the immediate events and the longer estate closing minutiae calmly and always feeling good about Ray’s and my times together.

i am sure Ray was glad i did. i think he’s still smiling.

i’ve had to deal with that a number of times since and it worked pretty well. i also have related this story to friends and family when they suffered such a loss. I hope it helped them.

i’m posting this here because i’m hoping it might offer others some solace in considering how to deal with a loss of a friend, relative, or loved one.

My thoughts and prayers are with you.

i posted two photos on Facebook Monday. i had them scanned by a lady who works hard at her profession. The photos were of my great grandparents, Hiram (Buddy) Carpenter Jewell and his wife, Sarah. i believe they were taken in the 1870’s.

i posted them on Facebook so relatives in the Jewell line could have access as these photos were not included in The Jewell Book, a large volume collected by Dr. Harold Jewell and his wife Mary Lee Snider Jewell. Published in 1994, Dr. Jewell and Mary sought information from all family members they could find and traced the lineage of our Jewell family from the earliest settlers in this country for creating this rather unique book.

When i entered the Facebook post, Teresa Steward Deathridge responded with “Share the stories!” This is my first attempt to do that for Teresa and family members.

i have been told by one of my parents or learned from some source i don’t remember, we come from a sheriff in England around the 1400’s, i think. It was from this family where a “Jewell” crest originated. i hope to research this and find out what each part represents. i am perplexed about the upside down white bird might mean. But this is only a preamble to the first of my “Jewell” stories here.

Hiram Carpenter “Buddy” Jewell was born on Knight’s Creek near Statesville, Tennessee in 1844. In 1861, he enlisted in Smith’s 2nd Tennessee Calvary for a year of service. The next year, he re-enlisted with Company D in the 8th (Smith again) Calvary of Tennessee in Bardstown, Kentucky and served until he was “paroled” at the end of the war.

While in Kentucky, he met a woman who became pregnant by him. Here the story gets a little hazy. i’m not sure if Buddy knew she was pregnant. Regardless when he was mustered out, he returned to Statesville and became a farmer. The Jewell Book has a curious paragraph, which would be a puzzle except my parents told me their version of the story. As usual, i got it a little confused, but with the help of their recounting and The Jewell Book, i think i’ve got it about right.

The curious paragraph read:

His (Hiram’s) oldest son, John Jay Jewell, was born to William Carpenter and Mary Jane Sutton (a strange wording and even stranger considering William’s last name and Hiram’s middle name were the same) in Kentucky Aug. 10, 1862 (This would indicate Buddy met Mary Jane during his first enlistment and makes me wonder if he stayed another three years why they didn’t marry). John Jay returned to Tenn. at an early age and became a merchant, lawyer, and outstanding citizen in the Statesville community.

My parents expanded on this curious paragraph with an explanation. After Hiram and Sarah were married, they received word about Mary Jane being extremely ill and help was needed. Sarah directed Buddy to go to Kentucky and bring back the ill Mary Jane and the son, John Jay.

Questions abound:

Who alerted Buddy and Sarah to the crisis? Where was William Carpenter, the father, at least the one listed in the curious paragraph? Did Buddy tell Sarah beforehand of the tryst (?) he had with Mary and the son born out of wedlock?

The answers to my questions matters little compared to what my parents told me. Buddy brought the two back from Kentucky to Statesville. Sarah tended to the ill Mary until Mary’s death — i could not find any date there and have considered returning to the Jennings Cemetery to see if there is a plot for Mary Jane Sutton near where Buddy and Sarah are buried. Then according to my parents, Sarah raised John Jay as one of her own.

i keep trying to imagine those times in that hamlet at the conclusion of the great war. i think of Faulkner’s trilogy and the Snope’s and the Sartoris’s and again imagining how they lived in a world of conflicted alliances, beliefs, life itself turned upside down. And i think of the dignity and the goodness that survived, that put humans, flawed yes, but humanity rising above even the boundaries we put upon ourselves today. And i beam with pride that Sarah Jones Jewell arose above the pettiness of the times and the cultivated beliefs to care for a woman she only knew as someone who had a son with her husband but nonetheless took care of her in illness and took the son not hers under her wing.

Sometimes, in our history and even in our lives today, goodness prevails.

That is a comforting thought.

Andrew Maraniss has captured the greatness and the humanity of David Williams. It is also very personal and moving. i wrote of David’s passing as soon as i learned of it Friday. i think Andrew’s story here in ESPN’s “Undefeated” website gives one a fuller idea of how wonderful this man was and how great his achievements were. He leaves a legacy, which i hope others will acknowledge and build on. i remain devastated at his family’s loss, Vanderbilt’s loss, college sports loss, the country’s loss, and my loss.

