Art: Cotter Bridge, courtesy of Thurman J. Williams of Cotter, Arkansas

 

Little Boy Lost, Old Man Found

 

I was born March 21st, 1942, in Mountain Home, Arkansas, the first child of Ernie Edward Wright and Alice Erlene Collins, who was always called Aline by all who knew her. My full name was Warren James Wright. Usually I was called Warren, but if I was in trouble it would be, “Warren James!”

Mountain Home is located in north central Arkansas on an Ozark plateau. The U.S. Census in 1940 showed the population was 927. By 1950 it was 2,217 due to the influx of government workers to build two dams forming Bull Shoals Lake and Norfork Lake. It was then, and is now—December 17, 2017— the county seat of Baxter County.

The small business district was on the square, with the historic courthouse in the center of the square. There were two theaters, two drug stores, a bank, and several other commercial businesses on the square. Morgan’s Drug Store had the best root beer floats.

Sometimes I would walk from our house to a blacksmith shop one block away, near the square, and watch red-hot horseshoes being pounded into shape to shod waiting horses.

I went to the movies every Saturday afternoon. There were serials—Superman, Batman, Captain Video, my favorites—and each segment would end at a perilous moment in the action, and you had to go to the movie the next Saturday to see what was going to happen. I was partial to western movies— Gene Autry, Hop-a-Long Cassidy, the Lone Ranger and Tonto, Lash Larue, Tom Mix, and Roy Rogers. It cost 25 cents to go to the movies or to get a haircut from Opie Hargraves, who had one leg shorter than the other.

When the Baxter Theater opened just off the square, the night of their first movie showing they had two large spot lights which caused quite a stir. Their beams scanning the clear night sky were visible from our house. I thought this must be what it was like when there is a grand opening in Hollywood.

As part of the opening celebration of the first western matinee kids could have their pictures taken with Smiley Burnett, who was the comedic sidekick in the Gene Autry westerns.

 

Mom and Dad Wright.

 

When I entered the world Dad was struggling to build a law practice, and Mom was his stenographic secretary. I was cared for by a succession of live-in housekeepers. One, Alice Painter, took care of me and loved me like I was her only child.

Family incomes were modest, except for the government workers building Bull Shoals and Norfork dams, and so farmers or poor folks would compensate Dad for his services with a smoked ham, sausage, produce, or whatever or whatever they could afford to pay him. He would always mark their accounts paid in full.

After the dams were built Mountain Home began to draw tourists and retirees so his practice began to prosper.

 

I have an early picture of Mom and Dad. Apparently they are at some club, I think in New Orleans. They are having a couple drinks and he is dressed in a suit and tie, peering through wire rim glasses, a hint of a smile on his face. Mom is in a 40s era white dress with shoulder pads, flowers in her wavy

brown hair. She looks glamorous to me. Movie star glamorous. It’s no wonder he was smitten with her.

 

Cotter RR Bridge by Thurman J. Williams

 

We lived in a modest wood-framed, two bedroom, one bath home on the edge of the government village, which was almost built in a circle around a field where I would play sandlot football and baseball with the neighborhood kids. I remember sometimes laying in the middle of that field on warm summer nights, gazing at the stars … wondering what was to become of me. I would listen to tree frogs, crickets, and other night sounds until Mom or Dad called me home.

It was a short walk to Mitchell’s Grocery where Dad would charge groceries, then pay his bill at the end of the month.

I was too young to write or cipher, but I was observant. I watched Dad load up with groceries, head for the door without paying, and just telling Mr. Mitchell to charge it.

One day I took a notion and went to the store, loaded up a sack of candy, walked out the door telling Mr. Mitchell to charge it. This went on for awhile, until Dad got his bill at the end of the month. He was furious. I got a whipping which made a temporary impression.

A few days passed and I started craving my usual haul, so I went to the store, loaded up with assorted sweets and started out the door telling Mr. Mitchell to charge it.

He called me back in and said, “Now Warren, your Daddy told me not to let you charge anymore candy unless you had a written note from him.” I stomped out the door, went home, and wasted no time scribbling several squiggly lines on a piece of paper. Returning to the store I threw my note on the counter where Mr. Mitchell was. He picked up the note, held it up for scrutiny, turning it one way, then another. Finally he said, “What is this supposed to say.” I responded, “You know what it says.” He was amused to the point where he told me he would give me a small sack of candy this one time.

 

 

I was a poor student in elementary school, prone to day dreaming, and more interested in catching

perch or skinny dipping in the creek near our house, than in anything pertaining to school studies. I was also fond of recess, when I would have an opportunity to flirt with Donnie Dilbeck, who wore Blue Waltz Perfume, which would get me all swimmy headed when I caught a whiff of it.

I would later become infatuated with Carolyn Carroll. I considered her to be my first girlfriend and gave her a promise ring to prove my earnest intentions. This was about the sixth grade.

Another girl who would be a secret love was Sue Roller. She was blond headed and pretty. But she was also several grades ahead of me so I never directly made my feelings of attraction known to her. I did write a note that said, “I love you Sue,” and left it in her yard, unsigned. I doubt that she ever found it.

 

Summer days I might roam the town, wherever whimsy took me in those long past, innocent and safe times.

One day about supper time I showed up at an elderly neighbor’s house to visit a lady I called Grandma Byrd. They were just sitting down to eat, and I pulled up a chair. Grandma Byrd said, “Warren did your folks say you could eat with us this evening?” I surveyed the bounty on the table and responded, “You know, they said if you were having fried chicken with gravy, collard greens, pinto beans, and cornbread, it would be okay.” They piled my plate high.

 

Cotter Bridge Spanning White River

 

Cotter is a sweet little mountain town in north central Arkansas, located on a great bend of the crystalline White River which flows out of Bull Shoals Dam, nine miles upstream. It is eleven miles west of Mountain Home.

From the bluff across the river, Cotter looks like it is on a peninsula.

I spent the summers of my childhood in the 1940s at Bapo and Mamo Collins home, my maternal grandparents. Across the street were my Uncle Sneed Noe Collins, Aunt Mil, and cousins Larry, Terry, and Pam. Aunt Crickett, Mamo’s sister, also lived in Cotter. Her real name was Gladys Chandler, but everybody called her Crickett. The reason eludes me and there is no one left to tell me why.

Most of the Collins men were railroaders. Years later my cousin, Terry, who became a railroader, was once going across the Cotter bridge in a caboose. He got woozy, stepped out the back door for a breath of fresh air and fell headlong into the frigid waters below, forever earning the moniker “Splash Collins.”

Cotter was a bustling railroad town, with puffing steam engines pulling freight and passenger cars, stopping briefly at the depot at all hours of the day and night. You could go anywhere in the country then, as train travel was the most utilized form of public transportation, and many roads in the Ozarks were unpaved.

So many memories of Cotter. Mamo spoiled me rotten, and made the best chocolate pies I ever tasted. Bapo would take me to Cotter basketball games. The gym was just a block down the hill from

their house. The flagstone gym had a tin roof, and worn, built-in wooden bleachers on one side, a stage on the other.. The Cotter school burned down years ago, but the gym still stands as a sturdy visage of a bygone era.

 

Cotter proclaims itself, “The Trout Capital of the World.” Bapo and I would go fishing on the river and catch a mess of trout. We also set out trot lines and fished on the lakes. Some of those catfish we caught on the trot lines were so big I was afraid to pull them in the boat with us.

