Why my father might not wanted a service
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| Daniel Johnson Matthews Senior 1930 - 2010 |
While no one except my bosses of work have really asked, he did not want a ceremony or memorial service, and I have pondered his reasons both requests the weeks before and the week after his passing this last Monday in November on the hilltop in his Druid Hills family homestead that once stretched from the current location of Callanwolde to that where Scott Boulevard and North Decatur bisect in Decatur.
If you would like to read about the street called Oakdale Road
, there remains an e-book version of that which my grandmother wrote in the 1970s The last names of our forebearers Medlock, Johnson, Harris, Blackshear and Matthews offer a glimpse into Atlanta's recent and distant past, as well as the State of Georgia. He counted among his many distinguished ancestors the author Joel Chandler Harris and General David Blackshear. I recall many trips to south Georgia as a youth to uncover our past to Cordele and points south. I am very proud of my Georgia heritage. The answer would be a lack of practicality and possibility of putting together such a service for a man who led as a vast, far flung and enriching life as he did.
The nearly foot long column inch tribute in the papers will take some time to digest but I would suggest it for anyone who is curious about from whence I came and evolved. But essentially, any service would have to be multiple places with multiple churches and cemeteries with almost insurmountable musical accompaniment.
Any ceremony for my father would have to take place at churches including Plymouth Congregational in Des Moines and Rock Spring Presbyterian in Atlanta. He would have to be interred next to his mother in Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta, and next to his father in Tennile, Georgia. He actually asked to have a little bit of his ashes scattered many different places including Bayfield, Ontario and Tama, Iowa, where his first wife Norma is buried with two headstones.
Music would have to include a tattoo of bagpipers, Randy Newman, and Ramsey Lewis at the very least. Probably throw in Illinois Jacquet, Willie Nelson and Oscar Peterson, too. The lyrics to the song "Birmingham," an obscure Newman tune never destined for airplay, kind of sum up my father's duality.
Got a big black dog
And his name is Dan
Who lives in my backyard in Birmingham
He is the meanest dog in Alabam'
Get 'em Dan
Combine that with those of "Rednecks," and you get a picture of a man who would love to bring African-Americans home from a night on the town to crank the quadrophonic stereo we had with the rather off-color lyrics
We talk real funny down here
We drink too much and we laugh too loud
We're too dumb to make it in no Northern town
And we're keepin' the n______ down
Keep in mind this is a man whose middle daughter dated African Americans at Roosevelt High School, where she was the President of the Senior Class and the Afro-American club.
His wife Norma regularly worked to get candidates like former Polk County Board of Education chair Nolden Gentry elected to offices that no black man had run for, yet alone won. This wife Norma also decided to bring the Iowa Caucuses to the first in line, helping George McGovern convert a third place finish into a nomination in 1972.
I appreciate all the Facebook and other greetings and kind words people have heaped on his grieving family. People who think of me as being some bleeding heart liberal would be correct, but recall that my father's only real request from beyond the (lack of) grave is to contribute to Georga Military College's Prep School in Milledgeville, Georgia, where he was the only member of his brigade to vote for Harry S Truman in 1948. The rest were split between Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond and a few for Thomas Dewey.
Growing up in Iowa I can remember at our house on 44th Street such people as Bill and Hillary Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Fred Harris, Gary Hart, Morris Udall and a few other fairly famous Democratic Presidential timber coming to our house or even spending the night in our sister Sarah's bedroom (she would share Emily's ample mattress in the room across the hall). My mom was a political hired gun who managed campaigns locally and nationally for the likes of McGovern and Udall.
We had musicians perform in our living room on a baby Grand piano built for an opera singer out of Athens, Georgia. Dartanyan Brown and Susie Miget come to mind and Mark Jung and other piano players such as my sisters Sarah and Emily played that piano quite well.
Most of the Republican we knew well were from Roosevelt or Plymouth, with Emily friends with the Vickie Ray, the Governor for life of Iowa (or so it seemed) of Robert Ray, who was supposedly Nixon's other choice to succeed Spiro Agnew as his Vice President in 1972.
My dad worked at Meredith Publishing and worked in a burgeoning world of Special Interest Publications, that would soon be the norm in the magazine world. He always wanted me to follow in his footsteps in advertising, and except for maybe five rare instances in my journalism career. Apartment Life and Better Homes and Gardens were the main publications I remember regularly in the house.
My dad sold cases of Coca-Cola individually allegedly for a nickel eacgh to get enough money to attend Atlanta Crackers baseball games down the street when he was a boy. He loved traveling off to new adventures like the Cleveland Air Shows as a tribute to his railroad working father William Collins Matthews. I remember watching the 1972 World Series with my grandfather and falling in love with the style and grace of Roberto Clemente. Grandpa Billy wanted the Orioles, but he did teach me the names of the three rivers of Three Rivers stadium. He would also make sweet pickles and send them up by the carton full from his Dublin home later in his life. He died right before the Presidential election in 1972 and I remember my dad telling my McGovern had no chance to win well in advance of the actual landslide won by Nixon.
He served some federal time for something about a mule and some untaxed liquor over the hills of north Georgia but those records are long expunged. This was never talked about at the dinner table very much. Nor was the fight that resulted with his front bridge of his upper teeth being replaced after some fracas at a nearby cinema as a youth.
Apparently my Dad was somewhat of a hellraiser and got shipped off to Military School to straighten up. Milledgeville did this to him and more. He made lifelong friends. But he also saw through the Military where they flash you top secret papers that say the enemy is bad and expect you to follow. Still he wants you to contribute to them here.
And yes if you click on any of the preceding Amazon links I get a few cents if you buy anything.
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