My Uncle Bill

I was born into what today would be called a dysfunctional family I suppose. My mother married my father when she was only 16 years old and a junior in high school. He was 24 and a law student at the University of Arkansas. She was from Atkins, a small town of 1300 people in central Arkansas and he was from Little Rock, the capital of the state. I never knew how that relationship happened because no one ever told me how they even met each other, much less fell in love and got married. But when she was six months pregnant with me after my father had returned from storming the beaches at Normandy during World War II and enrolled back in law school, she got a telegram from him one Friday afternoon that said he was leaving at 1:30 on a bus to attend a birthday party for one of his Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity brothers in Missouri. The problem was the telegram was sent at 3:30 in the afternoon and my 16-year-old mother noticed that. So she got on a bus, rode it to Fayetteville, Arkansas and caught him in delicto with a sorority girl at the University. She rode the bus back home and filed for divorce.

I was born into a wonderful home of loving, caring people, all my mother’s relatives. I lived for almost 18 years with my mom’s mom, mom’s grandmother, her aunt and uncle, and, from time to time, my mom and my step-dad. So we had four generations living under the same roof which made us a true extended family. But extended families weren’t so unusual back then, in fact my three best friends all the way through school lived in extended families too. It was a way for newly married couples to save their money until they had enough cash to live on their own. That’s pretty much a lost cause today. Newly married couples not only DON’T want to live with their relatives, they typically want to get as far away from them as possible.

But, of course, since an extended family was the only kind of family I had ever known, it didn’t seem unusual to me. My step-dad graduated from Oklahoma State A&M College with a degree in plumbing supervision and became a union plumber right away. Because of his career choice, his job took him many places but I always stayed with my extended family in that small town in Arkansas because they wanted me to have stability.

So the father figure in my life wasn’t really my step-dad because he wasn’t around that much. It was my Uncle Bill, the only other man in the family. He did everything with me and for me. We played ball together, would walk the railroad tracks together, would hitch-hike to baseball games together, would study together and anything else I was doing, he was helping me do it too. He wasn’t a very emotional or expressive man outwardly but whenever I was feeling down or disappointed over something that had happened to me, he would always put a hand on my shoulder and say

‘It’s gonna be okay sonny boy.’

I have no idea why he gave me that nickname because I never asked him why. I figured he had a reason and that was good enough for me.

He was my shelter in the storm. No matter what else was going on in my life, I knew he would always be there for me. The women in the family loved me too but they would get mad at me from time to time for doing stupid kid things but I never saw Uncle Bill get mad at me at all. He used every misstep by me as a teaching moment so I learned something positive from every mistake I made. Not many people will take the time or have the love in their heart needed to be that patient with a child but Uncle Bill did.

One of the things that stick in my memory had to do with one time my step-dad and me were coming home from Tulsa. As we drove down the street where our house was, we both saw a hearse driving down the alley towards the main street and my dad said ‘Oh no’ and I knew he meant that someone in my house had died and I was scared to death it was Uncle Bill. That fear sharpened its claws even more in me when we approached the front of the house and we saw my mom walking with my grandmother with their arms around each other. Then I knew for sure and I was so paralyzed with fear and dread that I couldn’t get out of the car when it stopped.

My step-dad did and came back a few seconds later to tell me it was the lady next door that had died and that all my family members were okay. That was the happiest day of my life without question. It felt like a thousand pounds had been lifted off my chest and I ran into the house to find Uncle Bill washing dishes the way he usually did after supper! I hugged him that night longer than I’ve ever hugged anyone.

In 1974, he died for real, suffering a massive heart attack right after breakfast. By 1974, most of the family was gone and my mom’s mom was living with her in Tulsa so Uncle Bill was by himself when he died. I always grieved over that and fear that I will meet the same fate someday.

He has never left my heart or my mind in the 43 years since his death and sometimes when I’m feeling lonely or down, I wish I could hear those words of his just one more time:

“It’s gonna be okay sonny boy!”