 

I remember many nights sitting at the kitchen table, listening to mournful train whistles in the distance. Bapo could tell what train was coming in by the sound of the whistle. “That’s the Red Ball,” he would say. The freight trains would have a big red ball painted on the side of the boxcars with lettering, “ Missouri Pacific Railroad”, in the middle.

Bapo was a conductor on the passenger trains, until they played out as people turned to automobiles for transportation. He ended his career as a brakeman on a caboose trailing the freight cars. He said at night going to Newport, a frequent run, rural folks would switch their back porch lights on and off as they passed by. A friendly greeting that brought him some comfort.

On nights when Mamo and I would take Bapo to the depot, we would pass hobo fires on the side of the river bank. The hoboes would hop freight trains to transverse the country looking for work, or just another camp. Sometimes one of them would come to our back door and ask for something to eat. Mamo would fix the hobo a sack lunch and he would be on his way to parts unknown.

The passenger trains no longer pull through Cotter going to places I thought I would never see. The freight trains no longer have cabooses. And the main street in Cotter is now lined by bordered up store-fronts.

Memories beget memories.

When Cotter was a thriving community my Aunt Crickett was the telephone operator of an old plug-in switchboard. One of my favorite things was helping her plug-in calls. Sometimes we would listen in on calls to catch up on the latest gossip, but we never spread any of it. In making phone calls, most people didn’t give numbers, they just gave names. “Crickett, this is Ruth, let me speak to Ethel.”

The phone company was located in a white house near main street. A siren was attached to the house. Whenever there was a fire she would pull a switch, the siren would go off, and the volunteer

firemen would start calling in to find out where to respond. A few minutes after all the firemen had called in, Velma Criggler would call in and say, “Crickett, where was the fire?”

Wednesday nights we went to prayer meetings at the First Baptist Church, in walking distance. Of course there was Sunday school, then the Sunday service. Brother Finn would give stem-winding sermons, building in intensity, with visions of hellfire and brimstone graphically described for those who

fell by the wayside. By the end of his sermon he would be furiously bellowing with emotion , face florid, veins bulging on his temples It seemed to me he was trying to scare people into heaven. It just gave me nightmares.

At the close of his sermon there would always be the invitation. He would stand in front of the pews , waiting for sinners to come forward and repent. It was a small congregation, but he would stand there

long enough for three or four to come forward and be forgiven. No one ever talked about it but I think they had worked it out so that they would take turns coming forward each Sunday. If the number of times you were saved counts for anything those folks were glory bound.

 

Warren, Uncle Harold, and Dad. Their old home place near Cisco, Arkansas.

 

Bapo was forever smoking his pipe and trailing tobacco crumbs wherever he went in the house. Mamo had had cataract surgeries—-these were the days before lens implants—and she wore glasses that appeared to have coke bottle lenses. But her vision was keen with them and she could spot a tobacco crumb from twenty paces. She would freeze like a pointer dog.

 

“Sneed! Quit scattering crumbs!”His response was mute, but when she turned her attention to something else at the kitchen table, he winked at me.

 

After Bapo died we were making one of our regular visits to his grave site. She noticed some leaves and debris on his flat grave marker and swept it clean with her cane saying. “Oh, Sneed.” Still fussing at him.

 

Me with Mamo at Bapo’s grave marker.

 

We were still living in Mountain Home. It was the late 1940s. I must have been about eight years old, utterly lacking in social graces. .

One day an elegant lady lawyer dropped by the house to consult with Dad about some pending cases. She appeared to be nearing the end of her practice, if not her life.

They spoke for awhile about legal matters, swapped courtroom stories. There was a lull in the conversation, so I thought I might contribute something. I addressed the lady, “ Would you like to go fishing? I hear the white bass are running.” She screwed up her face in an expression that was either a smile or a grimace and politely said, “Uhh..no, I don’t think so.”

A pause. “If the fish aren’t biting we could set out a trot line.” “Na..no, “ she stammered, “I’m not really…” “Maybe we could grab some catfish out of their hidy-holes.” An inspired thought.

“Warren James!”, Dad asserted, “that’s enough of that.”

Eventually the lady said she had to leave, something about having the vapors. She gathered her things and departed, fanning herself with what appeared to be a church bulletin.

 

 

Dad was well established in his law practice, and decided to run for prosecuting attorney for a district covering about five counties

. I think this was in the early 1950s. We would go down dusty dirt roads, nailing up campaign posters on telephone poles, and pass out cards to people on the square on Saturdays.

He won by a large margin. And he was re-elected every time he ran. He prosecuted criminals ranging from petty thieves and moonshiners, to murderers. One murderer he sent off for a long sentence would mail him a piece of his prison uniform every Christmas. Dad hid a gun on a high shelf in his bedroom after receiving several anonymous threats.

 

 

Attorneys began to urge dad to run for Chancery and Probate Judge of the 11th Judicial District. This covered about seven counties in north central and northwest Arkansas. He was elected for his first term in 1957.

We moved to Harrison, near the center of the judicial district. I was apprehensive about the move, since Harrison had long been fierce sports rivals to Mountain Home, especially in football. The annual football game between the Harrison Goblins and Mountain Home Bombers was always played on Thanksgiving Day with a loud and raucous following of fans from both towns.

I tried to be friendly to all the students in my class, and was immensely relieved to soon find acceptance.

Despite weighing only 135 pounds, I lettered two years in football and was selected as honorable mention all-district. That was in the days before you had to have a tree-trunk neck to suit up.

 

By the time I reached high school in Harrison, I became a serious student, and my grades reflected my efforts. I was voted Most Likely to Succeed and Best All-Around my senior year. Academically, I peaked when I was made president of the National Honor Society. James Crum should have been voted the Most Likely to Succeed. He was a quiet, socially awkward, but brilliant classmate who became a rocket scientist working on the first Apollo Mission for NASA.

 

When I was living in Harrison, I would often visit Grandma Wright on Oak Street.

On summer days she would while away her time sitting on her front porch, watching the sparse traffic go by, when she wasn’t tending a large garden beside the house.

Uncle Troy lived with her. He would drink himself into a stupor every day. He could go through a case of beer a day. Grandma said he couldn’t help it, that it was because of his service in World War II. He was with the forces that liberated the Jewish concentration camps in Germany. She said he drank to blot out the horrors he witnessed. He would have night terrors and flashbacks. They called it battle fatigue back then, now it would be correctly diagnosed as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Troy quit drinking abruptly while living with Grandma, without AA support or rehab, and never touched alcohol again. He went to work at a local furniture store moving and selling furniture, until he remarried and moved to Green Forest. His first wife drowned in the ocean while she was living in California during the war. His daughters by that marriage were estranged during the time he was actively alcoholic, but were reconciled with him when he got sober.

However he paid a price for his alcoholism. The last visit I had with him was when he was in the VA hospital, dying of liver cancer. He was jaundice, looked in the mirror, and said, “I look like a Chinaman.”

As we parted for the last time he said, “I hope to see you down the road some day.”

 

Grandma had white hair, tightly braided, and pinned up in a bun. She wore long flower-print dresses, and black hose. She was a devout member of the Church of Christ. She didn’t believe in wearing make-up or dancing. Her interpretation of the Bible was literal and she focused most of her attention on the Old Testament.

She never traveled but she was fascinated by it. She had a view-master and was forever viewing and fantasizing about places she would never see in person.

In later years she did not believe that men landed on the moon. She said God would not allow such a thing, and that the lunar landing was staged on a desert out West.

Grandma slept on a feather mattress, with the window cracked even in the winter time. She had many quilts she had made piled on for warmth. She slept with a hammer under her pillow. I didn’t

know if it was to protect herself from intruders, or to keep Grandpa Wright from coming into her bedroom.

