SURRENDER LUNCH

I admit to having contracted the genealogy bug. As a matter of fact, I am badly infected. But if there’s a cure somewhere out there, I don’t want to get well.

A few years ago, I discovered I am related to one of the Mayflower passengers, Richard Warren. And at about the same time, I discovered a list of his descendants; more famous than he could have ever hoped to be.

Ernest Hemingway, Franklin Roosevelt, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Richard Gere, Ulysses S. Grant.

Speaking of the latter of the five, even if you are a passing student of history, I expect you are aware that he was the final commanding General of the Union Army during the American Civil War. (Yeah. He was).

Among all my famous cousins ole Ulysses is my favorite, at least my most thought about; (in spite of the fact that I am a Southerner by birth). But it’s not for no reason this is the case.

You see, my best guy friend (Dennis S.) is descended from (drum roll) the final commanding General of the Confederate Army Robert E. Lee. I mean “go figure.” Almost like our personal little “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” scenario. (Don’t ya think)?

Funny, how history falls together, and how a single decision might have irrevocably changed the accounts in our textbooks. I previously wrote a reflection on the German dictator Adolph Hitler. He had applied for acceptance at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. In spite of the obvious quality of his paintings, he was rejected. Had one man decided in his favor, we might remember Hitler as a world-renowned artist, rather than, well, the way we remember him. What might have been.

The same historical irony accompanied General Robert E. Lee. He had been offered command of the Union Army by President Abraham Lincoln. He considered it, but opted for command of the Confederate Army instead. Who can say whether this great grandson-in-law of President Washington might have, in short order, led the stronger Union Army to victory?

After the war, General Grant went on to be elected President of the United States. After the war, General Lee went on to be appointed President of Washington-Lee College. While, to my knowledge, no photo exists of the April 1865 surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia, there is a single picture of Grant and Lee commensurating together; just four years after the conclusion of the war.

Dennis and I jokingly refer to one another as “Gen. Grant” and “Gen. Lee.” We break bread on a monthly basis, and I have referred to this recurring opportunity for camaraderie as our “Surrender Lunch.” However, unlike the original Civil War surrender ceremony, nobody wins.

Well, come to think of it, I guess we both win.

By William McDonald, PhD. From (Mc)Donald's Daily Diary. Vol. 78. Copyright pending

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JOSEPH RING'S CONVULUTED LIFE

By Wilson Ring THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

*His testimony at the Salem Witch Trials and his death at the stake

ELIOT, Maine— An L-shaped cellar hole still marks the site of the Neale Garrison, built in the mid-1600s a quarter-mile uphill from the Piscataqua River. Somewhere near here 302 years ago, an ancestor of mine was burned at the stake.

I visited the garrison’s remains as part of a quest to learn as much as I could about the final hours of Joseph Ring — my six-times-great-grandfather.

Along the way, I’ve confirmed quite a bit about his life: that he fought in some of America’s earliest Indian wars, that he gave some curious testimony at the Salem witch trials which helped hang a woman, and that, yes, he, too, came to an untimely end.

Unfortunately, he seems to have left no letters or diaries behind. But my quest put me in closer touch with a cousin, and together we shed light on stories passed down over the years and made some new discoveries about our distant relative.

It was in 1638 that Joseph Ring’s father, Robert, emigrated from England to the new world as a 24-year-old indentured servant.

A barrel maker, Robert eventually became a solid middle-class member of Massachusetts society, and the area of land he owned, near where the Merrimack River empties into the Atlantic Ocean, is still known as Ring’s Island.

Joseph Ring was born Aug. 3, 1664, in Salisbury, Mass., to Robert and his wife, Elizabeth Jarvis.

The boy, whose life would become a series of entanglements with history, was 11 when King Philip’s War broke out. This was the first of a series of on-again, off-again wars between the English settlers on the one side and the Indians and their French allies on the other, that would last almost 100 years.

Today we can reinterpret the Indian wars as a clash of competing cultures which the Europeans were destined to win. But 17th-century settlers living at the edge of English civilization didn’t know if they would survive.

“Northern New Englanders faced an unknown enemy that seemingly appeared from nowhere, struck with devastating force and just as quickly disappeared,” said Cornell University history professor Mary Beth Norton, one of many academics who helped me trace my ancestor.

