An intimate look at my Dad

MY DAD

   It was years before I learned why they called him Steve; his given name was Alford Theodore Warbritton, and I thought that, in itself, explains it. The only person I ever knew who called him Alford was his older half-brother Don; and he did it with an authoritative deep southern drawl that resembled Herman Tallmadge, or perhaps God himself. Dad was born on January 22^nd, 1911 in Marshall, Texas from the marriage of James Leroy Warbritton to Vashti Hunt Warbritton. My grandfather had migrated to Texas from Ashland, Nebraska after his first wife, Ida Johnson, died in 1900; they had two children, Don Leroy and Flossie Naomi. Then, forty year old James married fifteen year old Vashti Hunt at Marshall in 1900 and she bore him five children over the next fifteen years. Dad was next to last, with an older sister and two older brothers and one younger brother.  

   I believe his early years must have been wonderful to him because he often told us great stories of his childhood, and he literally yearned to be in East Texas for the rest of his life. You might say, “You could take the boy out of East Texas, but you couldn’t take East Texas out of the boy.” As a young boy, he learned to hunt and fish in the bayous that surrounded the cypress covered Caddo Lake on the Texas-Louisiana border. In later life, he was obviously most happy when he was anywhere near that same region. We don’t know a lot about his early childhood except that his Dad was a member of the Brick Masons Union and a member of the Knights of Pythias, and he lived on the southeast side of Marshall. He evidently began school in Marshall, but he did not stay there long as fate stepped in and altered the path of his entire family. In July of 1921, James Leroy died at the age of 61 and left Vashti widowed with five children.

   Wanona at 18, and Holman Taylor (H.T.) who was 16 could take care of themselves, but Vashti decided to send all three younger boys to the Pythian Orphanage Home in Weatherford, Texas. In 1921 there was little work for a woman and she could not support her boys. Dad was ten, his older brother James Jr. was thirteen and his younger brother Basil was only six; Vashti bundled them up and sent them to the Pythian Home and they never lived in her home again. Even though she married again, she never recalled her children from the home. Recent discoveries support that Dad left there in 1929 when he was 18 years old, though he always told his children that he never got beyond the eighth grade in school. We do know that he enjoyed his stay there; he was well fed and clothed and educated to whatever level he actually did achieve. While there, he picked up the nickname, ‘Steve’. One of his chores each morning was to bring bread to anyone who asked for it at the breakfast table. The older orphans called this position a stevedore and they would yell at him when they wanted more bread, “Hey Steve, more bread!”. The name stuck, because he wore it for the rest of his life. He never discussed much about his stay at the Home in great detail, but he supported the Pythian Home with generous donations for the rest of his life.

   Tragically, his older brother James was killed at the age of seventeen in a track meet at the Pythian Home; he fell while jumping hurdles and hit his head on the track border. We don’t know if Dad witnessed his brother’s death but he would have been fourteen at the time. About five years later, his younger brother, Basil Emory, died at the age of seventeen also, just two weeks after leaving the Home. Apparently he developed complications after surgery for appendicitis and he died in the home of his half-brother Don in Woodlawn, Texas.

    It was common practice for older boys at the Home to go and stay with family during late summer, after the crops were gathered. As a teenager, Dad would spend a couple of months on Don’s farm and it was there that he probably fell in love with the outdoor life. He learned to hunt and fish and identify the trees of the East Texas forest. Uncle Don would give him three shells for a 16 gauge shotgun and tell him, “I expect you to bring back three squirrels”, and he usually did. While hunting, he learned to identify every specie indigenous to the area. Years later, my brothers and I were treated to nature trips through the woods where he would carefully point out differences in the types of oaks or hickory or pine. He would point to the leaves and say, “This is a pin oak, or this is a blackjack oak, or white oak” and explain what he liked about each one. He particularly liked the white hickory over a red hickory because of the way it burned down into a long-lasting coal in the fireplace. Once he stopped on a trail, dug up the root of a small tree and handed it to me. “What does that smell like?” he asked and I said, “It smells like root beer”. He said, “That’s why they call it root beer, it comes from the sassafras tree.”

