THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 6, 1995 TAG: 9508020057
SECTION: REAL LIFE PAGE: K3 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: REAL MOMENTS
SOURCE: BY KRYS STEFANSKY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 56 lines
THE FUNERAL SERVICE was in Henderson, N.C., just across the railroad tracks and to the right, in the heart of town.
It could have been in any small town in the South.
My sister-in-law, Billie, lost her father a week ago. By all accounts he was not a powerful man in town, but a popular delivery driver, a valued neighbor and a well-liked member of his congregation.
On surely what was one of the hottest days of the summer, nearly 300 of us gathered in the pews of the First United Methodist Church, a tall stone building with grand stained-glass windows that glimmered like emeralds, sapphires and rubies in the sunlight.
Between us and the minister lay Billie's daddy, enclosed in a shiny coffin covered with a blanket of yellow carnations and dark green ivy. Sprinkled throughout the arrangement were zinnias.
When he sowed them in the bed behind his house this spring, Billie's daddy couldn't have known that they would be cut from his own garden and used to honor him. But there are some folks in Henderson who I'm sure would say otherwise. Some people just know when their time is near, they'd say.
We left the church after some wise and comforting words by the pastor about the importance of leading a good life, a humble life, a life lived to serve others. Outside, we pulled our cars into a long, thin line behind the hearse that held Billie's daddy.
Headlights on, we wound through the neighborhood behind the church. Folks on porches stopped swinging, stopped rocking and stopped mowing their lawns, standing motionless out of respect.
They didn't know who was being buried. It didn't matter. Somebody was going home and the world along our road stopped for a few minutes to mark his passing.
We were easily 100 cars, but nobody ran a light as we went by, nobody inched forward into the road, nobody drove on before we passed. Billie said later that the funeral director had asked the town police to block off the intersections but that somebody must have forgotten to send them out.
Respect, not the law, kept people still. All along the route to the cemetery, cars pulled over on the grassy shoulder, windows rolled down to catch a humid breeze, people inside them patiently waiting.
At one intersection, a tall man, thin and black, put down at his feet the package he was carrying, took the straw hat off his head and stood motionless, eyes cast down so as not to stare at the mourners.
Billie's daddy lived in a place where life's challenges are greeted with respect, where everybody is somebody, where even strangers take the time to stop and say, ``Well done'' to the dead and let their hearts go out to the living.
Hickman E. Crews Sr. lived his life in a small town. He was a lucky man. by CNB