My grandfather built a house in the tiny coal mining town West Blocton, Alabama, around the turn of the century. On Easter Sunday in the year 1909, my father, Tommy, was born in that house. Since there were seven or so brothers and sisters ahead of Tommy, grandfather Jim placed the infant in an Easter basket and announced to his brood that the Easter Bunny had delivered this pink, noisy package.
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Back then, kids believed that sort of thing.
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Now, to know my father, you’d have to know the people he admired, since men in his generation weren’t much for sitting around telling you about themselves. No, you just had to look about and pay attention to the men whose lives they emulated.
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In my father’s case, I can remember who some of his heroes, both literary and real, were:
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Sergeant Alvin York, who never accepted a dime in trade for the heroism he’d shown for his country in World War I.
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Preacher Josiah Dozier Grey and Uncle Famous Prill, the heroes of Joe David Brown’s Birmingham novel/movie, Stars in My Crown, men who never wavered from belief in family and neighbors and principles. They were forerunners of Atticus Finch and Tom Robinson and other strong Southern heroes of fiction and non-fiction.
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Harry Truman, who dispensed with nonsense and tried to do the right thing, even when it was not popular. He was in a long line of no-nonsense leaders, such as John L. Lewis and Eric Hoffer, people who thought for themselves and never followed a posse or a trend.
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Jesus Christ, who, like my father, was a carpenter, and a principled man.
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And so on.
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Now, it’s important to understand this one thing about my father—to look at him, to be around him, you’d never know he was a hero. He was a working-class, blue-collar, unassuming person you’d probably not notice on the street, unless you noted that he limped from an old coal mining injury received when he tried to save another man’s life. It was his very invisibility that made him a true hero, because he did the kind of thing that nobody gets credit for: he loved unconditionally and without reward. That’s right. He was a practitioner of unconditional love for family, the kind of love that seeks no return, no attention.
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You would have embarrassed Tommy Reed if you had tried to thank him for his acts of kindness, because you were not supposed to notice. He gave money in secret to relatives in need. He grimaced and bore silently the abuse of those who forgot to appreciate or thank him. And he never announced his good deeds. You just had to catch him now and then in an act of kindness.
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His heroes were all men who didn’t need adulation.
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What my father did need was a hard day’s work at an honest job, a few moments of privacy after a good meal, time to read a book or watch television with a child or grandchild on his lap, and an occasional hug from his 50-year wife, my mother.
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You could do worse than have a father like Preacher Grey and Joel McCrea, Uncle Famous and Juano Hernandez, Gregory Peck and Atticus Finch, Brock Peters and Tom Robinson, Eric Hoffer, John L. Lewis, Harry Truman, Gary Cooper and Sergeant York, and Jesus.
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Do they make ‘em like that any more? You bet they do, but you won’t know about it for a while, because they don’t have press agents. What they do have is the appreciation that takes years to grow and make itself known, the appreciation we come to have after we, too, have been called upon to commit an occasional act of unrewarded kindness.
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Take another look at your father. Who are his silent heroes? Who are yours
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© Jim Reed 2023 A.D.
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