{"id":112468,"date":"2021-07-13T12:01:00","date_gmt":"2021-07-13T17:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=112468"},"modified":"2024-02-15T00:52:04","modified_gmt":"2024-02-15T06:52:04","slug":"ill-take-my-stand-poor-richard-or-why-reynolds-was-so-serious","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/ill-take-my-stand-poor-richard-or-why-reynolds-was-so-serious\/","title":{"rendered":"I\u2019ll Take My Stand: “Poor Richard or Why Reynolds Was So Serious”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In the first edition of this column (ie, \u201cRock Around the Clock<\/a>\u201d), I wrote about my earliest sense of feeling Southern. The trigger was hearing \u201cDixie\u201d played on a juke box while spending the summer of \u201954 as a guest of my cousin Helen Hawkins Weber and her husband Mack, near Fontana Dam in the Great Smokey Mountains of North Carolina. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve long known that Helen had two brothers, Reynolds (my namesake*) and Russell. I hadn\u2019t known, until recently, that she had had another brother. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back around the time of my 64th<\/sup> birthday, I wrote a little about Reynolds and Russell here<\/a>. For awhile they lived under the same roof with my dad and his two brothers (John and Billy) in Pine Bluff. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dad once mentioned that Russell was always playful. So much so that my grandmother, a high school teacher of English and Civics, at times would order Russell to sit still with one of his schoolbooks for an hour. If Russell exclaimed, \u201cBut, Auntie, I\u2019m not reading<\/em> the book!\u201d, my grandmother would respond that she hadn\u2019t said he had to read it, but rather that he had to sit still with it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of Reynolds, dad just said he was always the serious one. I recently learned what I believe to be a part of the reason for this. The first step on the path of this discovery came when I joined Ancestry.com<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rather than looking to confirm family lore about my ancestors\u2019 ethnic roots (the family lore turns out to be amazingly accurate; details for a later time), my primary purpose in sending a DNA sample to Ancestry was to look for living<\/em> relatives. (Of course we\u2019re all<\/em> related; but nevertheless, more closely related to some people than to others.) I was very pleasantly surprised by the contacts I soon made \u2014 a few after a hiatus of decades, and another few for the first time ever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among the first artifacts I came upon along The Southern Front\u2020 of my paternal ancestors is  this photo dated \u201cDec. 1897\u201d. Standing is my great grandmother, Mary (\u201cMolly\u201d) Reynolds Lynn (1857 \u2013 1901) of Desoto Cty, Mississippi. Seated on the left is her father, George Alfred Reynolds (1823 \u2013 1906) of Union City, Tennessee. Seated on the right is Molly\u2019s daughter, my grandmother Russell\u2019s sister May Lynn Hawkins (1877 \u2013 1975), also of Union City, but later, as shall be seen, of Edna, Texas. \u00b6<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had no idea who the baby was on her lap, but I knew Reynolds was born 2 years later, and his siblings Helen and Russell were born after that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eventually, I learned that the baby\u2019s name is Richard Lynn Hawkins, and that he died at age 12. I assumed he\u2019d succumbed to an infectious disease, a cause of death much more prevalent among the young back then than now<\/a>. It turns out the cause of his death was more complicated. Recently there came into my possession a copy of a letter written more than 30 years ago by cousin Helen (now no longer with us), explaining what happened [slight editing]:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Richard Lynn Hawkins 1897\u20131910<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\n

It occurs to me that I am the only one left who remembers Lynn, that gallant, brave, and brilliant boy, not quite thirteen years of age\u2014who gave his life for me. The awful impact of it only occasionally hits me. I guess I couldn\u2019t stand it if it were constant.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was seven, Reynolds nine. We had been in Texas a couple of years, part of the time out on the ranch\u2014the Apple T, whose cattle brand was an apple with a T imposed upon it. For us, as children, that was very heaven. I can shut my eyes now and see Reynolds flying across the open plains on his horse, \u201cHeadlight\u201d, a beautiful brown Mustang pony. (Reynolds was riding him by age seven\u2014a horseman.)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

My memory of Lynn at that time was as a protector and big brother to Reynolds and me. Every day he read to us\u2014the Joel Chandler Harris Uncle Remus stories, Malory\u2019s Le Morte d\u2019Arthur with Sir Galahad and the Round Table. He read every word of the Youth\u2019s Companion to us. I read the other day that the \u201cPledge of Allegiance to the Flag\u201d appeared originally in its pages.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

