Live Out The String Is Best We Can Do

On September 10th Gertrude Noone died at the ripe old age of 110. On the following day Gertrude Baines, touted as America's oldest living person, passed away at 115 years old. On September 4th former Austrian politician Franz Olah died at 99. Famous Greek athlete Christos Vartzakis died at 98 on September 7th, and American herpetologist Henry Sheldon Fitch was 99 when he died on September 8th. On July 24th, in the midst of a scorching hot summer day, I stood at the graveside of Connor Wyatt Thoe and listened to Reverend Greg Smith deliver the last rites for a one-month old baby while sweat trickled down my back and legs. The tears that dripped from my eyes blended with the sweat on my face. Connor was born June 16th, far too premature to have much of a chance at survival, but his struggle for life for the little more than a month he lived was inspiring. He was the first child of Corey and Lynsie Thoe, two people I have known since they were children themselves and who I think very highly of. My opinions of them only improved immensely after seeing how the young married couple dealt with their son's situation and eventual death. Standing next to my own son Brian Gupton and his fiance Tiffanie Hatley at the gravesite this past July, I happened to look down at a small headstone for a "Baby Boy Bryan" whose dates of birth and death resulted in him having survived only one day. This unnamed child was born on January 23, 1918, to L.Z. and Clara Bryan and died the following day. L.Z. Bryan, the longtime head football coach at Brazoswood High School who coached the Buccaneers to their only state championship, was more than likely this unfortunate little baby's brother. L.Z. Bryan, the very successful football coach, passed away this summer as an octogenarian. My father, who was born in 1921 in his parents' West Columbia home, told me when I was growing up that he had a brother that died after living only a few days. This Gupton baby boy was born sometime between my father's 1921 birth and my Aunt Ruby's 1914 birth. Just like the child of L.Z. and Clara Bryan that died in 1918, the son of S.M. and Eula Gupton that died several days after his birth was never given a name. My parents told me when I was a kid that there were not many doctors and even fewer hospitals in the West Columbia area when they were born, so infant deaths were not uncommon in that era. But losing a baby in today's world, what with the advancements in medical technology and the abundance of hospitals in the Houston region, is almost unheard of. I guess Connor would not have survived as long as he did without having the best treatment modern medicine can offer. But that is little comfort to his parents and many other family members who grieved so hard over his death along with me and my son and future daughter-in-law this past summer. My wife and I have said to each other many, many times over the years that we can handle almost anything life throws at us, but the one thing each of us agrees we could not survive would be the death of one of our children. We were blessed with three healthy baby boys and adopted another one. We consider ourselves extremely lucky, especially after having so many close friends be forced to come to grips with the reality of what Peggy and I deem the worst possible thing that could happen to us. My brother Cody and I first had to cope with the death of a playmate when each of us was very young. Our family still lived in Markham, south of Bay City, Texas, when Jimmy Wendt died when he was a young child. I don't remember much about him now, because that was so long ago, but I do recall that Jimmy always had trouble breathing and was a wan, sickly little boy. He died about the same time my father's father passed away from emphysema in the early 1960s. I was only four years old when I lost my grandfather. My mother told me after I was grown that I used to write letters to Jimmy Wendt and Bussie (the name my brother and I called our grandfather, whose nickname was Buff but Cody mispronounced it and I simply copied my big brother) when I was first learning to write. She said I would place the little letters on the dinner table at night for the angels to pick up and carry to Heaven, sort of the ultimate air mail. My mother would gather the letters and hide them somewhere, telling me that the angels took my letters to Jimmy and Bussie. The next time a baby's death came into my sentience in my childhood days was when President Kennedy and his wife Jacqueline lost their baby son Patrick shortly after he was born. News of the infant's death was aired on our family's black-and-white TV in August, 1963, and I can just imagine how I bombarded my mother and father with questions about why did the President's baby boy have to die. I still ask that question today, as it pertains to babies, children and teenagers. An acceptable answer has yet to surface. I knew since my childhood that Elvis Presley, who shared the same birthday as me (I was born on January 8, 1957, the same day Elvis was celebrating his 22nd birthday), had a twin brother that died at birth. But it was only recently, when news of Michael Jackson's death this past summer was all over the airwaves, did I learn that Michael's older brother Marlon Jackson was also born a twin. Marlon, who is the same age I am, survived but his twin brother did not. I used to work with a man named Gary Smith who told me about his baby son dying a few days after he was born. Gary, who raised two