Thanks, Andrew.

https://theundefeated.com/features/david-williams-secs-first-black-athletic-director-wanted-athletes-to-see-the-world-outside-the-arena/

Yesterday, i wrote down the points i wished to cover with plans to complete and email it to him this afternoon.

i had also written about two-thirds of a post about his successor.

At noon yesterday, i read the news and knew i would not have to email one and the post, this one, would have to be radically changed.

David Williams died yesterday morning.

If you do not follow Vanderbilt athletics or are not a serious fan of the Southeastern Conference, you probably don’t know who David Williams is. Nor is it likely you have a clue about what he has accomplished.

If you are not one of those folks listed above or a dedicated follower of pro basketball, you are unlikely to know about Malcolm Turner either.

The email i was attempting to make as effective as i could was to be sent to David Williams. The post i had almost completed was about Malcolm Turner and my assessment of him being an admirable choice to replace Williams.

i am more than sad there is no need for the email and that post, now this post, is radically different from the original intent.

i heard David Williams speak when he was Vanderbilt’s Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs during a Homecoming weekend, 2011 i believe. In a Q&A response to a bozo question about doing something to isolate the athletes as Florida had done, Williams responded, “We don’t do things the Gator way; we do things the right way, the Vandy way.” That was the first time i heard that comment, and it has become a guiding light for Vanderbilt athletics, even used by Turner, the new Vice Chancellor of Athletics.

i have seen David Williams on numerous occasions, heard him speak on videos, and read his thoughts on the Vanderbilt Athletic website. i met him only once, this past Christmas for just a few minutes in the foyer of the McGugin Center when i was being given a tour by Andrew Maraniss, the author of Strong Inside: Perry Wallace and the Collision of Race and Sports in the South. In just those short few minutes, David validated every thought i had about him. He was a gracious man with a personal interest in anyone he met. He fostered confidence in me. He exuded the aura of equality.

The email i did not finish was to suggest an idea for a book i had suggested to Andrew after the three of us and Candice Lee, Vanderbilt’s Deputy Vice Chancellor for Athletics had met. i thought a study of Ralph Boston and Rafer Johnson would be an interesting and worthwhile subject. Both were incredible athletes, Boston the Olympic champion and world record holder in the long jump and Johnson the incredible Olympic decathlon champion, who were black heroes in that crucible of time of moving toward equality for people of color. From the little i knew having met both of these great men briefly, they appeared to have different opinions about their roles and possibly different stances in politics.

I suggested to Andrew, who has written on similar subjects, he might find this an interesting and worthwhile project and mentioned David Williams might be interested. Andrew wrote back and liked the idea but thought David and i should co-write such a book, that David and i being roughly the same age (David was 71; i just turned 75) growing up when Boston and Johnson were sports heroes and David black and me white would add depth and different perspectives to the book.

i was charged up at the idea. The email points i was formulating excited me even more. To work with Williams, who had retired and returned to teaching at Vanderbilt’s Law School, especially a program entitled “Sports, Law & Society.” It seemed to me the program dovetailed nicely with the book subjects i had in mind.

i am not chagrin the book now has little possibility of becoming a reality. I’m working on another book. Andrew is at work on two more books and his other writing projects. No, i am not chagrin, but i am heartbroken with the thought of losing David Williams, either in a possible close working relationship or following his next pursuit in his love of law.

i have put aside my comments about and praise of the new Vice Chancellor and his strategic vision. i believe he will be a worthy successor to Williams. i just wish Turner could have continued to have Williams for counsel and advice.

Regardless, it is a very sad time for me.

Rest In Peace, David Williams, you were remarkable, your achievements incredible, and what i considered the highest praise for my father, you were a good man.

The last of the Jimmy and Estelle Jewell clan will be leaving Nashville this morning. This particular twosome is headed back to the Southwest corner. We are going home. The staff side of this duo has what he considers four homes.

There is the home where we live in the Southwest corner. Bonita. i’ve lived there longer than any place else in my life. The Southwest corner, like damn near anyplace on earth, has its plus sides and its negative sides. For us, it has more pluses than most and we can live with the minuses. That’s basic risk, benefit assessment. Our assessment will be different from others. Perspective.

There is the home where i lived when i learned to live: 127 Castle Heights Avenue, Lebanon, Tennessee, where my parents lived for 62 years. i got to know almost every little corner from basement to attic, intimately from cleaning the clunkers of coal embers out of the crawl space ledges in the basement to going through all the storage in the attic with awe as to what was up there, washing windows, stripping and waxing floors by hand. That home is now in someone else’s hands, but it’s still my home.

There is this Navy home thing. It is broad and expansive. Of course, there were the duty stations, ’bout eleven of them. There were places home to me we called liberty ports. And there was the sea, which will always be a home for me.

