Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 20, 1994 TAG: 9403180206
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: GALAX LENGTH: Long
A neighbor tried to console the man by saying the Lord would take care of it, making it right in his own good time.
Maybe so, the flood victim said, but he wished the Lord would hurry. Lately, he said, the Lord had done about as much harm as he'd done good.
In this winter of ice storms and power outages, that kind of reaction is understandable at times. But Hampton goes back much further in time for the sources of his anecdotes.
He celebrated his 100th birthday this month. George Burns, eat your heart out.
Hampton has been a resident of Waddell Nursing Home in Galax for some eight months. After a lifetime of farm work in Grayson County, Hampton was having a little trouble with his legs from low potassium levels and a few other things that needed adjusting.
The leg troubles have eased with treatment and exercise. ``I've got to move a little. I need to walk a little every day,'' he said. ``I don't like to be hemmed up.... I stayed out in the open too long.''
It seemed as though the whole Carroll-Grayson community was celebrating his birthday. There was a party at the nursing home, an observance at a local church, and a gathering of children and grandchildren for yet another get-together.
President Bill Clinton sent a birthday card. So did House Minority Leader Robert Dole, whose card may have meant more to lifelong Republican Hampton than the president's.
Hampton counts ``Mr. Republican'' Joe Parsons, who was Carroll County's clerk of courts for about three decades, as one of his closest friends.
He also recalls voting for Democrat Woodrow Wilson's opponent, Charles Evans Hughes, when he cast his first ballot in 1916. ``I never begrudged it, either,'' Hampton said.
Hampton recalled a gentleman named Cox speaking on Wilson's behalf before the election, saying Hughes would be more likely to get the United States into war than the peaceable Wilson. Displaying a phenomenal memory, Hampton even quoted from Cox's speech: ``If you want war, vote for Charles Evans Hughes. If you want peace, vote for Woodrow Wilson, and the birds in the trees will sing peace.''
``Cox made a mistake in his speech,'' Hampton said. ``He got it wrong.'' The United States would enter World War I soon after Wilson was elected to a second term.
Hampton probably would have seen service during that time, but a doctor detected a heart murmur. Not liking the news, Hampton would not to go to a doctor again for the next 45 years.
Actually, he recalled, his grandfather Littrille Hampton had been a Democrat. He remembers his father, Charles, voting twice for Grover Cleveland. ``He voted Democrat when he started voting.''
But Charles apparently was swayed to the GOP by Hampton's mother, a woman named Nancy of strong political opinions. Hampton leaned that way, too.
``Well, if I'm anything, I'm a Republican. But the two-party system's all right,'' he said. ``Better than letting one party have it all the time.... You have a king and you're going to have something you don't like.''
Hampton came from a large family, with six sisters and five brothers who moved elsewhere.
``My family scattered,'' he said, ``most of them, and passed on.'' He still has a sister living in a Newport News nursing home.
He has six children and 12 grandchildren.
He visited one of his sons in upstate New York for what was supposed to be an extended stay, but got so homesick he returned to Virginia the next day. He has been to Richmond twice, he said, and Roanoke ``I guess a half-dozen'' times.
He farmed land in the Baywood area of Grayson County, where four generations of his family had lived since 1785. He was the last family member to live in what came to be known as Hampton Valley, selling the last piece of family real estate before moving to the Galax nursing home.
``I felt bad over getting rid of it,'' he said.
In addition to farming and raising cattle, Hampton did weighing and administrative work once a week for more than 40 years at the Galax livestock market. He admits to a lifelong fascination with the cattle business.
``I was about 15 when I started,'' he said, when his father went on a visit and left him in charge of the place. That was also when Hampton taught himself to play the banjo.
``That banjo was my friend at night. I loved to pick and sing. I'm hoarse now. I can't sing anymore,'' he said.
Hampton has traced his own ancestry 10 generations, and he has become something of an expert in genealogy in the Carroll-Grayson area for many families.
A son, Robert Nelson Hampton of McLean, was impressed with his father's memory of families when he asked about cousins. ``I asked him a couple years ago, and he rattled off 100 names,'' his son said.
As a child, Hampton would listen avidly to his father and grandfather sitting in front of a fire and talking into the night about people and events.
He remembers being allowed to drive his father's first Model-T purchased in 1913 (he was still driving a car until age 87). He even remembers that it cost his father exactly $585. His father had to finance the purchase.
Hampton has no idea why he has remained relatively active and mentally alert at age 100. Fresh air, exercise and regular habits probably did not hurt, he said.
``I don't think anything I've done has helped it,'' he added. ``I think the master's just been merciful.''
by CNB