daughters with his wife Sandy, said they brought their baby son home from the hospital and he took home movies of the two of them playing with their newborn son. According to Gary, after the child died the Smiths put the film of their baby boy away and never watched it again. My former coworker told me that nearly 30 years had passed since his son's death and he and Sandy still could not look at the movies they had taken of him. When I was a kid growing up in West Columbia there were two tragic events that occurred in town involving the deaths of small children. I went to Sunday School at the Methodist church in West Columbia and our preacher during my childhood years was Reverend Neff. He and his wife had twin sons that were a couple years older than me, and two older sons who were in high school when I was in elementary school. They also had another son who was several years younger than me. I can still remember the shock waves that traveled across town with the news that the youngest Neff boy, who hadn't even started school yet, was found hanging by a rope from a tree limb in the backyard of the Methodist parsonage next door to the church. The horrible sadness that accompanied the news of the Neff boy's accidental hanging was equaled in the same time frame (actual years and dates for these occurrences escape me) of my younger years when the Kirksey's youngest son was run over on the highway by an 18-wheeler one tragic morning. Steve and Mark Kirksey were both quite a bit older than me, but their baby brother J.J. was, like the Neff boy that died, several years younger than me. The story, as I recall it from my childhood, was that the Kirksey boys had a dog that followed Mark and Steve out to the highway outside of West Columbia when the older Kirksey boys went to catch the school bus to town. Their little brother J.J. went into the road to retrieve his family's dog after the older boys had left on the bus. The driver of the 18-wheeler came flying around a curve and was unable to avoid hitting the little Kirksey boy and killed him. Thinking that life was going to be a bed of rose petals and that I could somehow be insulated from all of the tragedy and horror (as Marlon Brando dubbed it in "Apocalypse Now") that was lying ahead waiting for me was very naive, I must admit, but I did go through most of the early years of my life feeling like I was somehow immune to it all. Little boys were dying around me left and right, but I never thought any harm would come to me. Having my brother's friend Phil Baker killed in a horrible pasture mowing accident when he was about 15 and losing my cousin Danny Louis Broadway at the age of 26 from post-Vietnam mental trauma shook me out of that unreal state of mind. Welcome to reality, young man! Life is not easy; it never was and never will be. Like the old T-shirts used to say: "Life is a bitch, then you die!" The deaths of West Columbia children John Garrett Conaway at the age of six in 1987 to cancer, Rob Tosch at a young age while playing with the Miska boys, Lorie Tolbert's young son from lifelong health issues who died when he was about three, and John Andrew Duque (left) at the age of 16 in a 1996 car wreck really hit home with me, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually. The culmination of all of these young people's deaths was just too much for me to take. I shook my clinched fists at the sky and asked God how could He allow these horrible things to happen? Why didn't He intervene? There was no reply from the sky. But I think I have received an answer. In a roundabout way. The other day I was conversing in my driveway with my son Bret's girlfriend Kristen Raasch about my plans to write this story. I told her how the combined effect of trying to absorb the tragic demise of so many young people in our community over the years had eroded my spiritual faith in the Lord above. My statement to Kristen that Connor Thoe's recent death after a one month struggle to survive had been the topper, leaving me somewhat empty in my spiritual tank. Her reply was that she was deeply spiritual and always had been. She lost an aunt to cancer at an early age. Her mother's brother Greg Kresta was left with small children to raise following the death of his wife and Kristen witnessed this struggle within her own family structure firsthand. Instead of reducing her faith in her Lord, the death of her aunt only made her faith that much stronger. I found this driveway conversation with a 23-year-old uplifting and put me in "rethink mode" about how I view this dilemma of having lost so many children to premature deaths in my own little world, from my childhood right up to the present. What really strengthens my faith in God in the aftermath of all of these deaths of beautiful young people has nothing to do with me at all, really. It is what I have seen with my own two eyes when it comes to how the parents and siblings of those children whose lives were snuffed out like so many candles blowing in the wind rebound and pull themselves up by their bootstraps in order to carry on with what is left of their lives. That is what I have found the most inspiring. Johnny and Suzanne Duque inspire me. Rich and Cookie Tillman inspire me. Debbie and Jimmy Harris inspire me. Gene and Linda Hightower definitely inspire me. And the list goes on, and on. I thank all of these fellow West Columbians for the living, walking, breathing models each of them has provided people such as myself who are in search of good Christian role models.