I don’t remember much about Grandpa Wright, other than he slept in another bedroom and would drink a lot of cough syrup. Grandma said it was for medicinal purposes. Dad said Grandpa had some sort of unspecified neurological condition.

A curious thing about Grandma was that she never missed a wrestling match on TV. She would cover her head with a folded newspaper to shield her eyes from the light overhead, and peer intently at the brawls, narrating every move they made with absolute horror and fascination. “Oh look,” she would say, “He’s stomping on that poor man’s head.” And, “Why he’s trying to choke the life out of that poor feller. They ought to call the law and put a stop to this.”

And she would never miss a match when “Gorgeous George” was on. He wore tights, had long blond curls, would prance around the ring spraying Chanel Number 5 before a match.

I loved her hearty, cackling laugh, and she did have a keen sense of humor. Dad and Carolyn had the same laugh. Humor was a staple in the Wright family.

Grandma was always affectionate and when I was leaving after a visit, she would say, “Your Grandma loves you honey.” And I would reply, “I love you too, Grandma.”

 

I remember the shame of the 1950s, and before, when it came to racism. Blacks and whites would be segregated in every dimension of our lives in the states of the old Confederacy. Separate schools for blacks and whites. The black schools were under-funded and inadequately staffed. There were separate water fountains and restrooms for “colored” people. There were lynchings of blacks all over the South, usually led by the Ku Klux Klan, for perceived slights. Like a black man looking at a white woman in a manner that was considered disrespectful. Touching a white woman was a death sentence carried out by vigilantes. If a black man wanted food from a white restaurant he would have to go to the back kitchen door, and wait for his order. “Colored” people lived on the other side of the railroad tracks from whites.

Governor Orville Faubus of Arkansas demagogued the issue of race to win terms extending from 1955-1967 . When the Chancery and Probate Judge in Little Rock ruled that separate but equal schools were not in fact equal, a court order was issued for the integration of Little Rock Central High School in 1957. The ruling was supported by the United States Supreme Court in Brown v. the Board of Education.

Faubus riled up the mobs to block the entry of nine black students into Little Rock Central High School. Scenes of enraged and rioting whites were shown to the nation on TV, spewing racial slurs and threatening these brave, but frightened students, beating them in some incidents. In history they would be known as the Little Rock Nine and would ultimately prosper and excel in their chosen careers.

To quell the mobs and the violence in Little Rock, President Eisenhower nationalized the Arkansas National Guard and sent in the 101st Airborne troops to protect these children with rifles and fixed bayonets as they entered school. Then began white flight.

I remember two white students from Little Rock Central coming to Harrison High School in 1958, to go to an all white school. Hell, the whole town was white, and had its own ugly history of purging blacks from the community in the early 1900s.

Dad said he would have made the same ruling on integration if it had come before him.

As for Faubus, after his last term he returned to his hometown of Huntsville and built a villa on top of a bluff over-looking the town, at a cost of around $250,000—this was in the 50s and 60s. When queried by the press about how he could afford such a mansion based on his meager salary of $10,000 a year as governor he replied, “I was frugal.”

 

Carolyn and I at Mamo and Bapo’s, 1940s.

 

My sister, Carolyn Doris Wright, was born January 6, 1949, named after a close friend of the family, Carolyn Doris Fletcher. There was such an age gap between us that we both felt like we were an only child. We could not foresee what a significant role we would play in each other’s lives when we were adults, separately facing dark days, and each of us providing the other needed emotional support to get through them.

I did take note that when she was old enough to read, she started reading voraciously. I remember Dad getting onto her about reading past her bedtime on school nights. She would get in bed, then when he was gone she would take her book into a closet with a flashlight and continue reading until she was nodding off, then she would go to bed.

And early on she had a quick wit and sharp mind. It would take her to places that neither of us could have imagined at the time.

 

After graduating from high school Dad urged me to go to the University of Missouri in Columbia. He was still ashamed of the racist spectacle of Little Rock, and thought it would be good for me to go out of state for my college education. I went three semesters, then got so homesick for Arkansas. I persuaded him to let me transfer to the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville to finish up my Bachelor of Arts degree. But it was Mizzou where I started my academic endeavors on the college level, and where I would begin my drinking career.

I continued my studies at the U. of A. But I was far more interested in Razorback football, drinking and partying than I was in my course work. By my senior year I would study every week night until 9:00pm, then go drink beer at George’s Majestic Lounge on Dicksen Street until last call. It resulted in my modest GPA of 2.5.

Sadly, I remember coming home from class to my rooming house off campus on November 22nd , 1963, to see my grief stricken housemates watching TV as the urgent news bulletins came in that President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated on a visit to Dallas.

Of course the whole nation was in shock, and mourning. The images are forever seared into my memory—of the assassination, Jackie Kennedy wearing a bloodstained dress, standing next to Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson, as he was sworn in as President on Air Force One before leaving Dallas.

Then the somber funeral followed by a procession in front of the White House, Jackie dressed in black, a veil covering her face, walking behind a Marine led, rider-less horse. It was the end of Camelot.

 

I graduated from the U. of A. the spring semester of 1964.

Senator William J. Fullbright—or Bill, as he was known in Arkansas when campaigning— was representing our state. He was formerly a law school professor of Dad’s and he assisted me in getting an internship at the State Department in Washington D.C. It would be the first time I took up residence outside of the Ozarks of Arkansas. It was to be an eye-opening experience for a hillbilly.

I lived in an apartment in a rough neighborhood near the Capitol Building, and roomed with Fred Favor, formerly the president of the student body at the University of Arkansas. He was doing a summer internship as an assistant to Senator Fulbright. The area where we lived was almost entirely black, poverty and crime ridden, but we could afford the rent.

Across the alley below our apartment, a black couple lived in a downstairs apartment. They were always having drunken fights in the alley, waking us up shrieking many nights. One night I awoke to see the woman chasing her man with a butcher knife, and I was struck by how the moonbeams glinted off its blade as she pursued him. She never caught him that night. She was too drunk, and he was too agile.

My work at the State Department was intriguing. I met several distinguished diplomats including Secretary of State Dean Rush and Ambassador Averell Harriman.

I enjoyed a visit with Senator Fulbright, who was then head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He conducted many nationally televised hearings, grilling Secretary Rusk and Defense Secretary McNamara , as to their reasoning for going to war in Vietnam. Fulbright had them squirming as he honed in with his penetrating, and skeptical questions as to where our national security was at stake. They should have heeded Senator Fulbright’s warnings about the perils of this ill-fated war in Southeast Asia.

 

Summer interns from throughout the federal government in D.C. were feted to many special receptions. President Lyndon B. Johnson held a barbeque for us in the White House Rose Garden. I met and shook hands with Senator Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. I was struck by how soft his hand was. I met Vice President Hubert Humphrey, the “Happy Warrior”, who asked me where I was from. I told him Arkansas. He exhorted, “You go back to Arkansas and lead those folks to political salvation with the Democratic Party.” I assured him I was committed to doing so.

 

One long week-end that summer I took a trip to New York City.

It was the beatnik era and Greenwich Village was where the beat poets were pouring out their souls and woes in the ubiquitous coffee houses. Bob Dylan was singing his early, anti-war songs. Peter, Paul, and Mary took up the cause in their concerts. Chubby Checkers had everybody doing the twist at the Peppermint Lounge, me among them.