He read to us all about Robinson Crusoe and his man Friday, and Dickens\u2019 Christmas Carol, and Bible stories too. All of this when we must have been very young. But it was from him that those beautiful classics came to me.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That July morning of 1910 was very hot. Mother had called to Lynn to take off his jacket. (Later she regretted it, because it might have been a layer of protection.)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The girl who was ironing in the servants\u2019 house called to Lynn to come and fill the gasoline stove for her irons. I was right at his heels, as I usually was, and was by his side when he poured the gasoline into the hot little tank. The stove exploded.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRun, Little Sister! Run!\u201d he yelled. I was frozen in my tracks. \u201cJump out the window,\u201d he urged. But I was terrified. He saw nothing to do but lift the flaming stove and run for the horse lot. By that time our screams had alerted Father and Mother, who came running. Father grabbed Lynn and threw him into the horse trough.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was burned over his entire body. \u201cWhy, oh why,\u201d Mother asked frantically, \u201cdidn\u2019t you just let the place burn?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLittle Sister was there,\u201d he replied.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Neighbors, Dr. Radkey, the whole little town of Edna did all they knew to do. Three days\u2014and he died. The shining hope of his loving family.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That summer, he was reading Caesar\u2019s Commentaries. Texas at the time had only ten grades. Lynn, who would be thirteen, was to enter his junior year, with graduation at fourteen. An excellent student, the only one of us who inherited Father\u2019s height. They had dreams of sending him to Harvard\u2014my mother\u2019s dreams had a way of materializing, so he doubtless would have made it.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The day he was buried, a few days before his thirteenth birthday, Reynolds wrapped his arms about me and whispered through his sobs, \u201cDon\u2019t cry, Little Sister, I will take care of you.\u201d And he did\u2014throughout the years\u2014many, many times.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

My beautiful, brave, and loyal brothers. The third brother was born in July 1911\u2014Russell Lynn. He always said he was a replacement. He really was. Father would get astride old Prince, Russell at scarcely two, tied to the saddle on my pony, \u201cSport,\u201d following him all over the place. They made a wonderful picture.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We were about settling down to a normal, happy family life when tragedy struck again. Father died on December 23, 1914, and was buried Christmas Eve.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mother was thirty-seven. We children were fifteen, twelve, and three. As I look back now, I realize how strong she was. Indeed, she was magnificent. But I\u2019ll write about that later.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

This terrible event that happened when Reynolds was only nine, and the family responsibilities that followed, especially after age 15 when his father died, might be a large part of why Reynolds was so serious.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n



* My real name is Reynolds William Joseph Russell. Thus, \u201cBilly Joe Russell\u201d is much closer to the underlying reality than \u201cGaetano Catelli\u201d, a name I used to counter NYC bias against my Southern-sounding real name (not entirely successfully; details to come) Much later, I learned that my mother\u2019s maternal grandfather had Gaetano as his first name . <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2020 The Southern Front<\/em> is the title of a book of essays by an eminent historian of the South, Eugene D. Genovese, who was born and raised a Sicilian-American Catholic in Brooklyn, NY; joined the Communist Party at age 15; later in life evolved into a Southern conservative(!); and returned to Catholicism in his final years. He will be quoted from time to time in future columns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b6 Names, dates, and birthplaces are per archives of the Daughters of the American Revolution, which I hadn\u2019t yet accessed when I wrote the \u201cbirthday\u201d piece about my namesake, Reynolds Hawkins and a few other relatives. Some emendations of the piece are in order:

Hannah was indeed the name of Reynolds\u2019s wife \u2014 but not the name of the sister of his mother (May) and my grandmother (Jessie). The third sister was, instead, Grace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was according to notes that I made when my father had only weeks to live that I recorded (perhaps the mistake was mine, not his) that the mother of my grandmother Jessie and her sisters was Mary Elizabeth Lynn. In fact, their mother was Mary Reynolds<\/em> Lynn, whose nickname was \u201cMolly\u201d to distinguish her from her mother, Mary Elizabeth<\/em> Reynolds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last, but not least, Reynolds Hawkins was, as noted, born in 1899. So, contrary to my dad\u2019s recollection, the unplanned baby sitting on Molly\u2019s lap in the photo dated 1897 was the (reported) cause of her leaving college, not Reynolds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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