Community

Neely's service was yesterday and for the weekend we were with family in North Carolina. What struck me was the sense of community that this lady created around her. She lived in the same house for more than 80 years. I understand that community in places like Winston Salem is different than in other parts of the country but even for that the outpouring was extraordinary.

On Sunday night we had a dinner with the very close friends that Neely either lived next to or interacted with. It was a warm evening with lots of remembrances. Eerily as we were about to go about the room to say something about her - a glass in back of my oldest brother fell to the ground with no apparent outside intervention. On Sunday afternoon we had one woman come by the house to express her sympathies who was Black and very frail. Her dad had worked with our granddad. But she wanted to come by and express her sympathies. She brought along her grandson (or great-grandson) who has just started college and we had a chance to talk about his long term goals and dreams. The south is a very different place from what it was in 1923 when Neely moved into the house.

The service had more than 150 people at it. It was a mix of people from the community. The church, which is the location of so many important family events is about the same age as the one where our daughter was married in September. I will be back in Winston Salem in the next couple of weeks in part to continue to clear up some family matters but also to experience again the extraordinary sense of community.

My two brothers and I spoke at the funeral - we each hit a different set of points. Mine talked about George Mason (who is in our lineage) and Hank Williams, Jr., who is not.

Here is what I said -
When I thought about what I wanted to say about Neely today I thought about two people – one of whom had a plausible connection to her and the other where I cannot think of a logical connection. But I will try to explain why I chose both.
Neely’s middle name was Mason – named after her father but there is also a plausible argument that part of the motivation was to recognize the author of the Virginia Bill of Rights – George Mason. If you go back in our family lineage we can make the case that he was related to us.
At one point Mason told one of his sons that from his experience he preferred the “happiness and independence of his private station to the troubles and vexations of public business.” Neely would have agreed with those sentiments. She spent almost her entire life within 100 miles of where we are this afternoon. But her vision was a lot larger. She was not attracted to the limelight but that does not mean she did not do important things.
At the start of our republic George Mason helped to bind our nation together. Neely did the same thing – a few hundred years later and with a different target audience. My siblings and I had a sort of strange family. Since neither Mary nor Neely married and our father was an only child – the only real family outside of the four of us was Mary and Neely. Mary was especially important when we were younger because she would come and visit in California. But Neely took on a new role by the time we were grown in reminding us of heritage. That took two forms. Neely told us the stories of our forebearers but she also helped us think about the importance of community – not with some high level philosophy but by the demonstration she offered in her every day life. We had the treat of a weekly phone call where we would chatter about what we had done and which movies we had seen or in my case which opera was coming up. But we also talked about the issues of the day. She was annoyed by political buffoons of all stripes. I used to delight in sending Christmas presents signed by Quinlan, Emily, Peter and me and a senator from North Carolina.
In each of the visits to Winston, we would hear about some person in our history. There was also the occasional reference to one person who I cannot find in our family tree, a Mrs. Poopdaddle, who could also be quite an object lesson.
The second person that came to mind was Hank Williams, Junior. Those of you that know Mary well understand that Bosephus’ music is more to her taste than Neely’s. Neely had a taste for classical music. She knew opera. Indeed as we were driving somewhere if I turned on country music, she would protest. But like Bosephus she valued “family traditions.” While she was a repository of (and like all families we have lots of it) she understood the dichotomy of family history. On the one hand family lore binds us to our forebearers. But on the other they also offer didactic devices which help us understand greater principles. To do that we need to understand that some of those things are more true than historically correct. When I angered my mom by sending a gift of clothing back (I don’t like people to buy me clothes) she reminded me that Totsy (her father) had done the same thing after a neighbor bought him a Christmas tie. My mother did not like that story, but I did. When my son Peter and I went to a Civil War site of one relative’s supposed valor (which later turned out to be not quite true) – she regaled us with some stories about that same Uncle Billie after the Civil War. So she gave us context for family traditions.
But she did not just retell our history, she created it. Neely spent almost 60 years taking care of someone in the family – first her father, then her mother, then her sister. When you spoke with her about it she did not complain – that was not a part of her DNA. In my opinion that service was trivial compared to her greater role in helping us all fit together.
I am concerned that if we don’t remember Neely’s ties to Bosehpus and George Mason that we will miss the instruction that she gave us all. It is easy for each of us to be a bit grumpy that this remarkable lady did not stay around longer to help us understand the joy of family, community and nation. But like the best teachers, she offered us these lessons and now we need not to mourn her passing but to think about how we can emulate her skepticism about position but her genuine reverence about community.

My brothers' remarks reflected them well. Unfortunately, I did not get a copy of what they said. All of us mixed humor and sentiment. In this case it was important to have that mix.