By BOB RAY SANDERS
bobray@star-telegram.com
A retired Lockheed Martin employee who is a regular reader of this column recently called after I wrote about the growing menace of incivility in the country and the never-ending plague of racism.
He wanted to have lunch but kept me in suspense about our topic of conversation.
Over a meal at a country club, Ben Carroll said the people of our community had to address the "decline in individual civility, disregard for deeds of personal support, an increase in abuse [due to] racism and an emphasis upon divisive values."
He held up his youngest son, Courtney, a football player in the mid-1970s at Eastern Hills High School, as an example of the kind of character more people should exhibit.
Ben Carroll had with him a clipping from the
Star-Telegram showing that Courtney was voted Defensive Player of the Year. He said that when reporters Joe Hornaday and Bob Sonderegger went to the school to present the award to Courtney, his son wouldn’t accept it until he was joined onstage by one of his teammates, Jim Person, a black defensive end who paved the way for him.
"A lot of the tackles and plays that I made were made because I knew exactly where Jim Person would be," Ben Carroll quoted his son as saying that proud day. "Nobody, I mean
nobody, could block Jim Person."
There was something else this father wanted me to know about his son, whose mother, Valda "Jackie" Carroll, taught German and physics at Eastern Hills. Yes, she taught Courtney.
His mother was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis when Courtney was about 10 and, by the time he got to high school, she was using a wheelchair. Courtney and his older brother would carry their mom up two flights of stairs to her classroom each day.
When I finally met Courtney, I realized this story would be as much about his mom as it would be about him.
This "Most Popular Boy" would go on to Yale, majoring in psychology with a minor in philosophy. He said he also did "teacher preparation" in social studies.
After graduation, he came back to Texas to work for the Sid W. Richardson Carbon and Gasoline Co., spending much of his time in West Texas towns before settling in an office in downtown Fort Worth. He wanted to be home to help care for his mother.
Courtney quit that job "to everyone’s dismay," he said, and became a photographer — something he still enjoys doing, but as a profession he couldn’t make any money at it.
He eventually taught school at Poly for three years, then joined the Fort Worth school district’s Energy Management department, which audits school facilities for energy savings.
During our lunch meeting, we talked about his mother, who had been born in Woodson (Throckmorton County) and attended Texas Christian University in 1947-48 as the youngest, and maybe the first, female physics student at the school.
A beautiful woman and fantastic dancer, she loved teaching and sponsoring the German Club, where she would take "those nerdy kids" and make them feel special, he said.
She also was a natural leader, Courtney said, remembering a time in 1972 when his parents sponsored a fundraiser for George McGovern’s presidential campaign and actor Jon Voight came to their house as the star of the event.
His mom’s MS got progressively worse, forcing her to stop teaching physics because she could not stand up to do the experiments. She eventually had a barber’s chair placed in the classroom to give her some height and the ability to swivel.
Courtney said he took his mother to London in 1985, where he met a woman from France who would become his wife and the mother of his four children, ages 11 to 21. That’s also the year his mom retired from teaching.
Is your mother still alive? I asked.
The pause, the facial expression and the watering eyes answered the question, but he said something that stunned me.
"She died in 1985, shortly after retiring," he said. "She took her own life."
"She was just tired," he added. "She felt she was a burden on us. . . . She was becoming helpless, possibly becoming blind."
His mother had confided to a close friend what she had planned to do — to take an overdose of sleeping pills — but had not told the family.
"That morning she was sleeping late," Courtney said. "I went in and her pulse was very faint."
How did you feel at that time? I asked.
"Hearing anybody’s last breath, especially your mother’s, is the saddest sound you could hear," he said. "Although I was crushed, I was relieved."
His mother obviously taught a lesson in living, and just perhaps a lesson on dying.
Bob Ray Sanders’ column appears Sundays and Wednesdays. 817-390-7775
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