THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 24, 1995 TAG: 9509220181
SECTION: SUFFOLK SUN PAGE: 03 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Susie Stoughton
LENGTH: Long : 109 lines
Ed Manry made me swear - even if we didn't have a stack of Bibles - that I'd wait until after I'd written this to read something he was giving me.
Made me raise my right hand and promise.
Now, surely, I couldn't lie to a gentleman entering his second century. Not even a little fib.
I took the folded paper - a copy of a story someone else had written about him - and stuck it in my notebook. He didn't want it to influence me, he said, watching me with eagle eyes.
I'd read it after finishing this, I promised.
Manry, his eyes twinkling behind his gold-rimmed spectacles, talked about fox hunting, fishing, the saw mill he started and the school house in the side yard where he and his sister learned Latin.
And he reminisced about his father, who founded Manry Insurance Co. in Courtland - the company that now is Manry-Rawls Insurance in Franklin, the oldest continuously operating insurance company in the area and probably the state.
He explained that the other story - the one I wasn't to read yet - was printed in a newsletter for the Children's Home Society, a statewide adoption, foster care and counseling agency that Manry has supported for years.
Next Sunday, he'll be 101. He could have fooled me, as he sat upright in the overstuffed chair in a front room of the 19th century Southampton County farm house where he was born. His soft, brown hair, neatly trimmed, would have made Kojak jealous.
He's a little hard of hearing, but then, so are many people much younger. Loudly, I asked where he was born.
``Right here in this room,'' he said. ``I remember sitting over there about 100 years ago and it was `hiccup, hiccup, hiccup,' for two days.''
He's been in the house all his life, except for his college and Army years.
He talked about spending 18 months in France during World War I, and about breaking his left ankle playing football, then recuperating in the hospital for four months. And he told of graduating from Randolph-Macon College, where he became an ``educated'' gentleman.
He's the college's oldest alumni. What did he study? ``Good times,'' he said, emphatically, then proudly showed me his picture in his senior yearbook.
``Edward Smith Manry,'' the caption read. ``Behold the handsomest man of the class of 1916.''
The young, smiling face peered back, the eyes, as always, twinkling.
``That's a religious school, so they can't tell lies,'' he said, chuckling.
He enjoyed those college years. But then, I could tell he'd enjoyed all his years. He was conscientious enough, however, to avoid getting into academic trouble.
The yearbook noted, ``It was he who gave them their grand old motto, `Never let your studies interfere with your college work.' ''
We talked about extrasensory perception - which he said once helped him find a fox when all the other hunters had given up - and politics.
``I think all citizens ought to vote,'' he said, claiming he's only missed voting in one presidential election.
And, he said emphatically, they should vote Republican.
``I am a Republican, bred and born,'' he said. ``My father was a Republican when there weren't but a few of them around. I don't think he ever lost a friend.''
His father, Lucius Manry, was a Confederate veteran and a nephew of General William Mahone.
After getting out of the service, Manry joined his father in the insurance business. But after a few years, he realized someone needed to tend the family farm, so he left his downtown Courtland office for the country life, about three miles outside of town. Later, he built a saw mill, shipping off logs on the railroad in front of his house.
Later, the tracks were removed, as other changes took place. The horse and buggy gave way to the automobile.
Manry, who's been driving for decades, renewed his driver's license last year and told the DMV clerks he'd see them in five more years.
And why had he never married? I asked.
Oh, he'd had a lot of girlfriends at one time or another.
``The ones I preferred didn't prefer me,'' he said. ``And the ones who preferred me, I didn't prefer.''
Besides, he said, if he had had a wife, he probably wouldn't have been able to do all that hunting and fishing that he enjoyed so much.
``I was not a confirmed bachelor,'' he said. ``I just drifted into it.''
He's got plenty of attentive nieces, nephews and their spouses - like Bill Harville, who looks in on him regularly.
And he's got good friends, like Elmo Fowler, who used to farm Manry's land. Fowler and his wife, Marie, live in another part of the house and help him with dinners.
``He's no kin to me, but we're as close as brothers,'' Manry said.
A maid who comes in the mornings fixes his breakfast, though he insists he could cook his own oatmeal if he wanted to.
I asked if he could offer any advice to ``youngsters'' today.
``One thing,'' he said, pausing. ``Be honest.''
``Do nothing that would be adverse to your health. Be conservative, in eating and everything you do. And have a little common sense.''
And we talked about his plans for his birthday.
``I'm going fishing that day, if I can,'' he said. He likes to sit level. Big waves rock the boat, sometimes even spilling his drink.
``If I don't catch a fish, it don't matter,'' he said.
Ed Manry knows that what matters most in life, as in fishing, is not so much what you get out of it but what you put into it. ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by JOHN H. SHEALLY II
Ed Manry, who will be 101 next week, gets a little help from a
magnifying glass to read the newspaper.
KEYWORDS: PROFILE by CNB