She said some readers of her 2002 book, “In the Devil’s Snare,” which linked the witch trials to the Indian wars on the frontier, compared the fear of Indians then to the terror following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

In Joseph Ring’s time, all able-bodied men served in local militias; volunteers were recruited for expeditions, or garrison duty on the frontier.

“The recruits tended to be younger, unattached types, who could use a few dollars and enjoyed an adventure,” said Emerson “Tad” Baker, chairman of the history Department at Salem (Mass.) State College.

Ring fit the profile. He was part of an expedition in 1690 as New Hampshire Capt. Shadrach Walton tried to relieve Fort Loyal, a stockade in Casco, now Portland, where about 200 inhabitants had been besieged by 500 Indians and French soldiers.

The four-vessel expedition arrived too late.

Ring and the others found the town burning after the Indians killed most of the settlers who had surrendered and been promised safe passage by the French commander.

The Indians “wreaked their vengeance unchecked,” reported the 1897 “Border Wars of New England” by Samuel Drake. “After plundering the fort the invaders set it on fire, and it was soon burned to the ground, leaving Casco untenanted, save by the unburied bodies of the slain.”

Most of what we know about Ring came from two affidavits he gave in 1692. They describe Ring’s role in the ill-fated expedition to Fort Loyal and provide other glimpses into his activities and possibly his state of mind.

In the statements, Ring describes a meeting that appears to have changed his life. In a tavern in Great Island, N.H., on the way to relieve Casco he met a man named Thomas Hardy, who invited Ring to play shuffleboard. Ring didn’t have any money, but Hardy lent him two shillings. Ring lost.

Over the next year, Ring was terrorized by Hardy, who kept demanding his money. Ring described a series of bizarre, dreamlike encounters with his nemesis and others. In one, Ring “was scared out of his wits by a fireball and ‘the dreadfull noyse & hideous shapes of these creaturs,’ ” Baker wrote, quoting words attributed to my ancestor.

Joseph Ring was possessed by demons, the Puritan minister Cotton Mather would write in a 1693 account justifying the witch trials. The young militiaman, he claimed, was struck dumb by a woman who was present when he met Hardy, a widow named Susannah Martin.

In 1692, Ring gave testimony during Martin’s trial in Salem that he had been drinking cider with Martin, another woman and Hardy before a roaring fire. Martin, he said, transformed herself into a pig.

She was hanged on July 19, 1692.

It took a while for me to come to terms with the reality that my ancestor contributed to the Salem witch trials, an event in American history that still horrifies and fascinates many.

How could he, like others, turn against his neighbors?

It may be that a modern concept — post-traumatic stress — helps explain Ring’s strange and fateful claims. He surely absorbed a terror of Indian attacks, not just because of his militia experience, but family experience, as well.

His wife, Mary Brackett, came from a family that was one of the first to settle the area now known as Portland. As a 12-year-old girl, she and some relatives had been taken captive by a party of Indian raiders and marched into the wilderness before they escaped in a canoe. Later, in separate incidents, her grandparents, father and brother were killed.

The so-called Brackett Lane Massacre in Rye, N.H., in which several of Mary Brackett’s relatives died at the hands of an Indian raiding party, came close to the time of one bizarre encounter between Ring and Hardy — and Norton thinks that’s significant.

Norton believes Ring’s experiences along the frontier contributed to his testimony against Susannah Martin.

“Joseph Ring is a great example of a frontier resident who was terrified by the threat posed by the Indian war ...,” said Norton. “Although he appeared as a witness against Susannah Martin, he seemed far more concerned about the Indians and the demons he saw aligned with them than with Goody Martin.”

Norton turns out to be an indirect descendant of Susannah Martin. And I’ve learned, ironically, so is my cousin, Franz Martin.

He lives in Los Angeles and spends much of his free time in the genealogy section of the public library, going through old town and family histories or rolling through microfilm records of Colonial New England.

He has mined a number of tidbits. In the fall of 1703, Massachusetts placed a bounty on Indian scalps and sent out three raiding parties on snowshoes to keep their adversaries off balance. Joseph Ring is not on a list of Massachusetts soldiers from what was called Queen Anne’s War. But it’s possible he was an off-the-books soldier, perhaps a bounty hunter, seeking to avenge his family’s losses.