And then there is Nashville. It was home for the shortest period of time, 1962-1967, although it was home in abstentia for the  last two years while i moved back to Castle Heights Avenue and car pooled to Middle Tennessee. i was just passing through Lebanon and Murfreesboro. Home was with my friends in Nashville…and still Vanderbilt.

A great deal of that short-lived home is gone, made way for new buildings, even a new style of life. Maureen and i went to breakfast yesterday at “Biscuit Love” in the Gulch. It’s diagonally across the street from the Station Inn. The Station Inn was  part of my home. It is now surrounded by high rise condos and about forty-leben chic, along the order of Biscuit Love, dining places. Station Inn reminds me of the Waterfront on Kettner in downtown San Diego, a refusal to change. Too good to go away. Period pieces not yielding to the development men hungry for more money.

We walked to the Frist Museum, what used to be the old main post office next to Union Station, which is now a hotel. Then we walked back to our hotel, a two-mile journey past the modern Gannett “media” building, all modern and glitzy that used to be The Nashville Banner and Nashville Tennessean co-occupied, wandering and winding maze of two real city newspapers and past what used to be Beaman Pontiac and is now a megapolis of every kind of car dealerships and down the west end of Broadway where Mac’s Diner, a working man’s restaurant which served milk, orange juice, and water in pint beer glasses because that was what was consumed the most, when it used to be but is now occupied by student hangouts, high rise hotels, and lord knows what else and then we continued across the campus where the library is now a modern multi-level jim-get-lost labyrinth instead of the Dewey Decimal System wooden files staring you in the face at the front door and the study hall where Spence Wilson once let loose a toy train and the stacks and carrels (oh lord, i hope they are still there) upon stacks and carrels. And dare i tell you? When the civil engineering guys used to learn the craft of surveying in the yard of the library and set up their scopes on tri-pods and ignoring the surveying rods, would waste the lab time looking through the scopes at the coeds in skirts reading while sitting on the three-foot high border wall of the library and the “civil” engineers would spend the lab time hoping to shoot a beaver. There i mentioned it and hope no one is truly offended.

And the residence halls where quads used to be. And engineering marvels of buildings where old buildings with high ceilings used to be and holes where new marvels will soon be.

And Johnny’s Market (Al Rotier’s dad) ain’t down Elliston Place anymore where Cy Fraser and i bought a six pack of Gold Crest 51 beer thousands of years ago and drank three apiece even though it tasted like some of the metal had flaked off and disolved in the mixture and we both became ill and blew more than lunch but at $1.25 a six pack, it was all we could afford. And Rotier’s itself is now only open from 11:30 — 3:30 every day except Sunday when it is closed when it used to be open seemingly all the time and we all drank Pabst Blue Ribbon, “PBR” or “Big Blue” we called it and kept our own tabs and played the pinball machines with no levers that paid and built up the odds by pouring stacks of nickels in, until you lauwered (still don’t know how to spell it) it and hit too hard on one side and got a tilt and lost your nickels unless you were Charlie Hon who paid for his room and board playing those machines and Al would gather bunches in the corner and plot seeing the brakeman’s wife (an oft-repeated event that cannot be told here) and Sim Davis walking out mumbling something about getting a shotgun and i was too dumb to figure it out and Mizz Rotier looking over her shoulder at husband Al and the plotting bunch and showing her displeasure with a raised eyebrow and Billy, the avigator, alligator Parsons and i having tuna salad lunch with saltines during summer school and going back to the summer deserted house now one of those holes in the ground and listening to Paul Harvey and his noontime show and sometimes carrying over to “the rest of the story.”

Gone.

As we walked the final block, across the street was Centennial Park where they play pickup touch football on the weekends now where my bunch sat on the statues and ate the first batches of Colonel Sanders Kentucky Fried Chicken when the colonel, the real one first opened a franchise near the campus and we thought it was pretty good because it was really Kentucky Fried Chicken and real biscuits and real mashed potatoes but it wasn’t as good as Loveless’ cafe out Highway 100, which had sit down family style dinners on Sunday with Tennessee Country Ham as well as fried chicken that was better than the colonel’s and almost as good as my mother’s and when Harvey’s, the family actually that owned the department store downtown on Church, put up the big Christmas scene with thousands of lights around the wise men and the shepherds and the stable and the baby with his mother and father in the center focus before some yahoo cried foul and made them take it down.

Gone.

But there across the road was something not gone, something romantic, two-plus centuries old now.

The Parthenon. Just like it was near 2500 years ago, same size, impressive and i have seen both this one and the one in Athens and remain awed, moved by both, and breathe a little faster while thinking to myself:

Some things never change.

And i say, “Aloha, Nashville” because i like the Sandwich Islanders bidding departure because “aloha” doesn’t mean goodbye.