As I sauntered around the Village, drinking a Ballentine Beer, I came across a place called the Crazy Horse Saloon. To my delight I discovered it was a strip joint. We didn’t have strip joints in Harrison. So I went in to see what I could see.

When the first stripper took off enough to where I discovered to my astonishment that the “she” was really a “he”, I sought out and complained to the management.

The manager was amused by my innocence. He gave me a drink on the house and told me all about “drag queens”. I finished my drink and left, but I found this encounter so disturbing I could hardly sleep for two days.

 

By the end of the summer of 64, the Vietnam War was getting cranked up and my draft status was 1A. I knew if I didn’t do something quick my ass would be drafted into the army and shipped off to the Mekong Delta. So I enlisted in the Navy for four years.

 

Operational intelligence officer, Joint Chiefs of Staff intelligence unit.

 

After boot camp in San Diego I went to communications yeoman school in Norfolk, Virginia. I completed my training and got orders for an assignment to an admiral’s staff, the Commander of Carrier Division Six, based in Mayport, Florida.

I loved being at sea, even on an aircraft carrier. We hopped around on different carriers, being the flag ship—the USS FDR, the USS Saratoga, the USS Shangri La, and the USS Independence, the only nuclear carrier at the time. We went on missions to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to Roosevelt Roads Naval Base in Puerto Rico. We ported in Kingston, Jamaica for liberty call.

At sea, watching night ops and the amazing Navy pilots landing fighter jets on a pitching deck was something I never tired of.

When we hit a port, sailors would head for the bars and the brothels.

Back in Mayport, we would go to the enlisted club for happy hour after work. Drinking was part of the military culture in those days. “Drunk as a sailor” was a tag that was earned.

Mayport was just outside Jacksonville, and Jacksonville Beach. It was in a sailors bar at the beach that I met and started wooing Victoria Amanda Kinsey. She had long, beautiful hair, soulful brown eyes, was slim, and had recently graduated from Florida State University with an MFA in art. It was not in her nature to go to a bar, but she was coerced into it by a couple girlfriends she was with.

Amanda and I were taken with each other right off. Back at sea I wrote maudlin letters expressing my love for her. It was my first serious relationship.

 

I took my work on the admiral’s staff seriously, was eventually promoted to Petty Officer 3rd Class, and selected to go to Officer’s Candidate School in Newport, R.I. I got my orders to OCS while we were at sea.

As I prepared to go to Newport, I asked Amanda to marry me after I graduated from OCS. She accepted my proposal. My parents were enthused, and her precious, portly, Polish mother was ecstatic. She was always trying to stuff me with perogies because she thought I needed to gain weight. I loved her widowed mama too.

 

After two years and nine months of enlisted service I was commissioned an Ensign. I graduated in the top third of my class at Newport. My first orders were to be in charge of the Armed Forces Courier Station in Adak, Alaska. I went to the Pentagon in D.C. to be briefed on my duties, then returned to Florida and married Amanda, proudly wearing my Navy whites.

Adak was remote duty, on an island near the end of the Aleutian Chain in the Bering Sea, 1,100 miles southeast of Anchorage. They had married housing at the base and so Mandy went with me. I worked out of the Naval Communications Station, a secure facility that did electronic surveillance on the USSR.

I was an Armed Forces Courier, delivering highly classified materials to military installations from Shemya Air Force Base, to a naval base in Kodiak, and Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage. I made frequent stops at Amchitka—where there were hundreds of Alaskan sourdoughs drilling a hole big enough for an underground nuclear test. One night on Amchitka I went to the beer hut where one of the grizzled Alaskan sourdoughs held me spellbound reciting by rote, “The Shooting of Dan McGrew.”

 

LTJG Wright on courier run, Alaska 1966.

 

Typically on missions I was armed with a .45 caliber pistol, as was the enlisted guard that accompanied me. I called him “Trigger”, because he always looked like he was about to draw on you.

The Aleutians had some of the worst flying conditions I had ever experienced.

My courier flights on military aircraft were often turbulent, but I got used to it. One time we were trying for a crawfish landing on Shemya in stiff crosswinds, and after a couple passes we ended up diverting to a Coast Guard station on Attu—the last inhabited island in the Aleutian chain. Twenty coastguardsmen lined the runway to greet us. They didn’t get much company.

The next day, waiting for the weather to clear, I was walking around with a chief petty officer. I noticed there were two dogs on the island and I inquired about their names. “Well”, said the chief, “that one there is Brown Dog, and the other one is White Dog.” That was easy to remember. I got to noticing that Brown Dog was walking around with a rock in his mouth, and the only way he would put it down would be if you put another one in front of him, and then he would drop his rock and pick up the one proffered. Finally I said, “Chief, how come Brown Dog is always walking around with a rock in his

mouth?” The chief replied, “If you had been on this island for nine years you’d be walking around with a rock in your mouth too.”

 

I made friends with a Navy pilot, Lt. Commander Jim Stockton, who took me on a patrol over the Bering Sea. He let me sit in the plexiglass nose bubble as a lookout. I scanned the desolate isles with my binoculars, peering into the bubbling pits of volcanoes. We flew low over some islands and spooked Caribou herds.

On one mission my concentration was broken by what sounded through the intercom like banging on the instrument panel in the cockpit. “What’s wrong with that thing,” said Jim. “Jim, what thing are you talking about?”, I urgently asked. “The altimeter,” he responded. I was about to shit in my pants when I heard the crew giggling, and knew I had been pranked.

Returning to base I beat a path to the Officer’s Club to down some stiff shots of whiskey to calm my frayed nerves.

One night I was drinking with this officer who was the skipper of a submarine that had pulled into port on Adak. We got slobbering drunk, and then he asked me if I wanted to go see his submarine. Of

course I did, so we supported each other as we wobbled out of the club and grabbed a ride to his sub. It was late and all the sailors were asleep except for those on watch. He let me up periscope, to view the stark black mountains surrounding us.

After that he took me back to base housing and gave me a bear hug goodbye.

 

It was a long nineteen months on Adak before I finally got orders to go to the Naval Communications Station on Boca Chica Naval Air Station in the Florida Keys. I was an operational intelligence officer assigned to a Joint Chiefs of Staff intelligence unit, spying on Cuba. That was only four years after the Cuban missile crisis and we were still doing U-2 flights over Cuba to make sure they did not attempt to put in any more Russian ICBMs. A couple CIA agents briefed me on a mission they were doing one time. I know why they call them spooks.

 

Key West back in 1968 was an island paradise. It had all the charm and appeal that it must have had when Ernest Hemingway was in residence with his wife, Mary. Tennessee Williams also wrote some of his best novels and plays there.

There were a few tourists, commercial fishermen, natives known as “conchs”. I would go to Sloppy Joes to drink on the bar stool where Hemingway hung out. Some evenings I would fish from the wharf on Duval Street. I talked to conchs who told me stories about Papa Hemingway and Tennessee Williams. Papa had always been one of my favorite writers. I loved that place. Mandy and I were both as happy as we would ever be in our marriage.

I attained the rank of full lieutenant by the time I was honorably discharged in October 1969.

Mandy and I returned to Harrison and moved in with Mom and Dad, while I tried to figure out what I would do with the rest of my life. I didn’t have a clue. I sank into my first major depression. I felt paralyzed by indecision.

Finally, one day I had a telephone conversation with my uncle Clyde Collins, Mom’s youngest brother. He was working as a vocational rehabilitation counselor in Atlanta. His caseload consisted of parolees and he described some of the cases and experiences he had in his work, which sounded challenging and interesting to me.

