ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, January 26, 1997 TAG: 9701270015
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
COLUMN: NEW RIVER JOURNAL
SOURCE: ROBERT FRIES
For my 35 cents, the best written article in the Jan. 10 edition of The Roanoke Times didn't come from a professional journalist. Instead, it was possibly the most extraordinary obituary I've ever read - no idle compliment from me, an ex-editor of a daily newspaper obituary column.
It was written by a son about his father, jotted down while Gerald Kirk sat in the Columbia Pulaski Community Hospital's intensive care unit waiting room. Nearby were other members of his family and his minister.
"Just a few minutes ago I visited with Daddy who is suffering so. There is a lot of sadness and tears present," Kirk wrote. What followed in his account of this emotional moment was a beautiful, heart-felt stream of memories, the story of a Montgomery County family that lived the old-fashioned way.
In fact, reading Gerald Kirk's tribute to his father, Clyde F. "Bill" Kirk, is like gazing at a Currier & Ives print depicting country life in an era that was somehow both easier and more demanding than our present times.
Bill Kirk died Jan. 8 at age 86. He had retired in 1977 as assistant supervisor after working for 40 years in the maintenance department of Montgomery County's schools.
His starting salary with the school system in 1937 was 40 cents per hour. He and his wife, Louellen, were married for 65 years. Together they raised a family of eight children.
"He was, and at present is, a great provider for his family. What leadership he has provided. He just wasn't satisfied until the smokehouse was full of meat and the cellar had plenty of canned food," Gerald Kirk wrote.
"His work ethic has been one that should be honored. When I was growing up he was always up before daylight to milk the cow and feed the hogs, then be at his job by 7 a.m. ... We always had supper at 4:30 p.m.; then immediately he, my deceased brother Charles, and I were out to work the garden, get up hay or whatever had to be done."
Gerald described his father as a modest-sized man with an outsized presence. "Daddy seemed to just receive respect from his fellow man," he wrote.
A family story illustrates why. Bill Kirk broke his leg in an accident, then went back to work too soon. While still on crutches he was digging a ditch when he re-broke the leg.
Their next memory is of Kirk, lying on his side in a half-body cast, digging out the basement of his home while his two eldest children hauled the dirt away in a red wagon.
Bill Kirk was also an avid outdoorsman. Gerald Kirk wrote of his father's spirit ascending to heaven, a trip that would "take him one more time over his beloved mountains of Montgomery County where he grew up and where he and Mama had their first home, which is a still standing log cabin that is now used by hunters.
"During his trip he is certain to pass over the mountains and valleys of Giles County which we have spent much time over the years...As he passes over Giles the deer will stand at attention for a moment of silence in respect. Daddy thinned their numbers over the years."
"My what a keen sense of nature Daddy had. Not much went by his eyesight and hearing in the woods."
What a wonderful image! Hemingway and all his writings about the bullfighters of Pamplona can't surpass the description of Bill Kirk's soul floating above Giles County, with the deer standing in respectful attention below.
"You can tell from the writing the type of admiration the family had for their father," George Harvey told me last week.
Harvey is a prominent auto dealer and citizen of Radford who married Bill Kirk's oldest daughter, Juanita. He remembers his father-in-law as a talented man whose hands could repair any mechanical device.
"That's a talent we don't see much anymore," Harvey added.
Bill Kirk grew up in eastern Montgomery County and came of age during the Depression, Harvey said. Like many other people whose values were forged during those hard times, Kirk learned hard work as a necessity and practiced the lesson throughout his life.
Harvey said his wife has passed that legacy along to their own children.
The Kirk family created another legacy by setting up the Clyde F. Kirk Nursing Scholarship Fund at Radford University.
Sally Cox, the youngest of the family's eight siblings, lives next door to the family homeplace on Agee Street in Christiansburg. Her house used to be a berry patch and there are other homes in the neighborhood where the Kirk's fruit trees stood.
She says the idea of the nursing scholarship came to the family during their emotional vigil at their father's deathbed. It is intended to honor Bill Kirk's physician, Dr. D.E. Yoder, and all the nurses of Columbia Pulaski Community Hospital's intensive care unit.
The Kirks also sought to honor their father in a vital way to keep his memory alive. The family had five years to raise the $10,000 needed to endow the scholarship; they and other donors did it in two weeks.
And they are still accepting donations. The family has said it would prefer the scholarship be awarded to a nursing student from Montgomery County, to recognize Bill Kirk's many years of work for the county school system.
"I can't tell you how so very important it is," Cox said of the response to the scholarship.
The family received about 75 sympathy cards after the obituary written by Gerald Kirk was published, some from people who knew Bill Kirk only through his son's words.
Gerald Kirk wrote: "When he dies, I will continue to think of him often and seek his wisdom. I better do good and well or he will let me know about it in his and the Lord's way."
Donations may be sent to the Clyde F. Kirk Nursing Scholarship Fund, c/o Radford University Foundation, Inc., P.O. Box 6915, Radford, Va. 24142.
LENGTH: Long : 107 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Reading Gerald Kirk's (left) tribute to his father,by CNBClyde F. "Bill" Kirk (right), is like gazing at a Currier & Ives
print depicting country life in an era that was somehow both easier
and more demanding than our present times.