A few nights ago my wife Peggy and I were dining at one of the local restaurants in West Columbia when our good friends Rich and Cookie Tillman came in. Peggy and Cookie embraced and shared pleasantries while I talked with Rich a little bit. The truth is I find it very difficult to converse with the Tillmans as I did years ago, simply because I am well aware of what an intense and drawnout tragic ordeal they had to live with for so long while their daughter Jeannie was battling brain cancer. We sat with the Tillmans at Kyle Field in College Station a few years ago, watching our sons participate in Aggie Corps of Cadets' marching routines. My son Bret was a junior at Texas A&M when Jimmy Tillman was a freshman. Jeannie was sitting with her parents that day in College Station, wearing a large hat to conceal her hair loss from chemo treatments she had been subjected to because of her cancer. I wore an Aggie cap to conceal the baldness that is a result of genetics and Father Time. Jeannie was an honor graduate from Columbia High School, Class of 2004, having finished fifth in her class. She attempted to attend college while struggling to beat the brain cancer that was an unwanted visitor into her busy life. She is pictured above and her graduation photo is below. It was so very difficult to watch Jeannie battle her disease. Why do these things have to happen to the very best of our society, to the most gifted and intelligent young people? Questions I ask now had to have been posed millions of times in the past by the parents of such children, who no doubt asked time and time and time again . . . why me? Those questions can not be answered.

Terminal cancer does not discriminate. It strikes humans of all ages and races. Next to car wrecks, which take loved ones from us with such quick and heartless abandon, a diagnosis of terminal cancer is the ultimate reality check. Far too many people I have known and cared deeply about in my five decades of living have received that death notice in the form of a doctor's bedside chat. Quoting Tim McGraw from one of his most popular hit songs: "I spent most of the next days, looking at the X-rays . . . talking about sweet time." It is that "sweet time" that whooshes by much too rapidly for, not only the cancer victim, but for those of us who love them and must come to the realization that we will have to go on with our lives without them. I will never forget the day my wife and sons Bret and Blake were eating lunch at the Chili's restaurant in Angleton when our waitress, Erika Wilbanks, informed us that her sister Ashleigh and her boyfriend Slade Edling had gotten engaged. With the next breath Erika was slamming the door on that good news with a sour dose of truly tragic news. Less than a couple weeks after getting engaged, Slade found out that he had brain cancer. Ashleigh and my son Bret are the same age and went to school together from daycare through their senior year in high school. The same goes for Erika and my youngest son Blake. They are also the same age. Slade Edling, the son of Thomas and Rita Edling of West Columbia, was a year or two older than my oldest son Brian. He played Little League with Brian and was on the Columbia Roughnecks baseball team when our good friend Corey Thoe was playing. We all kicked the prayers into higher gear for Slade and kept him in our thoughts throughout his lengthy battle with the malignant brain tumor that would eventually kill him before he was 30. The last time I saw Slade was at a fundraiser at The Armadillo Ballroom near Brazoria his family and friends had put on to help raise money for Slade's ever-rising hospital bills. He was confined to a wheelchair at that time. But his fiance, Ashleigh Wilbanks, was there at his side throughout the battle. Slade and Ashleigh are pictured below. Charles Wilbanks, a close friend of mine since the two of us were in the first and second grade together, have worked together at a local refinery for the past 20 years. His children and mine have grown up together and we are all practically like family. So it was extra painful to hear Charles tell me at work this past week about what a rough time his daughter Ashleigh had getting through the day on September 19th. Charles said that was the day Slade and Ashleigh were supposed to get married. The engagement ring is still worn on Ashleigh's finger, but because of his fatal bout with brain cancer, Slade will be to Ashleigh for the rest of her life what John D. Eddleman has been to my sister Kelli. They can merely think about what might have been, cling to their faith and move on with their young lives.