In any event, on Jan. 28, 1704, Indians attacked the Neale Garrison, and settlers fought them off with help from soldiers stationed nearby. A 1726 history of the early Indian wars by Samuel Penhallow said nine attackers were killed.

The losses so enraged the Indians, Penhallow wrote, “that at their return they executed their revenge on Joseph Ring, who was then a Captive among them, whom they fastened to a Stake and burnt alive; barbarously shouting and rejoicing at his cries.”

We still don’t know when, why or how Ring was made captive.

Three hundred years later, many people are surprised when I tell them the story of my ancestor who was burned at the stake after testifying in the Salem witch trials.

Some see his end as a fitting comeuppance. I don’t think so. I’ve come to believe that Ring was a victim of the times he lived in.

Still, the fragments we have on Joseph Ring might be compared to the jawbone a paleontologist hopes to use to build a complete skeleton. My cousin Franz and I continue to dig.

*Wilson Ring, the writer, is a distant relative of mine, and Joseph Ring was my 8th great Uncle

A CASKET MADE FOR THREE. Pt. 1 of 2

Billy Graham left us a few days ago. His song leader, Cliff Barrows preceded him by a couple of years. His vocalist, George Beverly Shea went on to his heavenly reward several years prior to that. They lived to be the grand old age(s) of 99, 93 and 104, respectively. I think God honored this ministry trio with exceptionally long lives.

Billy Graham preached an Easter sunrise service at a local park on the outskirts of Bartow, Florida sometime in the early 60’s; less than 2/3 of a mile from my childhood home. While my mother attended, I, having little or no use for “the things of God” at the time, did not. I regret it now.

Rev. Graham is due to lie in state in that lovely chapel located on the grounds of the Billy Graham Library in Charlotte, North Carolina. And as February gives way to March he is scheduled to lay in state in the Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C. Of course, the good reverend ministered to a grand total of 13 of our nation’s presidents; from Truman to Trump.(However, based on the moral mediocrity of some, it is fair to say they were not all impacted at the same level).

I have watched George Beverly Shea’s funeral video on YouTube several times. And as the notables, including the Commandant of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and Shea’s wife and family, filed in they were proceeded by the casket in which he rested. A simple, but beautifully constructed pine casket.

Both Billy Graham and Cliff Barrows were in attendance that day; Barrows on the stage, and a rather frail Graham sitting with his son, left front.

And, lo and behold, when Cliff Barrows went on to be with the Savior, three years later, the container in which he would spend the remainder of his posthumous days on this planet was a virtual duplicate of his friend George Beverly Shea’s casket.

And as I looking at my social media page a few minutes ago, I happened on a photo of Billy Graham’s casket. Need I tell you that it is a triplicate of his two friends’ pine receptacles? (Well, it is).

Odd, I thought. Very odd, indeed. And then it occurred to me that the whole thing must have been premeditated.

Apparently, the trio agreed, in advance, to procure for themselves caskets of pine; (the most plenteous and least expensive wood in existence). And, interestingly enough, Shea and Barrows are earnestly ‘waiting’ for their dear friend Billy; since the former of the two are buried on the grounds of the Billy Graham Library.

Three men who were given the distinct opportunity and privilege of impacting multiplied millions with the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is estimated that 1 in 30 people living today, perhaps more, either attended, or viewed a Billy Graham Crusade on television. And who can say how many of that quarter of a billion souls came to a saving knowledge of the Savior?

And yet, for all the good they did, and the nobility of their offices before God, and among believers… they chose to rest in pine boxes. Did I mention that Rev. Billy’s casket was made by representatives of the prison population of Angola Prison in Louisiana? (Well, it was). And for all I know, these same prisoners made the previous two caskets before him.

Simple pine boxes built by members of what some might characterize as “the dregs of society.”

All three of these spiritual heroes were humble men. They say if you go around telling people you’re humble, you probably aren’t. Well, neither George Beverly, nor Cliff, nor Billy were prone to do that. They regarded themselves as servants, and they had the hearts of servants.

I think all three of these humble men would be real fine with the simple wooden caskets which were designed for them, and I think they would be just as fine with the kind of folks who so lovingly constructed them. For, after all, like their Master before them, they were sent to save the lost.

