Missing Ray

Ray and I were friends for 70 years. Looking back over photographs I found a favorite of us standing in Miss Tanner’s second grade class, taken in 1952. There are a few snapshots of our high school years, and our work together at the Athens Theater where we made popcorn, sold concessions, cleaned, and operated early vintage carbon-arc projectors. No photographs are needed to remind me of our experiences at Concord College.

After graduating in 1968, we moved away from each other for the first time, but our friendship continued to grow. Ray went on to earn his master’s degree from West Virginia University, but as he used to say, “Garland went to the other West Virginia university.” We visited regularly, often meeting in Athens at our parent’s homes around holidays and special occasions. Ray and I were two of three students in our high school class who went on to earn Ph.D.’s, the other being our friend David Baxter. Ray, David, and I enjoyed learning, being around college students, and immersed in campus life. Each of us eventually pursued university faculty appointments and found, as my advisor said, that staying in academe was a “great way to prolong adolescence.”

Ray and I learned to appreciate formal education mostly from the life, love, and sacrifices of our parents, who had little opportunity to study, but who recognized that education was a way to make their children’s lives better than their own. We grew up in a place where all our parents knew each other, and every home was an extension of our own. In our community, there was no home more welcoming that the Austin’s.

As a kid, I loved visiting Ray because Mrs. Austin was the most gracious adult I knew, who always offered me something else to eat, and Mr. Austin had a subtle sense of humor that even Ray's brother Larry could not emulate. Mr. Austin masqueraded his loving kindness in a gruff father persona. Ray and I eagerly anticipated his response to any of our teenage questions, such as asking for the keys to the car. “Daddy, may I borrow the ca....” “NO” he would interrupt abruptly, followed immediately by the inevitable soft reversal, “What do you need the car for? --Well, OK.” Or, “Daddy, may I have a dolla….” “NO. What do you need a dollar for? --Well, OK.”

Another example of Mr. Austin's subtle sense of humor was at Ray's (and my) college graduation ceremony at Concord. A friend sitting beside the Austin's in the college auditorium recalled that Mr. Austin was carefully studying the long list of graduates in the Class of 1968. Just before the ceremony began, he leaned over,  pointed to an entry on the program, and quietly mumbled, "I see more of those Cum Laude boys are graduating again this year." (Ray and I later speculated that Cum Laude must fall somewhere between Austin and Elmore.)

Our parents didn’t have a lot of material wealth in those early days, but neither Ray nor I had any sense of poverty. Our parents focused on the most important things in life, especially raising their children. They had deep-seated values and shared a collective, intuitive sense of how to prioritize around families, form communities, and support each other. They overcame substantial obstacles through commitment and hard work, having themselves grown up in the era of the Great Depression and having lived through World War II. During our many road trips, Ray and I talked about how our parents quietly sacrificed to make our childhood special.

Ray was kind, humble and pleasant. I have never known a more giving person, especially when it came to his time. He was never in a hurry for important things. He took time to stand vigilantly in the hospital hallway each day before my father died in 1976, to greet family members, provide condolences, and support me during a difficult time. Forty years later he did the same thing when my sister Thelma passed away. Ray was the usher at my wedding in Michigan and attended by daughter’s wedding in North Carolina. He visited my wife Jean and me in West Virginia, Indiana, and North Carolina. We were the best of friends who never lost track of each other.

Ray loved to drive and took the time to make any trip worthwhile. Often our trips were planned but sometimes spontaneous. I remember a morning soon after Ray and I started college. We were at my parent’s house having a chat about a favorite aunt who lived in Bartow Florida. Ray asked if I’d like to go see her. Sure, I said. “Well, let’s go. Get some clothes…” We left Athens within the hour, and made it to Princeton, six miles away, when Ray said we needed to stop by Tri City Traction, where Mr. Austin worked as a mechanic, to change the brake shoes. Aside from that little delay, which admittedly surprised me even though I knew Ray had a propensity for delays, we had a wonderful and uneventful trip. And Aunt Betty was delighted, and surprised.

We had another memorable road trip a decade later. Ray volunteered to help Jean and me move and drove a rental truck from Logan West Virginia to Zionsville Indiana. We planned our trip well, but unfortunately included old US119 from Logan to Charleston West Virginia. Ray took the lead in the truck, and I followed in my car. After about an hour along the steep and winding mountain road Ray pulled over, noticing the upcoming bridge weight limit was 5,000 pounds and the weight of our 15-foot truck, empty, was 6,385 pounds. We quickly considered but rejected the idea of driving back to Logan to take Route 10. So, taking advantage of our advanced education, and youthful foolishness, we scurried down to the creek below the bridge to make a visual assessment of the infrastructure. As car passed over the bridge we observed little or no movement. It seemed solid enough. Then Ray pointed out that cars only weigh a ton or two and the weight is distributed. To test the bridge more realistically we decided to move the truck to the northbound lane, raise the hood, and temporarily block traffic. After five or six cars backed up, the truck mysteriously started, and Ray pulled it onto the shoulder. We figured the six cars passing over the bridge together weighed at least 10,000 pounds and the bridge was declared safe. We arrived in Indiana ten hours later.

Ray and I revisited roots during our 2007 road trip. We traveled the Athens back roads we discovered as kids with new driver’s licenses. We stopped at favorite spots along bubbling creeks and on mountain tops with spectacular views. Back in the 1960s we talked about building our future homes on sites like these. In fact, we bought adjoining tracks of a few acres each when we got our first jobs but sold them after careers took us away from the home front.

After visiting our old properties, we took route US52 to Williamson, Man and Logan. That was a bittersweet experience. The local economies had all but collapsed following the end of the prosperous coal mining era, and what used to be familiar places were gone or in disrepair. Our drive out of the mountains was somber, but soon we spotted bumper stickers or roadside relics that made us laugh.

Laughter is the best word to characterize our road trips, and indeed our entire 70-year friendship. We laughed every time we greeted each other with a weak and pathetic handshake that dated back to an experience with someone long forgotten from the 1960s, or when we swatted each other with a baseball cap when one of us would say something stupid. We endlessly repeated phrases we remembered from high school teachers, like Ms. Snidow sending David Thompson to the principal’s office: “David, I think you’ll be happier across the hall. Now pack up and get out….” Ray and I had fun together growing up and growing old together. We laughed a lot. Even at things that weren’t very funny. And we laughed remembering how we laughed back then. That’s what we did. I will surely miss Ray and look forward to seeing him on the other side! I’m going to give him a real handshake or maybe a hug.