Note: Hardback copies of
The Last Man To Let You Down, My Daddy the Undertaker will arrive in late July
with eBooks now available on Amazon.
Side-by-side, the two families lived in Putney. Between them,
there were nine children and one radio. No one complained about the lack of
television, video games, computers or the internet. None of the nine imagined those
entertainment gadgets any more than a man walking on the moon. That’s why the
blended band of Great Depression Era children was in the yard and up a tree,
playing.
The limbs were shaking with laughter until the youngest girl
dropped her doll. When its porcelain face shattered on the hard Dougherty
County dirt, the curly-headed 6-year-old started to cry.
Scrambling down, the kids were pelted with falling tears. All
vanished except one. An 8-year-old boy helped his grieving playmate to the
ground. Patting her shoulder, he said, “Please don’t cry. One day, I will
get you a baby doll even prettier than this one.”
Before long, the train whistle blew, calling the boy’s father to
another railroad job on the other side of the state. Seven years passed. The
little girl’s father decided to take a trip to see his old neighbors. With his
wife and children packed into their Packard, they were surprised to see an
older but familiar face greeting them on the Cherry Street curb. The car hop
was startled to see them, too.
When the white-jacketed teenager attached the refreshment tray to
their car, he noticed the girl wasn’t little any more. Nor was she crying. She
was a beautiful, young woman with sparkling blue eyes. And she was smiling.
The chance encounter made an impression. Another five years would
roll by, and a handsome Army private appeared in Panama City, Florida. Before
he left for the South Pacific, he had to say what he had been thinking—“I
love you”—to the girl who once dropped her doll.
He was the first to correspond from the Philippines, asking, “Why
don’t you write a lonely soldier?” A handwritten romance flowed back and
forth. By the end of World War II, love letters filled shoe boxes in her
parents’ home on Ichauway Plantation where they operated the country store for
Robert W. Woodruff, president of the Coca-Cola Company.
As 1945 drew to a close, the young woman was washing dishes and
looking out the window when she saw someone kicking up Baker County dust in the
lane leading to the store. Closer and closer he came, until she could see it
was a soldier. By the time the corporal got to the edge of the front porch,
Margie sailed into Dink’s eager arms. And that’s where she remained for 52
years. (February 3 would have been their 62nd anniversary.)
On December 2, 1946, there was a knock outside Room 321 in
Ritch-Leaphart Hospital in Jesup. The door swung open. The visitor was holding
a bundle in his arms.
“Margie,” Dink said, “do you
remember the time when you dropped your doll and cried? And do you remember I
promised you that one day I would get you an even prettier baby doll? Well,
here she is—our daughter, Sandy.”
dnesmith@cninewspapers.com