(Cont. - See Pt. 2)

By William McDonald, PhD. From (Mc)Donald's Daily Diary. Vol. 75. Copyright pending

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A CASKET MADE FOR THREE Pt. 2 of 2

*See Pt. 1

Their names are burned into the wood of Billy Graham's casket:

"Hand crafted by

"Richard Liggett

"Clifford Bowman"

Paul Krolowitz

They built it inside a small prison wood-working shop, tucked away from the main complex of America's largest maximum-security penitentiary. The three men were inmates: Liggett and Bowman sentenced to life for murder, Krolowitz serving more than 30 years for armed robbery.

The prison is formally named Louisiana State Penitentiary but everyone calls it "Angola"  built on land that was a slave plantation, home to thousands of people who were forcibly taken from Angola, their birth country in Africa.

Angola, with its 18,000-acre footprint in the Lower Mississippi Delta, houses men who have committed the most violent of crimes.

Most of the more than 5,600 inmates will die behind bars  either serving a life sentence or by execution.

In many cases, inmates' families cannot afford to have their remains shipped or to pay for a funeral. For years, Angola buried these prisoners inside crate-like boxes, not much sturdier than cardboard.

Sometimes, the home-made coffins fell apart.

A new warden decided that wouldn't do.

Dignity for the dead

A decade before Graham's ministry reached Angola, the prison was considered one of the toughest, bloodiest jails in the country.

Burl Cain, a new warden hired in 1995, is credited with expanding Angola's education and work training programs. His "moral rehabilitation" philosophy called for inmates to work unless they were physically unable and to practice spirituality or religion.

Cain himself chose Jesus. But, being a state-run facility, Angola had to welcome all religions.

Steeples and interfaith chapels went up. Some inmates became Christian music DJs at Angola's radio station. Others attended seminary.

The prison started a hospice end-of-life program for inmates to care for the aging and dying among them.

Angola also has its own burial ceremony. Prison ministers, graduates of Angola's seminary, lead a prayer service. Family and friends from outside the prison are invited to attend. A prisoner's body is carried by a horse-drawn carriage hearse to Point Lookout cemetery. Angola has two cemeteries now  the original Point Lookout is full.

During one of these burials, early in Cain's tenure, he stood at the foot of a prisoner's grave.

He watched as inmates began to lower the coffin into the ground. But the box, with the man's body inside, fell apart, remembers Gary Young, assistant warden at Angola who has worked at the prison for nearly 30 years.

Young said Cain believed that prisoners who died at Angola had paid their debt to society and deserved a dignified funeral service and proper burial.

Cain started a casket-building program at the prison  and he turned to an inmate known as "Grasshopper" to design a reliable casket.

Murder and life in prison

Richard Lee "Grasshopper" Liggett, the oldest of four children, grew up in Newton, Kansas, a small city about 25 miles north of Wichita.

He had a knack for mischief and occasionally ran away from home, said his brother John Liggett.

But, John said, mostly they lived a quiet life. The brothers would go to the dairy farm where their stepfather worked and help round up cows and wash milk bottles. At home, they counted train cars as they passed on a track near their house.

Before his time in prison, Richard Liggett wasn't a religious person, John Liggett said. Discussion of God or religion "just wasn't our thing," he said.

When John Liggett turned 17, he joined the Army and left Kansas. That same year, he'd later learn, his brother was charged with murder and kidnapping.

In 1971, 19-year-old Richard Liggett and another man were planning to rob a family late one Friday night, according to a news story from the Wichita Eagle. When they arrived on the family's farm, police told the newspaper, Liggett and 29-year-old Dwight Kafka killed a man, then held five members of the family hostage while trying to hide the man's body.

Both men were convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Liggett served the first three years of his sentence at Kansas' Hutchinson Correctional Facility. Then he was transferred to Angola.

There, he learned carpentry and leather-working, Liggett's brother told the Observer. In prison Richard picked up the nickname "Grasshopper"  he was so skinny, he could hide in the grass  and became a master carpenter in Angola's woodworking shop.

Building a casket took about three days. That's what Liggett was doing in 2005 when Franklin Graham came to Angola.

A simple casket

The Graham family has donated more than $200,000 to help build chapels and support prison ministry at Angola.

When Cain opened the prison gates to preachers like Franklin Graham, the change among prisoners was evident, says Young. "Moral rehabilitation," he said, is as much as about changing hearts for the good as it is teaching an Angola inmate a trade.

The prison wanted to host Billy Graham but by the early 2000s, the evangelist was unable to make the trip. His son Franklin, though, visited several times. So did his daughter Ruth.

