thedrifter
01-22-08, 05:30 AM
Article published Jan 22, 2008
Tales from the Crossroads: Menard coach gets to know deceased father through letters
By Bob Tompkins
btompkins@thetowntalk.com
(318) 487-6349
Wally Smith never knew his father, not the way a son would love to know his father, until this year.
And his father died 60 years ago.
A longtime cross-country and track and field coach at Menard, Smith knows what it's like to find a hidden gem among young runners. Now, he has found another hidden treasure in the form of letters - about 350 of them - written by his dad, Wallace Cayford Smith, to his father, Carl David Smith (Wally's grandfather), over a 17-year period.
Reading the letters, knowing how things turn out while living the days and weeks and years vicariously through his father's life, was, Smith admits, surreal.
The letters started in 1923, with two, when Smith's dad was 8 years old. That was the year his mother, Olive, died. The letters started in earnest eight years later, in 1931, and continued to seven weeks before his death of a heart attack, at age 33, in August, 1948.
Smith's father was one of six children, one of whom was Wally's uncle Bill, who died in 2000. Not long after Uncle Bill died, Wally received a box in the mail, with no advance warning, from one of Bill's children.
"It was crammed full of letters, standing on edge," Smith said. "I pulled out a couple and, out of curiosity, read them, and they were from Uncle Bill to my grandfather. ... But I quit reading and put 'em back in the box and in the closet, and that's where they sat 'til the summer of 2007."
Last summer, Smith, a math teacher as well as a coach, came upon the box of letters again while rearranging some things in his closet.
"This time," he said, "I pulled out a letter, and it was from my dad to his dad."
Wally read it, then read another and another. All were from son to father. He decided it would be best if he read them in chronological order, so he categorized them that way, and put the letters in plastic jackets and in five 2 1/2-inch binders.
Here was the son, reading about the father he never knew - not only because his father died when Wally was 5, but because he rarely saw the man he described as "a workaholic from day one 'til his death."
The bulk of the letters started when 16-year-old Wallace was at the Mt. Hermon (Mass.) School for Boys.
"In every other letter, he says how he hates this letter writing," Smith said with a laugh, "but, boy, the letters keep coming."
Through the letters, Wally read with fascination the mundane and profound aspects of his father's life. These weren't short, infrequent letters, either. Some of them were six-to-10 pages, and sometimes there would be three in one week. There was talk of a paper route, names of girls he dated - including Kay, who would be Wally's mom - his school grades and enthusiasm about the many sports and activities he was involved in at school.
"He went to Mt. Hermon as a country hick," said Smith, "and by the time he graduated, he was the president of the senior class, he was acting in plays, he was involved with the yearbook, he was an athlete. He was doing everything."
As a lifelong runner and running coach, Smith was fascinated to read that his father was a good runner. Wallace told his father in one letter how he was running four miles in 30:29 and one mile in 5:48. Smith also learned that his dad, who was also a good baseball player, would later have trouble with a knee, the left knee, and it would require surgery.
"That was the same knee for my surgery," said Smith.
The faded, yellowing letters, with stamps that cost 2 and 3 cents, glimmered with revelations of his father - a man he thought he never knew, but, in some strange, subconscious way, a man he knew well.
"He once expressed indignation about a place he stopped to eat, on a long bus ride," Smith said, "that charged him 30 cents for a glass of milk and a sandwich."
"The neat thing," said Wally's wife, Becky, "was he was so wide open in expressing himself in the letters that you really got to know him."
Wallace Cayford Smith worked various jobs after his schooling, from being a salesman (chocolate and Pond's lotion), to owning and running a laundry in Indianapolis. There, he worked 20-hour days until brother Bill returned home from the Army to help him run the place. That way, he could slash his work time to 10-hour shifts.
"One of the letters is from November, 1941," said Smith, "and he's selling choclolate and Pond's and talking about expanding his territory. He's full of plans and dreams about his job and his future. He doesn't have a clue, but I know it's two weeks before Pearl Harbor. I know that the whole thing is going to get turned upside down, but he doesn't.
"It sort of makes me feel like God looking down on all this. It makes me understand predestination, in the sense that God knows already what's going to happen in our lives. As dad is working day by day, making free will decisions, God has it all laid out. He knows how it's going to turn out."
