Uncle Bill is my “bragging relative.” I brag about him all the time because he has done things no one else I know has ever accomplished.
I feel like I’m related to a celebrity because he competed in the 1908 Olympics in four different sports, won medals and set a world record that has never been broken in the 26-foot rope climb (they discontinued the event many years later, so his record is safe). I brag because even though he didn’t finish high school because he had to work to support his family, he nevertheless received honorary degrees from several universities for his scholarship.
His specialties were Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War, and he was often asked to lecture about his favorite subjects. We heard he was very well-received. He sent us his clippings; we got pictures of him at a Civil War round-table panel with Adlai Sevenson, the governor, and another newspaper clipping with two young men whom he had saved one winter from drowning in Lake Michigan.
Uncle Bill was just different, and the differences seemed greater to me because of the huge disparity in our ages. He was actually my great-uncle and when he came from Chicago to visit us once a year, I knew I would be prodded to exercise and to talk about my studies. He loved nothing better than teaching and inspiring others, but he had never had children and didn’t really know how to talk to kids about what really mattered, like games and dances. I think he came West for mother’s delicious home cooking, especially pot roast and mashed potatoes.
When I was in high school in San Francisco, he wanted to speak before the student body on Lincoln’s birthday. I was mortified, because with his long silver hair and rumpled dark suit Uncle Bill didn’t look like any teacher I knew. I was afraid I would be embarrassed, and I embarrassed easily in those days. But the principal wanted him to speak, and so he came.
When the dreaded morning came, I cringed in the auditorium seat.
Uncle Bill was wonderful! There was just no other word for him. His flow of language, total knowledge of his subjects, love of history and passion for the greatness of Lincoln encouraged us to study and learn more about our country. He received a standing ovation.
I basked in being his relative.
Mother, who had to work, couldn’t attend the lecture at school, but that night she made Uncle Bill’s favorite pot roast and mashed potatoes with gravy and apple pie for dessert. He was a simple man, with simple tastes. He worked and lectured in Chicago until his late 70s, but the icy winters took their toll, so he moved to Santa Barbara, California, where he could swim outdoors all year. He became chaplain of the local veteran’s group. Although he had served his country in the medical corps during both World Wars, he was a man of peace.
A few years later, during the Vietnam War, a young man walked up to him and spat in his face because he was wearing his old lieutenant colonel’s uniform. Shocked, my uncle said, “Young man in my 84 years no one has ever questioned by integrity or physically attacked me.” He decked the man with a right to the jaw and marched on to the chapel. A few bystanders saw the episode and reported it to the Santa Barbara newspaper. Uncle Bill was praised and famous again.
At 85 he swam 100 laps at the local pool. It took him a long time, he said, but then, what was time for? I wondered if he thought about the Civil War as he swam, to keep from getting bored.
In his late 80s, he and another elderly man were unwisely carrying a refrigerator down a flight of stairs when the other man fell, and the load tumbled Uncle Bill to the ground and broke his hip. He was hospitalized for a long time, and his mind faded as the hip only partially healed. After the fall he was never really the same. He began to live entirely in his past, and was observed catching baseball games and giving signals to his invisible pitcher from the wheelchair to which he was confined.I visited him often, although he no longer recognized me. When I identified myself as a relative he was gallant, and would tell me he had just taken his mother (my great- grandmother) for a drive around the lake. She had been dead for more than 40 years.
I dreaded his 90th birthday at the convalescence hospital. He seemed utterly senile; his once muscular body sagged and several teeth were missing.
All the nurses, and the patients who could remember the words, sang “Happy Birthday.” Uncle Bill smiled and tried to struggle to his feet. Two orderlies held him up as he straightened his old body as best he could and, staying nearly vertical, began reciting the Gettysburg address.
The room fell silent. All eyes were on him, even those that were half-blind with cataracts. Each word was a ringing declaration of faith, of hope, of pain for those fallen in the Civil War. His voice had power; his memory was precise. I had never felt the words so emotionally and I began to cry. I noticed others crying, too.
When Uncle Bill finished, he received a long stirring ovation. When the applause ended, he collapsed back into his wheelchair.
Someone asked him what he wanted for his birthday present after such an inspiring speech. “Pot roast and mashed potatoes with gravy!” he said. “I’m hungry right now!”
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