My high school classmate and longtime good friend Vernon Ray Mack and his wife Jessie also lost a son to brain cancer. Justin Mack was only 12 years old and a sixth grader at Brazoria Intermediate School when brain cancer claimed his life. Justin is survived by his twin sister Janine and older sister Kirby. I attended the funeral for Justin Mack and have to rank it as one of the most difficult and heartbreaking I have ever sat through. My cousin Gary Broadway's daughter Courtney was a classmate of Justin's and Janine's. Courtney had wanted to read a poem she had written for Justin at his funeral but when the time came her emotions got the better of her and Courtney struggled to stem the flow of tears and finish the poem. I found myself wiping away my own tears that flowed unchecked while I watched the black preacher who was standing near my young cousin place his arm around her and give her someone to cling to as she finished reading her poem in honor of her deceased friend. And when my buddy Vernon took the microphone at the close of his son's funeral, I was deeply moved to hear him thank everyone who had meant so much to Justin in his son's time of need.

Another pair of good friends, Debbie and Jimmy Harris, have also lost a son to brain cancer. Kent Harris fought the same gallant struggle to survive in the face of difficult odds when he, like Justin Mack and Slade Edling, died much too young. I coached Kent's younger brother Josh Harris in Little League baseball when he and my son Bret were eight and nine years old. And Debbie Harris is someone I have looked up to and thought very highly of since I was a kid and she (Debbie Gilbert back in those days) and my cousin Denise Gupton were best friends. My heart breaks to think of what the parents and siblings and other family members of Kent Harris, Justin Mack, Jeannie Tillman and Slade Edling went through while these young men endured the ravages of cancer. Knowing they are all able to continue with their respective lives encourages me to put my trivial personal issues behind me and carry on with my own life, for anyone who has had to deal with the loss of a child has already survived my worst fear. I just don't know if I could do the same if that similar tragedy occurred in the lives of my wife and I.

One of the most touching events I have ever witnessed was when Janine Aubrey Mack graduated from Columbia High School a couple years ago. I was seated with my wife not too far away from where Vernon and Jessie Mack were sitting. Vernon, who was one of my best friends when we were in high school together, released a handful of balloons into the night sky at Griggs Field when his daughter's name was announced and he watched her receive her diploma. That night an empty chair was placed near the front of the assembly of graduates in honor of Janine's twin brother Justin. Without even realizing it at the time, I had tears streaming down my cheeks as I witnessed Vernon Mack acknowledging his lost little boy at the same time he and his wife celebrated the accomplishment of their daughter. It was extremely touching.

The morning I learned of John Duque's death at the age of 16 in a head-on collision near Brazoria the previous day is one of those moments in time that seem forever frozen in my brain. People often say they will always remember where they were and what they were doing at the exact moment they learned of the assassination of President Kennedy and the death of popular entertainment icons like Elvis Presley and John Lennon. That applies to me as well, but I also have burned into my memory bank what I was doing and the entire setting around me when I lost important people in my own little world. John Duque, pictured at right in the last yearbook photo he would take, was one of those people. His mother and father, Suzanne and Johnny Duque, have been for a very long time, in my personal opinion, templates of what really good people should be like. There are others in my viewpoint who also fit this description, but when I think of the title of that book that was on the best seller's list a couple decades ago, "When Bad Things Happen To Good People," I think of the Duques.

And Rich and Cookie Tillman. And Carroll Conaway and his ex-wife. Vernon and Jessie Mack. Thomas and Rita Edling. Jimmy and Debbie Harris. Bobby Tosch and his wife. Gary and Sandy Smith. Lorie Tolbert and her husband. All very good people. And all people I know who have lost children, kids who never got the chance to grow up and become adults. Lives interrupted long before they should have. Why? If any of us knew the answer to that question . . .

