On Monday I sat in the living room of a beautiful home in Bunker Hill. While the subject of the interview was a painful one, I still walked out of the house feeling good, not downhearted, all because while the words the dear woman I was interviewing was saying were one thing, what jumped out at me was something else: What a legacy!
If you read Thursday’s paper and I hope you did, there was a story about the 60th anniversary of when Sheriff J.V. Polk was killed. Sitting in the living room with one of his daughters, Janice Polk Shivers Loftin, she replayed again for who knows how many times that fateful night. Yet in between the facts, something else was coming out. She loved her parents; to her, she had the best parents anyone could ask for.
In between the heartbreaking details, Loftin shared some of the most delightful stories and I for one ate them up. Her feelings for her parents were so obvious. One could almost be jealous.
As parents we struggle day in and day out with work, bills and the many activities. We sometimes stay too stressed that we forget what really matters.
Our children may laugh when everyone is older over how perfectly manicured the yard and the house was but deep down what they are going to remember the most is how we loved them.
My father died when I was 24 years old. He only got to briefly enjoy two of his grandchildren. I was a single mother at the time, living at home and my father absolutely adored my oldest son, Tj.
Dad affectionately called him “Charlie,” and my son would call him “Big Guy.” The two of them would do as much as possible until cancer took over his body, and he died when Tj was just 6 years old.
All these years later, you can ask Tj about my father, and he will tell you my father was the greatest man ever. Tj never focused on the negative parts, he received so much love from his beloved “Big Guy” nothing else mattered.
Sometimes it might take a while for the little things to sink in. It was like that with my grandfather, Pop Kinlaw, and me. Pop, as everyone called him, was a barber in Charlottesville, Va., and was very much old-school.
Whenever we would go see Pop and my grandmother, my father, brother and I would walk down to the barber shop and they would get haircuts. I used to get mad as a young child because I didn’t understand why he would not cut my hair. Of course his thinking was I was a girl, and he didn’t know how to cut girls’ hair. Eventually he finally consented and cut my bangs, nothing else, but it was enough to make me happy. That and the dime he would give me to get a Coke from the soda machine.
Another time we were visiting, and I was bored and climbed the tree in the front yard. Pop stopped his car in the middle of Graves Street and blessed me out for climbing that tree. No proper young lady climbs trees. That hurt my feelings, and I remember crying. Dad said it just scared Pop because he didn’t want me to fall and get hurt.
To a young girl who happened to be the only girl of the six grandchildren, I thought he didn’t like me.
Yet the last time I saw him alive, I was 11 years old. I still remember him looking at me with tears in his eyes, and it hit me: I was more special to him than I realized. I knew he was sick but had no idea he was dying. A few short weeks later, he passed and boy was I heartbroken.
As a legacy of love passed down the Polk family, so it has passed down in my family. I can only hope I am passing it on to my children as well.
What kind of legacy are you leaving?
Susan Amundson is the managing editor of The Columbian-Progress. She may be reached at (601) 736-2611 or samundson@columbianprogress.com.