Surprisingly, the letters rarely speak of world or national events, Smith said, with the exception of the mention of Thomas Edison's death and an occasional passing reference to one event or another. "The word 'Depression' never comes up," Smith marvelled.
With America thrust into World War II, Smith's dad tried to join the Navy but was rejected because of a kidney condition, and so he tried the Marines, but was rejected for the same reason. After drinking 20-25 glasses of water in a day, Smith explained, his dad's urine was clear enough to pass the physical for the Army Air Corps. But the truth eventually caught up with him and he had to return to private life.
Smith also read in a '41 letter about an older sibling who was stillborn. That prompted thoughts that he was two years away from being born.
"As we were getting to nine months before I'm born, I am conceived, and they don't know it," Smith said. "I am waiting for the letter announcing they're pregnant with me, and it came. That was cool."
Maybe the toughest letter of the bunch Smith read was his father's last letter, dated August, 1948.
"That letter shows the same characteristics of optimism and plans for the future," said Smith. "He doesn't have a clue, but I know he only has seven weeks on this earth."
"Your dad was a stranger to you," Becky said to her husband, "but (through the letters) you learned to love him and appreciate who he was."
"What have I learned?" asked Smith, whose daughter Jenny died at age 16 in an automobile accident 16 years ago. "Life is short - just how short I don't know. Am I ready for my last day? Will I have advance warning, or will it just all be over like dad's?
"Life is all about the present moment," he continued, "and how I choose to respond to that moment. I've heard and believed those words for many years, but now they're a little bit closer to my heart. So don't ley any of those 'I love you's' go unsaid."
It's the kind of message that makes the rounds via e-mail messages almost daily, but the depth to the message hit home for Smith, thanks to old-fashioned, hand-written letters. They were letters that his father, apparently begrudgingly, took the time to write, with openness and frequency, to his father, never knowing they would someday be letters to his son.
And so the chasm of 60 years between a son and his unknown father is filled.
More than filled, it is brimming with an enviable kinship that for so long seemed forsaken.
Ellie
Tales from the Crossroads: Menard coach gets to know deceased father through letters
By Bob Tompkins
btompkins@thetowntalk.com
(318) 487-6349
Wally Smith never knew his father, not the way a son would love to know his father, until this year.
And his father died 60 years ago.
A longtime cross-country and track and field coach at Menard, Smith knows what it's like to find a hidden gem among young runners. Now, he has found another hidden treasure in the form of letters - about 350 of them - written by his dad, Wallace Cayford Smith, to his father, Carl David Smith (Wally's grandfather), over a 17-year period.
Reading the letters, knowing how things turn out while living the days and weeks and years vicariously through his father's life, was, Smith admits, surreal.
The letters started in 1923, with two, when Smith's dad was 8 years old. That was the year his mother, Olive, died. The letters started in earnest eight years later, in 1931, and continued to seven weeks before his death of a heart attack, at age 33, in August, 1948.
Smith's father was one of six children, one of whom was Wally's uncle Bill, who died in 2000. Not long after Uncle Bill died, Wally received a box in the mail, with no advance warning, from one of Bill's children.
"It was crammed full of letters, standing on edge," Smith said. "I pulled out a couple and, out of curiosity, read them, and they were from Uncle Bill to my grandfather. ... But I quit reading and put 'em back in the box and in the closet, and that's where they sat 'til the summer of 2007."
Last summer, Smith, a math teacher as well as a coach, came upon the box of letters again while rearranging some things in his closet.
"This time," he said, "I pulled out a letter, and it was from my dad to his dad."
Wally read it, then read another and another. All were from son to father. He decided it would be best if he read them in chronological order, so he categorized them that way, and put the letters in plastic jackets and in five 2 1/2-inch binders.
Here was the son, reading about the father he never knew - not only because his father died when Wally was 5, but because he rarely saw the man he described as "a workaholic from day one 'til his death."
The bulk of the letters started when 16-year-old Wallace was at the Mt. Hermon (Mass.) School for Boys.
"In every other letter, he says how he hates this letter writing," Smith said with a laugh, "but, boy, the letters keep coming."
