LikeTheDew.com

Memories Of A Brotherhood

Not long after the column ran, I received an email from folks I have long known. Their email read in part … “Sometime ago you mentioned that our Lincoln County Historical Park lacked a tenant house. That touched us and inspired us to search for an available tenant house that could be moved there and restored. We found one.”

I was given the owner’s name, Beth Colvin Huff, and contacted her. I discovered that the tenant home had some of its history recounted in “The Miracle Of A Friendship,” an autobiography written by the owner’s father, James Robert (J.R.) Colvin. His words brought to life a friendship lost with the passing of time.

“A young black man came to work for my Daddy in 1930. John was probably 18 or 19 at that time … John Bennett was one of the two black men I loved like a brother.”

John Bennett was the only person who lived in the little tenant home built by J.R.’s dad. Inside, shelves once hung to store John Bennett’s glasses and dishes, pots and pans. A table with two chairs and a bed were there, too.

J.R. wrote, “John kept his house spotlessly clean. His yards were well kept, and he usually had blooming flowers and shrubbery he would obtain from his mother. John could do anything! He was not a big man, but for his height and weight he was as strong as any person I’ve ever known. He and I would go fishing together, go hunting together or would sit by his fireplace during cold, rainy days and play checkers by the hours … We loved and respected each other as if we were brothers.”

Circumstances and time separated them. J.R. went to college and Bennett left the county in 1941. Time passed, more than 50 years, and J.R. despaired of ever seeing his friend again. Then, by chance, J.R.’s younger sister, Martha, discovered that two of John’s nieces lived in Los Angeles. A few phone calls later, a reunion with Bennett who now lived in South Carolina was in the works. Many years had passed. J.R. was 79 and John Bennett was 84. A vast chasm of time and change separated them.

The visit went well. The men shared great memories and John Bennett’s recollections proved amazing. John Bennett remembered being the lead cradle man at wheat cutting time and how he and J.R. played checkers by his home’s fireplace. After 57 years, he even remembered helping move one of J.R.’s relatives into her dorm at the Georgia State College for Women in Milledgeville. He even recalled hauling her wardrobe trunk up 14 steps to Room 29.

J.R. wrote movingly of their final parting. “There are few times in my life that I hit such an emotional high and it lasted for several days … as we drove away, we could see John and his wife, Lizzie, standing on the screen porch, their bodies bent with age and injury, both standing on their walking canes, but a smile on their faces waving goodbye, a beautiful sight and memory! I know deep down that the age of miracles still exists.”

And so the two men parted.

There’s an interesting aside to this saga of brotherhood, another close connection. J.R. taught for a while in Fayetteville, Georgia. Huff told me that among his students was Ferrol Sams, the Southern physician and writer who wrote Run With The Horseman. Dr. Sams modeled a character in Run With The Horseman, Mr. Dorsey, after Beth’s father. If you have the book, read about the respect Dr. Sams had for her father beginning on page 352. Huff says the two men stayed in close touch through the years and saw each other often. “Dr. Sams,” she said, “spoke at my father’s funeral and told of his love and admiration for him.”

Love and admiration is what J.R. and John Bennett shared. The little home where they shared friendship will not last forever, unless it’s saved. Little homes like this one are crumbling back into the earth from whence they came and as we lose them, we lose memories of people and times nothing like today. In this case, we lose the very place where two very different men formed a brotherhood.

J.R. wrote his autobiography after he visited John Bennett, inspired by their reconnection at long last. Beth Colvin Huff eloquently wrote of their friendship. “It is just one part of the story of the rural South with its complex history of race relations. It speaks of how friendship and character transcended color.”

Huff is hopeful that the little house finds a forever home in the Historical Park. “When I acquired this part of the family property after my father’s death, I was sorry to see it in such an overgrown state. When I was heard that there might be some interest in preserving and restoring the home, I was delighted to donate it.

“I have had the opportunity to meet some of the people interested in historical preservation in the county and it gives me another reason to visit Lincolnton. I have so many wonderful childhood memories of family reunions and summer visits to see my cousins, aunts, and uncles at White Rock.

“My mother, Lois Colvin, my sister, Jan Colvin Davenport, and I are delighted that we can honor Daddy and his friend, John Bennett, by participating in the move of the house to the Lincoln County Historical Park.”

My hope is that this little home with its memories and connections to the past makes it into the quaint little village the folks back home are building. It’d make a fine and natural addition. And if it does, I have one small request. Place two chairs and an old-fashioned checkerboard by the fireplace. Let visitors know that two men, brothers you could say, spent many a moment here enjoying each other’s company in a small home where the spark of friendship burned as warm and as strong as the oak logs did here so many, many years ago.

Top photo shows a typical tenant home in disrepair in Alabama.