Marc Cohn, one of my favorite singers and songwriters whose biggest hit was "Walking In Memphis," survived being shot in the head in a bizarre carjacking incident in Denver, Colorado, several years ago. Cohn and his band had just finished a concert in the Mile High City and were exiting the venue where they had played their set when a man ran up to their van and demanded that the driver stop. Instead the driver hit the gas in an effort to avoid the robbery attempt and the gunman fired his pistol into the van. The bullet grazed the skull of Marc Cohn, who was sitting in the backseat of the van. The Grammy winning singer was rushed to a Denver hospital where he was treated and released. This death escaping incident motivated Cohn to write a song entitled "Live Out The String," which was included on his most recent CD, "Join The Parade," which was released in 2007.

Lyrics of "Live Out The String" come about as close to defining my personal beliefs pertaining to the deaths of children, not only babies, kids and teenagers, but the deaths of everyone of any age. It's all really a crap shoot, a mere roll of the dice. It's the cards each of us were dealt. Call it fate, call it destiny, refer to it however you like. But in the end, none of us can ever avoid getting the call to meet our maker when it is our time.

"It's only natural, maybe superstitious to try and find, the meaning in beating the odds, 'cause sometimes you gotta (get down on your knees), and thank the whole wide universe of gods for letting you live out the string, a little longer boy. Raise your voice and make a joyful noise. Ain't no guarantee of anything. Live out the string. Now that a meteorite has fallen in the chair you just got out of to answer the phone, will you live every moment like it just might be your last, or will you still just bitch and moan?" So go some of the lyrics to Marc Cohn's song "Live Out The String."

Half of those pictured below are no longer with us. My mother, Verna Giesler Gupton, and her older sister, Yvonne Giesler Broadway, were both victims of cancer. They each lived long, full lives, although none of us who loved them were ready to let them go when they passed away, but the death of John Duane Eddleman when he was hardly out of his teen years was a crushing blow to all who loved him. John D. is pictured standing alongside my older brother, Cody Gupton, and our Aunt Yvonne, and my mother Verna holds Brandy Gloor while seated beside Brandy's father and John D.'s brother-in-law, John "Stormy" Gloor. And Jeannie Tillman is pictured above playing the flute during her high school days in West Columbia. John D. and Jeannie were about the same age when both were taken from us much too soon.

My wife Peggy and I both graduated from high school in West Columbia in 1975. I would bet good money that our graduating class lost more classmates in automobile accidents during our four years in high school than any other in school history. That is a record we would much rather concede to another graduating class if we could somehow reclaim all of those lost young lives. Today we can take walks down memory lane by thumbing through the pages of our high school yearbooks and pointing out all of those friends who did not have the luxury of living long enough to take the walk in cap and gown on graduation night with us. It definitely affected my psyche during my teenaged years when I--like all of my classmates at Columbia High School--got to the point where I found myself asking, "Who will be next?" And, of course, hoping that it would not be me. Car wrecks took the lives of several beautiful young girls I had an eye for in my high school days. The senselessness of it all, combined with the surreal atmosphere we grew up in, created by our being so young and thrust into a new awareness of the ugliness life presented during the era of the Vietnam War and only a few years removed from the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy, Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King, Jr., seemed to constantly kick us while we were down. Memories of my high school days are now sharply focused on simply wanting to click my heels like Judy Garland and be somewhere, anywhere else but where I was. Sadness was a constant state of mind because of the deaths of so many classmates.

But I did not take any of these tragic deaths of high school friends nearly as hard as I did the loss of my college roommate when I was attending Sam Houston State University in Huntsville. My first semester at Sam Houston I shared a two bedroom apartment with my cousin Billy Jenn, Isidro Valdez and John D. Eddleman. Isidro and I shared a bedroom while Billy and John D. shared the other. John D., who was engaged to my sister Kelli at the time, was a member of the Sam Houston Rodeo Team. On the night of December 1, 1978, he competed in the bull riding at a rodeo in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Later that night, after the rodeo, John D. was killed when the pickup truck he was a passenger in rolled over several times. My college roommate was ejected from the truck and killed when the pickup rolled over his body.