He had graduated with a master’s degree in vocational rehabilitation counseling from Florida State University in Tallahassee. If I was interested he suggested I talk to his former professor, Dr. Echols, who was head of the program.

I made an appointment to see Dr. Echols and drove to FSU to see him for an interview. We hit it off and he told me if I could pass the GRE for admission to graduate school, he would see that I got a grant that would pay for my tuition and books, plus a $200 a month stipend. I would also qualify for $200 a month in assistance as a Navy veteran. FSU was not a large university and rent was cheap off-campus. We could live on that.

Having a goal and a plan was my ticket out of the depressive funk I had been in.

Mandy and I went back to Harrison to live with Mom and Dad, while I crammed and prepared to take the GRE. When I finally took the test, I passed it, applied for Dr. Echols program and was accepted for admission the fall semester 1970.

I had matured enough to become a serious student and I excelled in my studies. In addition to the voc rehab courses, I took courses in psychology. One of the courses involved being in an “encounter group experience.”

Encounter groups were touchy-feely sessions that would border on grope therapy. It stirred a sexual restlessness in me. Hippies were espousing free love and I didn’t want to miss out on it.

I talked to Mandy about having an open relationship, where you could screw other people, but maintain your commitment to each other. Such bullshit. She wasn’t having any of it. She was a devout Catholic and knew this was not what she signed up for.

But I was in the early stages of alcoholism, which also impaired my judgment. I lost my moral bearings. I started having tawdry affairs—aren’t they always tawdry. There was no shortage of opportunities in era of flower children and pot parties. I didn’t care for pot, but I liked to drink and party. When I would sober up there was always the residual guilt—so somewhere under my alcoholic fog, I still had morals.

I frequently went drinking with an Irish professor of mine, Dr. Brahaney, and other classmates.

Despite my excesses, I graduated from the master’s program with a GPA of 3.89, in 1971.

 

Grandma and Grandpa Wright weren’t always estranged. They grew up in hard times, raising five strapping boys to help tend to a 160 acre tomato farm in the backwoods of Carroll County near Cisco in Arkansas. They were poor, but never went hungry. And everybody else was poor so nobody gave it any thought. The Great Depression brought hard times, drought, and poverty that would linger long afterwards in Arkansas and especially Oklahoma. The dust bowl days.

Once a month they would take a horse drawn wagon into Green Forest to get provisions—staples that came in big cloth bags. The flour sacks had pretty patterns and would be made into dresses for Grandma. Water would be hauled from the spring down the hill from the old home place. Human wastes would be disposed of in honey pots and a one-holer outhouse.

My Dad’s four brothers were Harold, Troy, Harley, and Audie.

Uncle Harold was destined to go to Arkansas Tech in Russellville, graduate with a business degree, and marry Joan Milburn, from Harrison. They would settle in Texas to raise a family, prospering on his wits as a free-lance entrepreneur. One venture took him searching for veins of silver ore in South America. His prospecting paid off when he found a lode of silver that would make him wealthy. But before he could mine it, heavily armed Sandinistas came in, took it over, and he was fortunate to escape before they killed him.

In Texas, Harold was recruited to work as an executive for a few corporations, supervising the laying of pipelines through several states. After he did a few contracts, he went back to Houston—flipping Cadillacs, and buying up rent houses—which comfortably supported he and Aunt Joan, and my cousins Sherry, Maia, and Kurt.

Uncle Troy’s fate I have already related.

Uncle Audie was the first Wright to go to college. He went to the University of Arkansas and graduated from law school. In World War II he attained the rank of major and was the Commanding Officer of the 17th Bomber Group.

He was based in North Africa. On a bombing run over Italy he was struck by flak, bleeding to death before they returned to base. One of his crew members sent the following tribute to Grandma:

 

Major Wright’s skill and courage have contributed to the success of the operations of the 17th Group. His record as a first class pilot doing his part in this war since the early days of the North Africa campaign is well known. It speaks quite eloquently for itself.

But what we’d like to tell you is something about the man himself and his relations to the men who worked under him. Come to think of it, right there is one of the keys of Major Wright’s success as a Commanding Officer—no one worked “under” Major Wright—we all worked with him…no Commanding Officer in any man’s army was ever more respected and looked up to by every man in his organization…

 

Perhaps we might classify him as the “typical American”, but it would be more exact to say that he was what we wish the typical American could be

…let us swell with pride at the fine record Major Wright has left behind him and at the privilege that was ours to be associated with him—and in due respect and esteem to his memory, let’s get in there and do our respective jobs just a little better than we have been doing. We think that’s the way he’s like to have it.

 

I can tell you that Dad never got over Audie’s death. Their dream was to practice law together after the war was over.

 

Dad’s brother. Third from right. Major Audie Wright killed in bombing run over Italy, WWII.

 

Recently my Uncle Harold, the youngest brother, told me about a time when Audie was on rotation from the war to his home base in Oklahoma. On a training mission he diverted to the old home place at Cisco. He buzzed the town of Green Forest at low altitude and swooped over a mountain Harold was on top of, overlooking their home in the valley. Harold said he felt the backwash from the engines, and grandma came to the front door and was waving with a hanky as Audie dipped the wings of his bomber over the house and returned to base.

 

Dad went to a one-room school in Cisco, Arkansas. He would listen in on his class, then the others, as the teacher worked his way through each group up to the final sixth grade level.

Before Dad reached the sixth grade, the Cisco school was closed and consolidated with the Berryville school system. Students would be bused to Berryville and it would cost $8.00 a year to ride the bus.

The year he was to transfer to Berryville, the tomato crops did poorly, so he couldn’t afford the bus ride and he was going to drop out of school and work the farm.

The superintendent in Berryville, knew Dad showed great promise, by his Cisco teacher’s reports. He called Dad in for a meeting.

“Now Ernie,” he said, “what’s this I hear about your dropping out of school?” “Yes sir,” Dad explained, “we just don’t have $8 to spare this year for me to ride the bus.”

“Don’t you have anything you could sell that would be worth $8.00?”, asked Mr. Jones. Dad responded, “I have a baby calf, but it’s not worth that much.” Mr. Jones said, “I’ll give you $8.00 for it.”

So the matter was settled. The following years their crops came in, and Dad ended up graduating valedictorian of his class at Berryville High School, giving him a scholarship to the University of Arkansas.

At Fayetteville he lived in the fire station for his room and board, going out on calls when he wasn’t in class. He later found a better job managing and living in the FHA house until he would graduate from law school.

 

As long as Dad was alive, I can recall pilgrimages to that old wood-frame house where he grew up in Cisco. He was nostalgic about the memories of his childhood there despite the hardships.

He told me about the time Harley talked him into taking an umbrella up in the barn loft and opening it. “Now here, Ernie, just jump out of the loft and you will float to the ground just like you had a parachute.” Dad did, the umbrella collapsed, and he almost broke his legs.

Then there was the time that Harley and Troy got to playing tug-of-war with a stove poker. Harley on the side of the wall where the wood stove was. He would shove it through a hole in the wall to Troy in the bedroom and he would pounce on it and start pulling. One time Harley heated the poker till it was

red hot, shoved it through the wall. After Troy grabbed it and burned his hands. He could be heard screaming all the way to the Yokam Creek.

 

My last visit to Cisco was with Dad, Uncle Troy, and Uncle Harold.

We had to cross Raymond Fletcher’s property to start the trek to the old home place. Raymond lived in a trailer, where we respectfully stopped to make sure he was okay with it. He was, of course.