A tour of Angola in 2005 took Franklin Graham to the woodworking shop, where he was moved by the simple dignity of the caskets and the inmates' care in building them.

According to Young, who was on the tour that day, Franklin said his father was a "simple man with a simple message," and would want to be laid to rest in a simple casket.

Franklin Graham asked Cain to have Angola carpenters make a casket for his mother, Ruth Bell Graham, and his father, and to burn the builders' names into the wood. The cost: $215 each. He declined Cain's offer to use a higher-grade wood for the Grahams.

Ruth Bell Graham died in June 2007 and was buried in one of the Angola caskets.

Richard Liggett didn't get to see the family receive the casket he'd built for her, or to see her funeral  he died three months earlier from lung and liver cancer.

Prison officials shipped Liggett's body to his family in Kansas. They sent with him a casket  one of the last ones Liggett had built before he was too sick to work in the shop.

John Liggett believes his brother's heart was changed at Angola because he went to church and heard a tale of redemption.

In a box of papers, discovered at their mother's house after Richard Liggett died, his brother found dozens of certificates from Angola. The papers show Liggett was active in church, studied the Bible and shared his religious views with other inmates.

"My brother," he said, "was probably saved by Billy Graham."

'The love of God'

As Liggett's health declined in 2005 and 2006, other inmates were brought in to help build the caskets. At least four other inmates, whose names aren't on Billy Graham's casket, had a hand in building it, said Young, the assistant warden.

David Bacon, convicted of murder in 1988 and sent to Angola to serve a life sentence, was one of them.

Bacon told the Observer he grew up estranged from his stepfather and mother. He didn't know his biological father until he was 12.

"This comes from hindsight: I was looking for love, guidance, acceptance, approval," Bacon said. "When you're young, you'll do anything to get it. I couldn't get that from my father."

Instead, Bacon filled his life with drugs and alcohol, he said. By age 24, he had no job and his wife had left him, taking their two young daughters.

In 1988, Bacon and his stepfather killed a man in Baton Rouge, according to court documents.

At Angola, he entered substance abuse counseling and Alcoholics Anonymous. He earned his GED, took public speaking courses and participated in anger management classes.

Prison was the unlikely place he found faith, Bacon said.

"I had never really had a relationship with God or Jesus," Bacon said. "But after a few years at Angola, I began to soul-search and make those changes."

In Billy Graham's preaching, Bacon heard a message of redemption, he said, and his newfound faith filled a hole in his heart he had barely realized was there.

Graham's teachings, Bacon said, showed him God wasn't looking down at him inside Angola with judgment.

"They showed us the love of God," Bacon said. "Nobody is beyond redemption. I've been redeemed."

Bacon was awarded clemency and released from Angola in December 2016. He lives in Mississippi and says he's established relationships with his brother, his two daughters  now 34 and 31  and four grandchildren. He has a job remodeling homes and says he's been thinking about trying to build caskets again.

On Wednesday, he watched television coverage of Graham lying in honor in the U.S. Capitol.

Bacon remembers the smoothness of the cabinet-grade plywood and the smell of the wood stain as he helped build Billy Graham's casket.

"It was," he says, "a great honor and a privilege."

(Maria David contributed.)

(c)2018 The Charlotte Observer (Charlotte, N.C.)

I'LL BE RIGHT BACK

*As Rev. Billy Graham lies in state in the Capitol Rotunda, following is a story about my interaction with one of his children.

Several years ago my wife and I attended a Ruth Graham seminar on the west coast of Florida. And as I recall, the multi-hour event included elective segments on any of a number of topics by a number of well-known speakers.

Well, for anyone who has known me very long, it should also “go without saying” that I didn’t drive an hour there, and an hour back, not to make Ruth Graham, the daughter of the famous evangelist, Billy Graham, my priority.

Apparently, one segment Jean and I attended finished early, and (also apparently) my wife got involved elsewhere, since I headed over to the main convention hall to get a “good seat.” And (you guessed it) Ruth Graham was scheduled next on the, well, schedule.

It can safely be said that I did, indeed, get a good seat since when I walked into the auditorium I found myself completely

… alone.

