On August 31, my uncle, Herschel Glenwood Williams, passed away. I miss Glen every day. I’ve been trying to write about him, but it’s hard. There’s not a starting point to the story, or a suitable ending.
I remember Glen first in the bedroom we shared at my grandparents’ house in Exeter, Virginia in the early fifties. I was about four or five, and I remember sleeping in the double bed with Glen and being amazed at his loud snoring. I’d wake up early in the morning and sit on the side of the bed, just looking at him sleep…and snore.
I remember Glen joining the Air Force when the mines were closing (again) in the mid-fifties and leaving for Texas. Glen had served in World War II in the Navy. Glen was trained as an aircraft hydraulics mechanic and worked on C-121, C-130, C-141, C-5, and other aircraft. His Air Force career was based in Charleston, SC with two assignments outside the area – in the early sixties he spent 12 months at Keflavik AFB, Iceland, and in the late sixties he spent 18 months at Clark AFB, Republic of the Phillipines. After he retired from the Air Force, Glen worked at the Charleston base as a Civil Service employee on the same flight line where he had spent so many hours keeping the planes flying (and landing.)
My parents lived on Pennsylvania Avenue in Bristol, TN for a few months after moving back from San Antonio, Texas. Glen came in on leave and met the two sisters who rented the apartment downstairs. Before long, Glen was spending more time downstairs than visiting with us upstairs. He proposed to Carolyn Maree Vernon and she accepted. They were unseparable since the wedding.
Glen was diabetic and fought it for years. He passed away from complications of the diabetes and heart problems in North Charleston, SC at 8:30pm on a Wednesday night. Carolyn and her sister were by his side.
This sounds really clinical. Let me back up and add to the above paragraphs.
The house in Exeter was a small two-bedroom structure built by the Stonega Coke and Coal Company around 1918 and sold to employees. I remember my grandfather being excited when the 30-year, $5000 mortgage was paid off in the mid fifties. Glen played with me when I was young, and throughout my life was my friend, advisor, supporter, and, when my father wasn’t available he was my father.
When I was in the second grade, two bullies jumped me on the way home from school. One held me and the other one beat me up. I came home crying. My father’s lesson was that if he heard of me starting a fight, I’d get a whipping, and if he heard of me running from a fight I’d get a whipping.
My Uncle Glen added, after Dad had left the room, that when someone jumped me, that meant he planned to hurt me. The way to stop him was to hurt him first – to discourage the attack. The next day, one of the boys knocked me down and jumped on my chest. My hand found a piece of brick and the ensuing pain in his forehead caused the bully to forget about the fun he was planning and he went home in tears. He never even spoke to me again.
No one in the family had a car, but we had a friend in Exeter who would take us to Jonesville, VA one Sunday a month to visit my great-grandmother, who lived in a log cabin just outside of town. My grandparents, Glen, and I would get into the Studebaker and drive to “the farm.” My grandfather paid the neighbor $1.00 for the gas, and he ate lunch and spent the day with us.
Glen walked me around the farm and showed me the dairy and the cornfields, then left me to my own discoveries. I’d check back from time to time to make sure he was still on the porch with the others and hadn’t left me.
After my grandfather passed away in February of 1957, my grandmother moved to Bristol, VA and I moved in with her. My parents, brothers and sister moved to Charleston, SC. Glen had encouraged Dad to come south to look for work when the mines began to lay off workers again. Dad got a job as a ship’s radar repairman at the Navy yard. I spent school years in Bristol and my summers and Christmas holidays in Charleston. Although I was “based” at my folks’ home I spent a lot of time with Glen and Carolyn in their trailer. Glen would go to work just before midnight, and Carolyn and I would watch the Tonight show and go to bed. I showed up in Charleston one June and Glen was painting his trailer…well, not his trailer, just the screws that held the outside aluminum panels on. The salty coastal air caused rapid corrosion on the screws. Glen used steel wool to clean off the corrosion and a small modeller’s paint brush and Testor’s model paint to match the color of the screws to the trailer’s colors. The detail story sticks with me because of everything I’ve seen Glen do with such exacting detail. I’d never be worried about flying on an aircraft Glen had worked on!
Glen bought two acres of land beyond the town of Moncks Corner, SC although his friends advised against it. He spent a couple of years going out to the farm to clear the big southern pines growing on the property. When he was happy with it, he moved the trailer from the rental property to the “farm.”
He put a chain-link fence around the property, small evergreens by the fence, grapevines, and a plum tree that he was proud of. He took care of the place with the same attention I had seen him apply to his hobbies and “fun” projects.
When I dropped out of college and was worried about being drafted, I looked at Glen and Carolyn and Glen’s life in the Air Force. I enlisted, and Glen supported me. You know, I don’t remember Glen ever trying to talk me into anything except making my own decisions, and whatever decision I made, Glen supported me.
After my parents passed away, Glen was my anchor. If I was overseas, I’d write (infrequently), and I’d hear from Glen (frequently), and he’d tell me about the family, the yard, and his opinion of the government.
After I retired from the Air Force, I’d call Glen once or twice a month, and we’d talk, and talk, and talk. It wasn’t unusual to spend 90 minutes or two hours on the phone with Glen. We didn’t always agree in our discussions, but we always had respect for each other and understood the other viewpoint.
I worried about Glen and the trailer when Hugo hit the South Carolina coast and called him. He and Carolyn had weathered the storm in a cement-block motel in Moncks Corner. The trailer didn’t show major damage. The insulation was blown from underneath, and the aluminum porch awning had peeled back over the top of the trailer. Trees were down everywhere. Glen decided for the first time to rethink the “I love my trailer. I’ll spend the rest of my life in a trailer” idea that I’d heard for years. The next time I saw Glen, he was living in a modest brick home on the property. The trailer? It was parked over close to the side fence with items from my grandmother’s apartment stored in it. He still loved.it.
Glen was like that. He was attached to things. He never forgot his roots. He remembered growing up in the coal mines of southwest Virginia. He remembered the wonderful lessons he learned in those years, and he remembered the terrible times. Glen understood family values. Not the family values politicians talk about, and not the family values preachers deliver sermons about. Glen said that no matter what happened with one of us kids, we’d still be family and he’d fight to protect us. If we did wrong, we did wrong, but we were still family and that trumped everything else.
Glen was the trump card in the family, and it’s going to be hard to play the game without him!