THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, February 19, 1996 TAG: 9602170056
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E3 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Larry Maddry
LENGTH: Medium: 75 lines
ON THURSDAY afternoon, as a cold front slipped into Hampton Roads and hinted at snow, I went grocery shopping with a friend.
We paused in the aisle to admire some foil-wrapped pots of daffodils. The daffodils were small islands of loveliness.
Unmindful of the shopping carts rolling past them, the tiny, frail blossoms trumpeted the approach of spring. Finding them among the canned and packaged goods was like bumping into a clutch of infant angels in a bowling alley.
The flowers reminded me of a touching reminiscence by Charles Kuralt, contained in his new book ``Charles Kuralt's America'', published by Putnam. Turned out that Kuralt is a good friend of Granville Hall, who grows daffodils on a two-acre spread up in Gloucester.
A couple of years back, Hall sent Kuralt a shipment of daffodil bulbs labeled by name. Into the shipment he had tucked a paper bag sealed with staples containing two special bulbs.
``When I opened the bag, a label fell out,'' Kuralt wrote. ``It said, `Narcissus Charles Kuralt.''' It took him several minutes to realize it wasn't a joke. Granville had named a daffodil for him.
Hall had raised the bulb from seed and registered it with the Royal Horticultural Society. It had come from seeds found by a famous botanist in New Zealand.
Unlike most daffodil varieties on file with the International Daffodil Registrar in London, which are the results of careful hybridizing , the one named for Kuralt had been conceived by a bee, a spider or the wind. Kuralt refers to the daffodil bearing his name as a ``love child.''
Kuralt waited like an expectant father for the daffodil to bloom. One morning it opened in the garden of his Connecticut home. Here is his description:
``From the midst of its creamy white petals arose a trumpet of pale yellow with a feathery lemon-yellow fringe. The flower faced the sun demurely but with what I thought was a certain confidence. Well, it seemed to say, `Here I am. What do you think?'''
Each bulb yielded two blooms. Bursting with pride, Kuralt walked to the knoll where they grew several times each day to be sure they were all right.
For the return drive to his home in New York, he cut the namesake daffodils, placed them in a glass of water and wedged it into the passenger seat.
During a stop at a gas station, the station attendant glanced inside the car and said, ``Nice flowers.'' He wanted to tell the man the whole story but merely said ``Thanks.''
The daffodils had been a retirement gift. Kuralt received plenty of other awards when he left CBS, but nothing has compared with the honor Hall has shown him with the Charles Kuralt Daffodil.
When I phoned Hall on Friday morning, he asked if we had gotten any snow. ``We've already gotten two inches here in Gloucester,'' he said. He mentioned that Kuralt had honored him by naming a patch of woods near his Connecticut home ``Granville's Woods.''
Hall reminded me that there were only three Charles Kuralt bulbs in the world. He sent two of them to Kuralt. The one Hall kept was struck by a shovel and has not bloomed yet.
``I hope it does this spring,'' he said. ``If it does, I'm going to enter it into the Gloucester Daffodil Show. If it wins a blue ribbon, I'm going to send it to him.''
Hall said he's been the subject of two Kuralt ``On the Road'' pieces. Kuralt just showed up at the flower grower's home one morning, looming large in a field of peonies. They've been friends ever since.
Kuralt says when his namesake daffodils multiply, he intends to give bulbs to his two daughters. He hopes those bulbs will multiply as well, and brighten the gardens of his grandchildren.
``I guess that's not immortality, but it's as close as I will ever get,'' he said. by CNB