And since I had a few hundred seats from which to choose, I walked towards the front of the theater, and took a seat in the 3rd row, center. (I simply don’t sit on the first row of a theater, church, auditorium, or fill in the blank. Somehow, it seems a bit comforting, if that is the word, to have something in front of me, and not, as it were, to have my legs hanging out in midair).

At any rate, as I sat waiting for Ruth Graham to make her debut, who should appear but, (you guessed it)

… Ruth Graham.

Ruth, (if I may be so bold to call her by her given name) came striding across the floor from right stage towards the left, and had walked perhaps ten feet when she saw yours truly seated in Row 3, Center. Suddenly, the young lady, (younger than me, and definitely younger than she is now) stopped, and said,

“I’ll be right back!”

As I recall, I sheepishly responded with,

“Uh, Okay.”

The well-known daughter of an even better-known father. The never-to-be-well-known, except in his little corner of the world, pastoral counselor.

Interacting at that moment, at least, on the same level. (Well, to be fair she was up on a stage, but you see where I’m going). We momentarily engaged one another as if we were acquainted.

I refer to such scenarios as

“creating memories.”

And though, if you asked her, Ruth may have long since forgotten that momentary exchange,

… I never will.

By William McDonald, PhD. From (Mc)Donald's Daily Diary. Vol. 47. Copyright pending

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WADDLING OUT THE DOOR

Once there was a pleasant little town, much like many other pleasant little towns, but this one was populated by ducks. There were white ducks, yellow ducks, green ducks, multi-colored ducks; ducks of every size and age. And everywhere they went… they waddled. They waddled here. They waddled there. They waddled everywhere. And when Sunday came, they waddled to the duck church, and sat in the duck pews, and listened to the duck preacher, as he preached his duck sermon.

On this one particular Sunday, all the ducks had waddled in and were anxious to listen to their favorite duck preacher preach his duck sermon behind the duck pulpit. But this Sunday would be different from all the rest.

For as the duck preacher got up to preach they caught a glimpse of fire in his eyes, and there was a whole different demeanor about him. The ducks of Duckville could tell… he was inspired. And so the duck preacher began:

“Fellow ducks. You weren’t mean to… waddle! You were meant to… fly! Over hill, over dale, over forests, over lakes. You were never meant to waddle. You were meant to fly!

And the ducks of the Duckville Church thought, “Well now, that’s a novel concept. And they continued to listen as the duck preacher waxed eloquent. And the longer the preacher preached, the louder and more inspired he became. And the louder he preached, the more enthused, and outrageous the ducks in the duck pews became.  And they began to shout, and clap their… well, wings. And some even flapped those wings a bit, as if they were practicing for the real thing.

And as the sermon wound down, the duck preacher said, “And so my fellow ducks, I leave you with this admonition, and please remember this bit of important information. “You were never meant to waddle. You were meant to fly!”

And finally, the duck preacher said the benediction, and offered a final prayer, and the hundreds of ducks in the duck pews realized that they had heard, possibly the most singular and most important sermon their duck preacher would ever preach. And his final admonition rang in their heads as they prepared to leave the church.

And when the closing prayer had been said, all the ducks arose from their pews, and

… waddled out the door!

By William McDonald, PhD. Excerpt from "(Mc)Donald's Daily Diary" Vol. 5. Copyright 2010

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THE INESTIMABLE VALUE OF ONE'S WORD

Should any of my descendants happen on this particular blog, in the context of my emphasis, here, it is important to note that among the two or three positive traits I value most is that of keeping one’s word.

There’s a scripture which speaks of the nobility of keeping one’s word, even to one’s own detriment. While I am far from a perfect man, I have always attempted to keep my word.

My wife reminded me tonight of a singular and shining example of the practical application of this behavior.

It seems Jean’s grandfather, a Mr. Vaughn, was an orange grove caretaker, way back in the “30’s” and lived across from the grove he tended. After one or two incidents when Mr. Collins desperately needed to contact his trusted servant, and was unable to do so, he offered to have a phone installed in the humble little house. He promised that as long as the family lived there, he would continue to pay the monthly phone bill.

And though Mr. Vaughn pre-deceased his younger wife, Mae continued to live in the house, and that old phone remained in the same old place.

And the aged grove owner faithfully paid the phone bill ‘til the day of her death;

…46 years later.

By William McDonald, PhD. Excerpt from "(Mc)Donald's Daily Diary" Vol. 5. Copyright 2010

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