48 years after a grandfather’s death
The calendar says 48 years.
But that can’t be possible.
It can’t be 48 years, plus one day, since the phone rang and a shaky voice said, “He’s gone.”
The Legal Genealogist didn’t need to ask who.
Just the tone of my mother’s voice told me all I needed to know.
That Monday, 48 years ago yesterday, was the day we lost my grandfather.1
Clay Rex Cottrell — the man we all called Daddy Clay — was the only grandfather I’d ever known. My father’s parents were gone before I was born, but I’d never felt that I’d missed out — my mother’s parents were there. Always there. There for me.
Until, all of a sudden, one of them wasn’t.
This image is how I remember Daddy Clay best.
A little scruffy. With that little bit of a beard. That little bit of a smile.
And he was always always there for me. One of my greatest treasures is a letter he sent my mother after we’d returned home to Colorado from a visit when I wasn’t even six months old. In it, he said: “How are you & how’s my baby? You know I have always threatened to burn the room (your sister) uses when she is here because she leaves it in such a mess that it doesn’t look possible to clean it up but this time I wanted to burn the room Judy was in because I couldn’t look in that door with that crib gone for a long time. I sure missed her and still do. …”
Born in Iowa Park, Texas, in April 1898,2 he was the youngest of 10 children, eight of whom lived to adulthood.3 His parents split up when he was just 11,4 and his mother died when he was just 14.5
He spent time with older sisters in Oklahoma and an older brother in South Dakota, never finished high school, and ran away to Texas as a teenager to marry the sweetheart whose mother swore she would never consent to the marriage.6 By the time he was 21, he was a father twice over,7 had been drafted in one of the last call-ups of World War I8 … and had already buried a child.9
He was a grandfather years before he fathered the last of his own 12 children,10 had a raucous and impish sense of humor, and was as stubborn a cuss as ever walked the face of this earth. He once fell off a tractor when the chain he was using to pull a car off some logs it had rolled over tightened suddenly and jerked him backwards. The tractor rolled over his leg and he came out screaming that it was broken in two places. It took us two years to get him to agree to go to the doctor.
There’s so much I want to remember about my grandfather. So many stories to tell about his life. But the story we all need to remember the most is the one told by these two pictures, taken well into the marriage to my grandmother Opal (Robertson) Cottrell that her family said would never last.
The way he looked at her.
And the way she looked at him.
Rest in peace, Daddy Clay.
We miss you.
We always will.
SOURCES
- Virginia Department of Health, Certificate of Death, state file no. 70-026729, Clay Rex Cottrell (21 Sep 1970); Division of Vital Records, Richmond. ↩
- See Virginia Dept. of Health, Certificate of Death, state file no. 70-026729, Clay Rex Cottrell (21 Sep 1970). ↩
- Interview with Opal Robertson Cottrell (Kents Store, VA), by granddaughter Bobette Richardson, 1980s; copy of notes privately held by Judy G. Russell. ↩
- See 1910 U.S. census, Tillman County, Oklahoma, population schedule, Frederick Ward 1, enumeration district (ED) 248, p. 41(A) (stamped), sheet 4(A), dwelling 71, family 74, Mattie Cottrell household; digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 14 Oct 2011); citing National Archive microfilm publication T624, roll 1275. ↩
- Linda Norman Garrison, Tillman County Personals: Abstracts from Frederick, OK Newspapers May 1902-June 1911 (Lawton, Okla. : Southwest Oklahoma Genealogical Society, 2009), citing Frederick (Okla.) Enterprise, 16 Apr 1909. ↩
- For the marriage, see Wichita County, Texas Marriage Book 5:388, Cottrell-Robertson, 16 Oct 1916, marriage license and return; County Clerk’s Office, Wichita Falls. ↩
- Their first-born child, my aunt Ruth, was born in 1917; my uncle Billy in 1919. For Ruth, “Oklahoma State Vital Records Index,” entry for female Cottrell child born 12 Aug 1917, OK2Explore (https://ok2explore.health.ok.gov/ : accessed 21 Sep 2018). For Billy, see ibid., entry for Billie Rex Cottrell, 8 Nov 1919. ↩
- “Fifty-Eight to Leave for Camp on August 28th,” Wichita Falls (Tex.) Times, 26 August 1918, p.3, col. 1. ↩
- That first-born child, my aunt Ruth, died in 1918. See Dutton Funeral Home (Iowa Park, Texas), Record of Funeral, Baby Cottrell, 22 February 1918; digital copy privately held by Judy G. Russell. ↩
- My cousin Bobette was born in 1940. “Texas Birth Index, 1903-1997,” entry for Bobette Staples, 31 Jan 1940, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org : accessed 21 Sep 2018). Our youngest aunt was born — well, let’s just say some years later. After all, it’s not polite to tell a lady’s age, right? ↩
Ernest Baker, my grandfather. Same sense of humor, that slight grin. Born in Parker County, Texas, 1882. Lived there until he was almost 25, married my grandma, Betty Bell Thomas, moved to Walnut Springs TX in Bosque County, passed away at 89 years of age. Well respected. After I got married, brought my wife down to see my grandparents. It was Christmas season and right outside Glen Rose TX I pulled into driveway of a farmhouse. My wife asked are we here? Told her no, just going to get a little something for the season. It had been a few years, lady did not recognize me, I asked if might could get a quart of corn. She said we do not sell whiskey here. Oh, introduced myself then said grandson of and she said so good to see you again, will be right back. Told my Dad once that I never met but one man better than him. He said “your talking about your Grandpa, he was one in a million”
Your Granddad and mine — cousins!! — would have loved each other so much and gotten along so well!
Funny how things are. Thanks for sharing the story of your grandpa. I’ve been thinking a lot about my step-grandpa a lot, and started working on his genealogy a couple weeks ago, curious. My widowed grandmother remarried the same year I was born. I never knew any grandfather but Grandpa Jesse, and didn’t realize he wasn’t my blood grandpa until I was old enough to start wondering about the different surnames (even his adult step-kids called him “Dad”). Not the character that yours was, Judy, but he had his ways. Wicked sense of humor, could never say grace without a joke in it, one of a number of things that could set my grandmother off. Story-teller extraordinaire in a family of story-tellers, and some of his stories were pretty wild. He was more than that, though. He taught the grand-kids how to admire a butterfly without damaging it, let us look at the baby hummingbirds in a bush near his shop on the promise that we would never bother them. Took care of a little crippled cat, and was friends with the owl that lived in the loft of the top level of the chicken house. I saw it fly down at dusk, and ride his hat as he walked up the hill. When his dementia started, they sold the farm and moved to town, a little house between our house and my school. I’d stop by and watch old movies with him until suppertime. I’m still addicted to them. Eventually, his dementia got bad enough, grandma and grandpa moved away to live with grandma’s oldest daughter on the coast. He died there, and was buried with his first wife in another state. I’m so glad to have had Grandpa Jesse in my life, perhaps a less than perfect man but a wonderful grandpa.
I have included your blog in INTERESTING BLOGS in FRIDAY FOSSICKING at
https://thatmomentintime-crissouli.blogspot.com/2018/09/friday-fossicking-sept-28th-2018.html
Thank you, Chris