The trailer Raymond lived in was crammed with all manner of stuff—tools, boards, a box of buttons, screws, washers, tin, trash that accumulated. I don’t know how he could find a place to eat, pee, or sleep in there. And he stunk to high heaven.

As we struggled through the thick under-brush, crossed creeks, and averted menacing thorn trees on the way to the house, Uncle Harold suddenly stopped. He pointed out buzzards spiraling over some trees ahead of us. “Boys,” he said, “I think Raymond circled around on us.”

We got to the house and found that Raymond had crammed so much junk in it we barely open a door.

 

I do not intend for this to be a comprehensive biography. I will relate stories as they come to me without regard to chronology. Full disclosure: About four years ago I was diagnosed with a multi-domain, mild cognitive impairment. This is the same diagnosis that Mom was given before she died of Alzheimer’s in 2009, six months after Dad died of acute leukemia. My diagnosis could also be a precursor to Alzheimer’s, but no doubt some of it could be attributed to 30 years of alcoholism. I started out a high functioning alcoholic, and would end up a low functioning alcoholic with memory loss and blackouts. Those brain cells don’t grow back.

I confess to some sense of urgency in writing these stories. I am on medications for Alzheimer’s, but they could stop being effective at any time. I see a clinical psychologist who is helping me cope with this condition. She specializes in treating people with memory loss, so I am in good hands.

 

After I concluded my tour of duty in the Navy, I secured a job as a counselor at the Fulton County Juvenile Court in metropolitan Atlanta. I got high praise for my work with street-hardened kids doing group therapy and using a Reality Therapy approach. The judge was impressed enough that he asked me to train his probation officers in the use of these techniques, which I did.

 

While working in Atlanta I obtained a post-graduate degree counseling and psychology at Georgia State University. After graduating I was able to secure a position back home in Harrison as a therapist in the community mental health center there. I was eventually promoted to Clinical Coordinator, an administrative position.

 

Card that submarine commander gave me after drunken tour of his sub. Adak, Alaska, 1967.

 

My drinking continued unabated. I started to frequent a bar where I met a blond-hippie-pot-head, who was also fond of drinking. We had an intense, turbulent affair. I ended up leaving Mandy and marrying Ann McClay. Beyond a mutual physical attraction and your choice of substance abuse there really was no basis for a lasting relationship. I discovered she had a short attention span for men. She was restless and wanted to move out west. I reviewed therapy positions out west in a journal for psychology. I spotted one for a therapist to work in rural clinics, this one providing services to Pershing County in Lovelock, Nevada. I applied, was flown out for an interview and hired on the spot.

 

View from back of ranch house I was renting in Lovelock, NV. 1981.

 

Ann and I moved to Lovelock, and I remember entering the town limits—population about 5,000—with a bout of the dry heaves. I sensed this was a serious mistake.

Lovelock had a cowboy bar, an Native American bar, a Mexican bar, and a brothel called La Belles.

The local paper announced my arrival, noting that I was from Dogpatch, Arkansas (seven miles from Harrison).

Word got around that I was a hillbilly with a sense of humor, and apt at spinning yarns.

Folks began to come to my office near the square.

I soon discovered there was a real need for my services. People suffering from desert depression, alcoholism, and loneliness.

I developed an eclectic caseload. A cowboy who came in distraught because he was in love with a working girl at LaBelles and she wouldn’t kiss him or tell him she loved him. A compulsive gambler who was also a police officer. Every now and then a Greyhound Bus would disgorge a deranged passenger. A gold miner came to my house one day just because he wanted to see what somebody from Dogpatch would look like.

I did a lot of work with law enforcement, assisting with the commitment of someone who had come unhinged for reasons that were not always clear.

 

Late one night I got a call from the jail. It had taken half the police force and several sheriffs deputies to subdue a Native American named Black Eagle, because he was out of control on PCP. Certainly a danger to others.

I went to the detention center, the jailer took me back to the cell the inmate in question had been pacing in, and he was going to let me in the cell to talk to him. I said, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” He said he was going to let me in the cell so I could do my assessment. I said, “I can find out what I need to know by talking to him through this little cubby hole.”

His eyes were as black as his name and they bore holes through me. I wrote up a letter of commitment for him to be transferred to the mental hospital in Reno.

 

The main office I worked out of was in Fallon, and I developed close friendships with peers in that office during our weekly staffing. Friends that I am still in touch with today.

 

After living in Lovelock for about nine months Ann left me to go work as a cook on a riverboat on the Mississippi River. She assured me she would be back, but my gut told me something different. Whenever I would try to pin her down about when she was planning to return she would say eventually, and that my stewing about it was part of my neurosis and insecurity.

Finally, I was tipped off by a mutual friend that she was having affairs, and looking for a relationship that would improve her financial standing. I immediately filed for divorce, which she did not contest.

I spent another nine months in Lovelock, not far from Seven Troughs, a ghost town. If loneliness could kill you I would not be writing this story. It was me and two dogs, Wilbur and Earl. They were as depressed as I was, and could care less how much I drank.

Fortunately my sister, Carolyn, was living in San Francisco with her husband, Forrest, and working at San Francisco State University. The city of lights was a five hour drive from Lovelock and she provided me with much needed emotional support with her “hands across the desert” assurances that I would come through this and end up far better off than I was with Ann. She never liked Ann and thought I was crazy to get involved with her. An accurate observation.

I went to spend New Year’s Eve with Carolyn. She took me to a party in a posh, high-rise condo overlooking the city.

After a few shots of tequila I noticed an enticingly beautiful young lady in a stunning black sequined spaghetti strapped evening dress. The first slow song I asked her to dance. Her perfume was intoxicating. I returned to Carolyn’s side, eyes glazed with desire.

“You do know that’s a transvestite don’t you?”, she said. I looked again. Thick ankles. I blurted, “I’m going back to Lovelock where the men are men, and the sheep are nervous.”

 

Letter from former President Clinton to Dad.

 

I was homesick for the hills of Arkansas. I put in for an application for a one-therapist office in Heber Springs and got the job. I moved into a house on top of a mountain out in the country with a panoramic view of Greer’s Ferry Lake. Me, Wilbur, and Earl.

Wilbur was a St. Bernard. He was very social, and he started wandering off and would be gone sometimes two or three days before returning home.

One time when he was gone I started searching for him. I talked to a neighbor about a mile from my house. The woman who answered the door said she had not seen Wilbur. Then she stated that she and her husband had moved to Heber Springs from Magnolia, in south Arkansas, “to get away from the nigras and the mosquitoes.”… A comment that was sadly racist.

Wilbur finally came home. But I was a nervous wreck from worrying about him. I decided to consult with the local vet to see if anything could be done that would stop his wandering.

“Well,” he said, “I could fix him.” Lop his balls off. I asked if that would stop his wandering. The vet, “He might go out one or two trips but he will be real disappointed.”

“What about depression, “ I inquired, “will he get depressed.”

The vet paused for a moment, reflected on it, then responded, “We haven’t had any suicides.”

So Wilbur was fixed.

 

I was very lonesome and isolated in Heber Springs, though my clients and town folks could not have been more appreciative of my services.

I had no idea what to do other than what I was doing. Then one day I got a call from the executive director at the mental health center in Harrison. He had once interned under me when I was the Clinical Coordinator there. “Warren,” he said, “would you consider coming back to Harrison and being our Senior Clinician.” That’s all I needed, “When could I start.” “Whenever you want to,” he replied.

I gave three weeks notice and then moved back home. It was wonderful to be close to Mom and Dad again.

