
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, June 26, 1994                   TAG: 9406260123
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: PADUCAH, KY.                                LENGTH: Medium

FINALLY, SPEEDY GOING TO REST

Henry Atkins has been standing around Velma Hamock's home for 66 years. She thinks it's time to put him in his place, with a proper church service and burial.

Henry is better known as Speedy Atkins, the tuxedo-clad, well-preserved corpse, a demonstration of the power of undertaker A.Z. Hamock's secret, homemade embalming fluid.

Speedy died in 1928 and initially was kept around so Hamock could monitor the permanence of his embalming technique.

The embalming fluid's secret went to the grave with Hamock when he died in 1948. Since then, Speedy has been kept mostly in a closet at Hamock Funeral Home, a display for curious visitors.

He has appeared on national TV three times. His life story has appeared in newspapers throughout the country. People travel hundreds of miles to see him; visitors were at the door last week from Louisiana. Radio talk-show hosts from around the country call to check on him.

Velma Hamock, the undertaker's widow, planned to bury Speedy in a quiet ceremony in 1991, but that ceremony didn't materialize.

Now, a memorial service is scheduled for Aug. 5, followed by burial.

"It is time, after all these years, that he be buried," Velma Hamock said. "He is a dead person, and there is no need to keep on keeping on."

Speedy was a faithful worker at the old Dixon Tobacco Co. in the early 1920s, and a friend of Hamock. His nickname developed because he was a fast worker.

On a sunny May 30, 1928, Speedy was fishing from the bank of the Tennessee River near Owens Island.

As he fished, he sipped from his jar of homemade brew. As the warmth of the sun and the brew began to take effect, accounts say, Speedy dozed, slid into the river and drowned.

Speedy had no family, so Hamock decided to use him to demonstrate his embalming fluid.

Velma Hamock will not mourn his departure.

"You don't cry over anything you have to give up, because you eventually must give up everything," she says. "Don't love anything so hard that you can't give it up."

by CNB