July 13, 2006 Issue

Once you enter the main door it’s 30 steps to the nurses’ station. Turn right, and it’s another 38 steps to room 119, the room my father has lived in for the last five years. It is not that far, but some days it can be a really long walk.

Five years ago at Christmas, my father broke his hip. He was already suffering from dementia and my mother and I had to make a decision. It was the kind of decision that you hope you never have to make.

My father is a big man. Even before his fall he was not particularly mobile. As anyone who knows him can attest, he required a lot of attention from my mother when he was totally healthy. He was demanding in many ways and while he was so strong in some aspects of his life — he was almost helpless without my mother in many others. Complicated stuff he could handle. Buying clothes, getting dressed, deciding what to eat, driving a car, or doing yard work were out of the question without help from my mother.

The types of situations that many people find terrifying were a piece of cake for my father. Everyday issues however, sometimes scared him to death.

It is hard to believe that my father, at the end of the hall, sitting quietly in room 119 is in large part responsible for so many of the things that we take for granted today. Things like having women on juries. Before White versus Crook, that wasn’t the case in many areas of the south. When my father went to work, blacks were not only not sitting in jury boxes, they weren’t standing in voting booths, or drinking at water fountains, or going to state universities, or any integrated public schools for that matter. My father helped Muhammad Ali follow his convictions when he refused to fight in the Viet Nam war. He helped Howard Levy and Anthony Herbert protest the war in their own ways. He helped Martin Luther King get out of jail so he could continue marching for his people. He represented Spenser Oliver, whose office at the Watergate was burglarized. He led the case to impeach Richard Nixon.

He walked with Dr. King; he sat with John Lewis and Julian Bond; and he stood up to George Wallace. When he was 33 years old, the day after the 16th Street Church bombing, he told the entire city of Birmingham, Ala. that it had to change.

Of course he didn’t accomplish all of these things by himself. On the wall of his office he has a telegram offering support from the great philosopher Jean Paul Sartre. He had help from many good people who had the courage to stand up to the inequalities that existed in our country. But my father led the way and showed people how things could be changed.
In the days when the conservative rallying cry was for “Law and Order,” my father used the law to change the order.

People often comment that they wish they could get my father’s opinions on matters that face us today. My father was never shy about giving opinions or advice. Even as he began suffering from dementia, he was confident in his thinking. “I’m smarter with only 10 percent of my brain than most of these idiots are with all of theirs,” he once said. Growing up, it seemed to me he gave too much advice. Much of it, directed to me, was unsolicited and unwanted. But now, I find myself needing advice from time to time. And I too wish he could give it.

His family came from the brutal poverty that was life in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky. They were too poor to worry much about racism. Their dog wasn’t in that fight. But somewhere along the line they must have taught my father about right and wrong. And it stuck. Because when my father got hold of an issue there were rarely any grey areas. There was the Constitution of the United States and you had better interpret it properly, or get out of his way.

I am an only child. My parents taught me to make friends easily and in many cases those friends became almost like adopted brothers and sisters. My parents may have only had one child but over the years they brought so many young lawyers and journalists into their lives that our family seemed large to me.

Many people in Destin know my father, but not too many knew him in his prime. That’s probably just as well. He could have been a bit much for some people. Little Jimmy Shirah has been a friend of my parents since they moved here in the early ‘90s. I don’t know that my father’s politics would have bothered Jimmy much, but I do know that my father was responsible for upsetting Jimmy ten years ago. I got my father a 1972 red convertible Pontiac Bonneville for father’s day many years back. One day he asked Jimmy to take a drive with him.

“I’ve been through hurricanes, and shark attacks, and I’ve had boats sink on me,” he once told me. “But in all my life I’ve never been as scared as riding over the Destin Bridge in that damn car with your father. He never once paid attention to where we were going; he just kept looking at me and talking to me the whole time. I was sure we’d never make it off that bridge.”

It was a bit hard growing up in the rebellious ‘60s with a father who out-rebelled you at every turn. My father was a radical. And he was a patriot. He loved his country and he loved the Constitution. Unfortunately, I didn’t inherit all of his radical spirit. After all, I’m sort of a reluctant businessman. But in his four grandchildren I occasionally see a spark of his radicalism and it makes me smile.

We have a pretty good- sized family now. If there is any blessing to my father’s illness it is that our family has grown larger. My mother is probably tougher in many ways than my father and her strength has been present throughout the years. For her and for me, the most rewarding experience of recent years has been our involvement with the remarkable people who help care for my dad.

The Davenport family, relatives of Possum Joe, the vegetable vendor of years past in Fort Walton Beach, are our heroes. Vida Ree Davenport, Regina McCants, Carolyn and Willie Hutchins, Jennifer Cowart, Ann Seaton, Ted Sheffield, Chiquetta and Chiqueda Douglas, and also Jesse Owens have been with our family since my father became ill. They are loving people who we couldn’t live without.

They have taken to my father, and he has taken to them. My father’s career involved standing up for good people like the Davenport’s. I think they know that and they now help and protect him as though he was a member of their family.

Many of my father’s old friends are reluctant to see him these days. They prefer to remember him as he was. I can understand that. Still, there are many visitors to Room 119. Some days are busier than others. When a crowd gathers, my father will go through the motions of giving a speech, probably his favorite thing to do. He still has many of the same mannerisms and the same inflections of speech that he used to have. But, of course, it’s not the same.

I’m sure the days pass slowly now for my father. Some days must seem longer and lonelier than others. I have hope that in the quiet hours of the night when he is alone with his thoughts he can somehow summon bits and pieces of his past and remember a few of the wonderful things he has accomplished for us all. If he can do that, I can picture my father, in the darkness of that room, with a smile on his face.

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