After about four months I was visiting with Dad and I told him I was going to get a loan and buy a farm house I had spotted. “What are the terms,” he inquired. “Ten percent interest for 30 years.” As I was leaving he said, “I’ll loan it to you seven percent for 30 years.” “Dad, you would be 115 years old before I got it paid off, are you going to forgive the debt if you pass before then?” “I’ll give it some thought,” he said.

So he loaned me the money on a contract basis, providing of course for punitive measures if I did not make timely payments.

Another time I told him I decided I was going to get a loan to buy a new car. “Wait a minute,” he said as I was leaving, “What are the terms?” It was ten percent interest for sixty months. “I’ll loan it to you for seven percent for sixty months.” I told him I would take him up on it.

He wrote up a contract for me to make my payments without fail on the seventh of each month, with no grace period. After I had made 57 payments on time, I got busy on the 58th month and it slipped my mind and he called me on the eighth, “Son, did you forget I loaned you some money on that car?” I promptly went over and gave him a check and made the final payments as required.

Dad was just teaching me a good work ethic and how to be responsible. The lesson took.

 

Dad’s hobby after he retired from the Arkansas Court of Appeals was making money. He would stay transfixed in his chair watching the business channel on TV with the stock and bond ticker going across the bottom of the screen. He would make notes about things he thought he might be interested in investing in, and at the closing bell he would go to his computer, research those things he had made note of. Then he would call up his discount broker and tell him how many shares or bonds to buy—-mostly he acquired tax-free bonds. He had a diverse portfolio. His broker told me talking to Dad was like talking to another broker, only one who knew more than you did.

One time Carolyn was home and she was talking to him about the liquid assets he was piling up. She told him, “Dad, you better be spending some of this because you wouldn’t approve of the way Warren and I would spend it.” I thought he would put it in a trust where we couldn’t touch it unless we were eligible for food stamps. But I would later find out he left it to us with no strings attached.

 

I had been working in the field of mental health for over sixteen years. I was weary of it and starting to have more symptoms than the people coming to see me. I didn’t know what else to do. Then I got a call one day from John Massey, an administrator with Arkansas Rehabilitation Services.” “Warren, I was wondering if you would consider going to work for me and heading up the rehab office in Harrison.”

 

“When could I start? “ John said it was up to me. I told him I would give three weeks notice and would enthusiastically make the move to rehab in Harrison.

 

By this time I had been single almost eight years. I dated women indiscriminately. They all look good at closing time. More than once I would wake up with a coyote woman’s head resting on my arm. That’s a woman so unattractive that rather than wake her up, you chew your arm off and leave.

Then I didn’t date at all. I just had several women friends, which was safe and comfortable.

One night I went to singles night at the local tennis club. It was then and there that I met Linda Sue Raney. She too had been divorced twice, and was only looking for friendship. Our friendship grew closer and with time I began to realize I loved her. She had long brunette hair, a slender figure, and an alluring personality. She also was witty and easy to talk to. And she grounded by principled values and her Christian faith, unlike Ann.

We had been seeing each other for about a year when we took a trip together to Sanibel Island in Florida. One day after we had returned from the beach, she was putting her hair in curlers I found myself saying, “Would you marry me?” I was as startled as she was. She paused, looked at me intently and said, “Yes.”

She moved into the old farm house in Harrison with me after we were married.

It did not take Linda long to see, after we were married, that I was an alcoholic. I admitted as much but told her I was ready to quit, but would throw one last drunk first.

Our agency was having a state convention in Hot Springs. I told her it was there that I would have my last drink. The last night in Hot Springs I went to Dad’s Place, a quiet bar, hopped on a stool and proceeded to get plastered. My boss John came in and said something to me. I looked at him but did not respond. Finally, he turned to the guy next to me and said, “What’s wrong with him, can’t he hear me?” “Yeah,” the fellow replied, “he can hear you, he just can’t talk.”

Ann Milburn, another counselor in the Harrison Office safely escorted me back to the Arlington Hotel.

It was a five hour drive the next day back to Harrison. I felt wretched. I was depressed, having panic attacks, and praying to God the whole trip that I would never touch alcohol again.

June 2nd, 1991, I was sober, and have remained so to this day. I did not go to AA or rehab, I just had no desire to drink. I was done with it. I think the only reason I did not go into the DTs was that I always maintained my fitness and my nutrition.

The next day I told everybody at the office that I was quitting drinking. They were shocked at this news. “Why, you just like to have a few, dance a little, and have some fun?” “Yeah,” I told them, “I drink like that when I’m with you all, but then I go home and keep drinking until I pass out or go to sleep, do you drink like that.”

Well no, they allowed. I knew the gossip would spread, but I didn’t care, I would acknowledge to anybody that I was an alcoholic and admit that drinking was not a sane option for me.

With time they saw I meant it, and then they were glad to have me as a designated driver whenever they would go drinking.

I quit drinking just like Uncle Troy did

 

My sister left San Francisco State to take a position as the head of the creative writing program at Brown University. Forrest later followed her when he secured a position as a professor in the English department. They would both go on to publish books of poetry that were critically acclaimed. Carolyn won many awards, the most prestigious being the MacArthur Foundation “genius” award, which is given to people in diverse fields of employment—science, engineering, business, architecture, literary arts. Their respective careers were marked by distinguished achievements in their fields. The award was $500,000 given over a period of five years to just support her work. Brown was proud to have her writing, publishing, teaching seminars around the world.

You would never know she was a celebrity, hailed by literary critics world-wide and in constant demand for readings and seminars. There were few continents she had not been to. I think she spent more time in Paris than Providence. Brown encouraged her travels and recognition more than her teaching, because they felt it was good exposure for Brown. All the accolades, acclaim, and awards did not change her. She was as comfortable and contented talking to plain folks as she was talking to Steven Spielberg and Jack Nicholson after one spring graduation. Their adult children were her former students and she met them at the reception area for the English department after the ceremony. Forrest asked Jack Nicholson if he could take his picture to send to me, because he knew Nicholson was my favorite actor. His picture now sets by my computer.

 

Carolyn (C.D. Wright) receiving Distinguished Alumna Award from the University of Arkansas. Fayetteville, Arkansas.

 

I made several trips to see Carolyn and Forrest in Providence, R.I. On one of them I talked her into taking me to a seaside seafood festival.

In addition to the many venues for food there were two fortune teller booths. I went to one of them to have my fortune told. She studied my hand, shook her head and said, “You have a curse on you.” I acknowledged that I had suspected as much for some time and asked her what I could do about it.

The first fortune teller told me she could remove the curse for $150. She would go to a sacred place, perform proscribed rituals and in thirty days the curse would be removed. I told her I wanted to get a second opinion.

I went to the other fortune teller. She concurred. I had a curse. But if I would give her $200 she could go to a sacred place, and after she had prayed and gone through a sacred ceremony the curse would be removed in thirty days. I told her the other fortune teller told me she could remove it for $150. She shrugged and said, “Okay I can remove it for $125.” I told her I would give it some thought.

 

In August 2009 Dad started having terrible falls, he was often so weak he could hardly get out of his chair. He was getting so frail he was almost skeletal. He was getting bruising all over his body.

I finally had to take him to the hospital after he fell face first onto the kitchen floor, leaving him bleeding profusely. A simple blood test determined that he had acute leukemia. He was told the only treatment option was hospice it was so far advanced.