John D., as everybody called him, was like family to me. He was the younger brother of Sherry Gloor. She and her husband, John "Stormy" Gloor, remain very close to my immediate family today, as do their two daughters, Brandy and Mandy. So the death of John D. Eddleman near the end of our fall 1978 semester at Sam Houston State was truly life altering. For my sister Kelli more than for me, but his passing at 19 or 20 years of age remains among the saddest ordeals I have ever had to endure.

My younger sister Kelli is pictured above on her graduation night in 1978 with our grandmother, Pauline Giesler, and John Duane Eddleman, Kelli's boyfriend at the time. A tragic automobile accident would claim John D.'s life on December 1, 1978. He was a sophomore at Sam Houston State University and my college roommate at the time of his death. Jamie Dungy, pictured below looking at his mother Lauren prior to his and younger brother Eric's baptism, was a freshman in college when he took his own life two weeks prior to his nineteenth birthday.

In his 2007 autobiography "Quiet Strength," Tony Dungy addressed the December 22, 2004, suicide of his eldest son James. Unfortunately, Tony and Lauren Dungy received that late night phone call that my wife Peggy and I have always dreaded and feared to receive. A call telling us that one of our children has died. "For reasons that will never be fully known, Jamie had taken his own life," Tony Dungy writes in his book. "Lauren and I weren't sure how we'd get through this, but we recognized that we were going to have to cling to God's strength and love if we were going to have a chance."

Our good friends Gene and Linda Hightower of West Columbia have been in this situation and walked the same path of extreme grief that Tony and Lauren Dungy walked during the Christmas holidays five years ago. The Hightowers' son also took his own life. I shared their grief and pray that my wife and I never have to experience the throes of such extreme sorrow that the Dungys and Hightowers went through. It takes a special man or woman to find the inner strength within them in order to survive having to bury your own child. Those with a strong faith predicated on their sincere beliefs that Heaven exists and one day all of them, mother, father, brothers and sisters, will all be reunited for the Hereafter with their lost child and sibling, seem to have a better chance of dealing with the tragedy.

Tony Dungy was told by a chaplain of an NFL team he had once been associated with following his son Jamie's suicide, "Life will never be the same again, but you won't always feel like you do right now." James Dungy ended his own life just two weeks shy of his nineteenth birthday, during his freshman year in college. His father writes in "Quiet Strength" that those words were uttered to him by Tom Lamphere, the chaplain for the Minnesota Vikings at that time, as the two men stood at James Dungy's open casket. "That is when it really started to sink in and become real," Dungy wrote. "I'm never going to see him again."

Today I often see Johnny and Suzanne Duque, Rich and Cookie Tillman, Corey and Lynsie Thoe, Vernon and Jessie Mack, and others who are friends of mine. Tony Dungy retired as head coach of the Indianapolis Colts at the end of last season. He is now highly visible on television as one of NBC's studio talking heads on Sunday Night Football. All of these people who have moved on with their lives are strong Christian human beings. Each of them has that common thread that binds them together. They have all lost a child at an early age. My heart breaks for each of them. Those who live in and around my hometown of West Columbia, I see often and never fail to wave and say hello. But for the most part, conversations about their lost children are nonexistent. I can imagine what it must be like to have experienced what they did. So I feel like none of them need constant reminders, even if my intent is only to express that I love them and want them to know that I think about them often. It is just too difficult to talk about. That is a given.

Tony Dungy said in his book that he spoke to the large crowd that had assembled in Tampa, Florida, for his son Jamie's funeral five years ago. Among the things he said at the funeral was this, which I think every parent should take to heart: "Parents, hug your kids--every chance you get. Tell them that you love them every chance you get. You don't know when it's going to be the last time."

Former Indianapolis Colts head coach Tony Dungy, left, is pictured with his two sons, Eric, center, and James, in a photo taken in 2004 on Thanksgiving Day. The Dungy family can relate to others who have lost a child at an early age. James Dungy committed suicide less than a month after this photo was taken.