Through the letters, Wally read with fascination the mundane and profound aspects of his father's life. These weren't short, infrequent letters, either. Some of them were six-to-10 pages, and sometimes there would be three in one week. There was talk of a paper route, names of girls he dated - including Kay, who would be Wally's mom - his school grades and enthusiasm about the many sports and activities he was involved in at school.
"He went to Mt. Hermon as a country hick," said Smith, "and by the time he graduated, he was the president of the senior class, he was acting in plays, he was involved with the yearbook, he was an athlete. He was doing everything."
As a lifelong runner and running coach, Smith was fascinated to read that his father was a good runner. Wallace told his father in one letter how he was running four miles in 30:29 and one mile in 5:48. Smith also learned that his dad, who was also a good baseball player, would later have trouble with a knee, the left knee, and it would require surgery.
"That was the same knee for my surgery," said Smith.
The faded, yellowing letters, with stamps that cost 2 and 3 cents, glimmered with revelations of his father - a man he thought he never knew, but, in some strange, subconscious way, a man he knew well.
"He once expressed indignation about a place he stopped to eat, on a long bus ride," Smith said, "that charged him 30 cents for a glass of milk and a sandwich."
"The neat thing," said Wally's wife, Becky, "was he was so wide open in expressing himself in the letters that you really got to know him."
Wallace Cayford Smith worked various jobs after his schooling, from being a salesman (chocolate and Pond's lotion), to owning and running a laundry in Indianapolis. There, he worked 20-hour days until brother Bill returned home from the Army to help him run the place. That way, he could slash his work time to 10-hour shifts.
"One of the letters is from November, 1941," said Smith, "and he's selling choclolate and Pond's and talking about expanding his territory. He's full of plans and dreams about his job and his future. He doesn't have a clue, but I know it's two weeks before Pearl Harbor. I know that the whole thing is going to get turned upside down, but he doesn't.
"It sort of makes me feel like God looking down on all this. It makes me understand predestination, in the sense that God knows already what's going to happen in our lives. As dad is working day by day, making free will decisions, God has it all laid out. He knows how it's going to turn out."
Surprisingly, the letters rarely speak of world or national events, Smith said, with the exception of the mention of Thomas Edison's death and an occasional passing reference to one event or another. "The word 'Depression' never comes up," Smith marvelled.
With America thrust into World War II, Smith's dad tried to join the Navy but was rejected because of a kidney condition, and so he tried the Marines, but was rejected for the same reason. After drinking 20-25 glasses of water in a day, Smith explained, his dad's urine was clear enough to pass the physical for the Army Air Corps. But the truth eventually caught up with him and he had to return to private life.
Smith also read in a '41 letter about an older sibling who was stillborn. That prompted thoughts that he was two years away from being born.
"As we were getting to nine months before I'm born, I am conceived, and they don't know it," Smith said. "I am waiting for the letter announcing they're pregnant with me, and it came. That was cool."
Maybe the toughest letter of the bunch Smith read was his father's last letter, dated August, 1948.
"That letter shows the same characteristics of optimism and plans for the future," said Smith. "He doesn't have a clue, but I know he only has seven weeks on this earth."
"Your dad was a stranger to you," Becky said to her husband, "but (through the letters) you learned to love him and appreciate who he was."
"What have I learned?" asked Smith, whose daughter Jenny died at age 16 in an automobile accident 16 years ago. "Life is short - just how short I don't know. Am I ready for my last day? Will I have advance warning, or will it just all be over like dad's?
"Life is all about the present moment," he continued, "and how I choose to respond to that moment. I've heard and believed those words for many years, but now they're a little bit closer to my heart. So don't ley any of those 'I love you's' go unsaid."
It's the kind of message that makes the rounds via e-mail messages almost daily, but the depth to the message hit home for Smith, thanks to old-fashioned, hand-written letters. They were letters that his father, apparently begrudgingly, took the time to write, with openness and frequency, to his father, never knowing they would someday be letters to his son.
And so the chasm of 60 years between a son and his unknown father is filled.
More than filled, it is brimming with an enviable kinship that for so long seemed forsaken.
Ellie