He was referred to an oncologist. I went with him to his initial appointment. It was a grim prognosis. Dad said he wanted to die at home and get hospice care there. He was stoic to the end. Two weeks later he lay dying in a hospital bed provided, that was in the living room. I stayed close by his side until one night he got very agitated, his tongue began to swell, but he managed to say, “You’ve been a good son, I love you, and I’m proud of you.” I heard the death rattle, he gripped my hand, jerked back saying, “Son, son, son…” His hand went limp.

The father I had looked up to, admired, and respected more than any other was gone. He had never been religious. Christopher Reeves, when he was dying was asked if he believed in God. He said, “I don’t know if there is a God or not, but I have always believed you ought to act like there is.” Dad always acted like there was. And he asked a chaplain to pray over him in his final moments.

Mom passed of Alzheimer’s six months after Dad died. I had been feeding her nightly at the nursing home, though she didn’t know me from Adam’s goat. She thought I was a kind stranger who took care of her. At times she would think I was Sonnyman, a distant cousin who left his family years ago and was never heard from again.

After supper, the CNAs would start rolling residents to their rooms. I would help out. One night an old timer said, “Hey young feller, could you give me a roll too?” I said sure, “Where you going?” He said, Alpena, a small town about 16 miles away. I told him I wasn’t planning on going that far but I could roll him to his room. He said that would be alright.

Watching a loved one slowly fade away with Alzheimer’s is a heart-wrenching vigil. I knew Mom’s time had come when she quit eating. She couldn’t swallow. She would die two weeks later.

My Mom’s soul has passed, but she remains forever in my heart and my memories. And I will always have her blue eyes.

 

Of course the older you get the more losses of family and friends you accumulate. We all end up orphans if we live long enough.

 

The most emotionally devastating loss I would suffer, was the death of my sister from a blood clot to the brain January 12th, 2016.

Carolyn had been on a literary event and reading to Argentina. She had taken a direct transcontinental flight from Chile to Providence. During the flight she slept or read. Forrest would get up and pace now and then.

When they got in that night they were talking about what a wonderful trip it had been. They went to bed, and when Forrest woke up the next morning Carolyn was dead.

I talked to the physician who did her autopsy at her wake in Providence. He told me that because she was inert during the flight home, a clot formed in one of her lungs, coursed to her brain and killed her instantly—probably about 11:30pm that night.

Forrest is still bereaved—as we all are. Linda and I are inconsolable. My nephew, Brecht’s world was shattered and he has turned to me and Uncle Harold as the last links to the Wright and Collins families.

I don’t think grief ever goes away, it just mutates. It’s always a part of you. The sadness lingers….…..

 

Sobriety transformed my life. I felt like a free man. I was able to fully love those who loved me, and Linda fell in love with me all over again.

I married into daughters, granddaughters, and great-granddaughters. I love being a papaw.

Lily Grace, Lea’s youngest daughter, knew if she wanted something, all she had to do was come to papaw.

Summers she would come to stay with us for a few days. I would take her to play miniature golf or bowling, or to arcades. One trip over she said she wanted to do something different, I think she was about seven then. “I want to go roller skating,” she said. I thought well it would probably be like riding a bike, you never forget how to ride a bike. But I was over 70 years old. At the rink she hit the floor and was skating around like a water bug. I got my skates on and as soon as I hit the floor my feet flew up towards the ceiling, I fell backwards, bracing my fall with my right arm and wrist. I cracked a bone in my wrist.

The next day I was seeing an orthopedic specialist to get my hand and wrist splinted. The doctor inquired, “How did you do this.” “Roller skating,” I said. “No really,” was his skeptical reply, “How did you do it?”

…..

 

 

I’m almost 76 year old as I write this. I have never been happier, felt more peaceful, or blessed in my life. Linda and I grow even closer as the years pass. She is my one and forever love…

I’ve come a long journey from those summer nights when I laid in that field behind our house, wondering what was to become of me.

Now I know. Little boy lost, old man found.

 

 

 

June, 2023

 

Warren Wright

I’m 81 years old. I walk 3-5 miles, 3 days a week. Do yoga with bicep curls 3 days a week. I don’t smoke or drink and maintain good nutrition. If I didn’t cuss, I could probably be a Mennonite. Cussing is an unfortunate habit I picked up from serving in the navy during the Vietnam War from 1964-69. Those of a certain age would be familiar with the expression, “Drunk as a sailor,” or “cuss like a sailor.” I’m trying to rid myself of cursing too. Now when I start to blurt out some obscenity, I catch myself and do some deep breathing instead.

Old age is not for sissies. I have some dementia. I get distracted, misplacing my car keys, glasses, or cell phone; forgetting whether I was going into a room or out. But we often have the comforting presence of our granddaughter, Kara, who offers the mantra —“That’s okay, papaw,” and then helps me search. Then all is well.

I wish more people would be kind, caring and compassionate with old people, like Kara. Well, really, we should be that way with everybody in these troubled times.

Some of you younger people need to remind yourselves that if you are as fortunate and blessed as I am you may live to the age of 81 too.

Stay safe, my friends. Warren.

 

 

 

About the author:

Warren Wright was born in Mountain Home, Arkansas, on an Ozark plateau. He is the son of the late Judge Ernie Wright and Aline Wright, his dad’s court reporter. He is the brother of the acclaimed poet, C.D. Wright, who died January 12th, 2016.  He is a novice writer, with degrees from the University of Arkansas, Florida State University, and Georgia State University. He was an intelligence officer in the Navy during the Vietnam War. Wright was a founding member of the Harrison Community Task Force on Race Relations. He is married to Linda Wright, and is a retired mental health therapist, and senior rehabilitation counselor, residing in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

 

 

 

In memory of C.D. Wright, the following poetry is an excerpt from her book, Deepstep Come Shining (Copper Canyon Press, 1998):

 

We can’t send this message    no positive way

hallelujah    glory to ya    they call it the hump

day    if you can get over the hump you’ve got it

made    position yourself to hear

somewhere around the 14th verse    we need

an elevator    to help us look in the present

to help us visualize the future    thank you

for your call    can’t you see    not of this

world    who has no way    somebody say    what is

a leader    who knows the way    goes the way

shows the way    just in case

somebody doesn’t know    what I’m talking

about    the commission to be a friend

to the lost people    this goes out to the air

the sweet barbecue of night    I want to

magnify    praise is at the gate    to enter in

at dawn    I said please sit down    the more

you praise the clearer the mind becomes    I said I

love you    I adore you    I called didn’t I    praise is

the gate    to enter in    we need an elevator    to

take our lost friends up    to the auditorium

of light    didn’t I call    O world world world

I but stumbled when I saw    praise is the gate

to enter    plenty of parking    come early

to get a good seat

 

 

C.D. Wright (1949–2016), one of her generation’s most popular, formally restless, and influential poets, was recognized with scores of major awards including fellowships from the MacArthur, the Lila Wallace, the Lannan, and the Guggenheim foundations. She received a fellowship from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts which, after her death, honored her by launching a new award in her name. Wright was raised in the Ozarks and came to live with Forrest Gander in San Francisco, Eureka Springs, Dolores Hidalgo, Mexico, and Providence. She published sixteen collections of poetry and prose and served on the faculty at Brown University for decades. Her book One With Others won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. Reviewing Rising, Falling, Hovering, The New York Times noted: “C.D. Wright belongs to a school of exactly one.” Wright re-energized documentary poetics in English with major, book-length works such as One Big Self. She was an energetic advocate for other writers; she edited Lost Roads Publishers, a book press that published more than forty writers. A noted collaborator with other artists, Wright created a large-scale multi-media installation, “a walk-in book of Arkansas,” as a touring exhibition.

cdwrightpoet.com