   There follows a gray area in our knowledge of what happened to Dad. We know he left the Pythian Home in 1929 at he age of 18 and he surely must have gone to East Texas. The famous East Texas oil strike had occurred and Gladewater Texas had become a typical, wild, oil boom town virtually overnight. His mother and sister Wanona had become nurses in the Gladewater hospital, so he may have moved in with them and started working. His brothers and nephews were bricklayers, so he may have moved in with them in nearby Woodlawn and developed his trade during this timeframe, because he was a brick mason most of his life. He may in fact, have done some of both, because we know that he was in Gladewater in 1933 and he had already acquired his brick laying skills.

   My Mother’s Dad was brought into the Gladewater Hospital because of a terrible beating on the streets of Gladewater on New Year’s Eve 1932. My Dad’s mother, Vashti, was one of the nurses who treated him. Mother’s father, Oscar Mike Mosley, died from that beating and though neither of my parents ever discussed it, this may have been the event that linked them together. We know that Dad was courting her in May of 1933 and that they were married on June 23^rd, 1933. Sarah Geneva Mosley was the love of his life and they were spiritually inseparable for the rest of their lives. After his abandonment at an early age, I can only imagine the joy he must have felt in finding his soul mate and the promise that their future held together. We have no wedding photographs, but the early pictures of their courting and early marriage suggest two people very much in love and eternally bound to each other.

                               

                    Mother in 1933                  On the hood of a ‘28 Chevy’                              “This is Steve-isn’t he cute?”

                               Age 17                                                                                                      Mother’s inscription on back   

                      

   Dad got a job with Magnolia Oil, the predecessor to Mobil Oil, and they moved to Vivian in the Northwest corner of Louisiana. Apparently his work was sufficient to provide for their needs throughout the latter years of the Great Depression, and they developed some lifelong friendships. Their first child was not born until December of 1939 in Rodessa, Louisiana. He told Ted with a sheepish grin on his face, that “He just wanted to get to know Mother better before they had kids.”  Michael Leroy was named after both his grandfathers, Oscar Mike Mosley and James Leroy Warbritton.  Dad worked with Magnolia Oil for a couple of more years and then returned to laying brick in East Texas when the Second World War broke out. Their first attempt for a daughter resulted in the birth of Alford Theodore Warbritton Jr. (Ted) in April of 1942. The war effort was going strong and like everybody else they lived off ration books for everything. Dad was 32 years old when I was born in December of 1943; their third son and last attempt for a daughter. In 1944, when I was a baby, they moved to the San Francisco Bay area and Dad got a job in the shipyards at Berkley. Mother’s sisters and husbands were already there, so they lived nearby.

   In February of 1945, Dad was drafted, even though he was 34 and he had three children. He went to a skills screening and when they discovered his construction skills, they placed him in the Navy Construction Battalion. He went through basic training in the Navy and by April, he was shipped out to the South Pacific. He went through Honolulu and eventually landed in Guam. According to his letters home, he became a mechanic for large trucks and he did carpentry and painting on construction projects. He wrote many letters home filled with crude language and grammatical errors. He had a talent for drawing and he kept a book of pencil sketches he drew of Mother and his children, as well as replicas of movie stars photos he apparently saw in magazines. 

Near the end of his deployment, he became almost paranoid because he had not received any letters from her for a couple of weeks. The war was over and he was due to be released around Christmas of 1945, but he didn’t know that Mother had left California and was headed back to Texas. His letters turned to pure joy when he discovered that she was already back home.

  

                                                                      April 1945

   Dad’s brother, H.T. (whom he called L.T. for some unexplained reason) developed Tuberculosis while stationed in the South Pacific, and after the war moved to western Texas for the arid environment. My brother Mike had acute asthma attacks, so my folks decided to try out the same hot dry climate for his health. Mother and Dad built the first and only real home they ever owned in Sweetwater, Texas. Dad bought a couple of lots next door to Uncle H.T. and together they constructed a tiny house with a kitchen, a bath, and a large bedroom. Mother and we three boys stayed with my Grandmother in Throckmorton, Texas. Within three years, he added a living room and a large bedroom with three closets in it for my brothers and me. It is to this day, my first and lasting memory of home.

   I know that it was difficult for Dad because he was 400 miles away from his beloved East Texas and all things green and wonderful. But Dad adapted because he had to; he had three boys now, so he started getting involved in church. He had picked up the smoking and swearing habit, and drinking a few beers, like so many during the war, but he displayed a profound deep conviction for his Christianity. He was elected deacon and I felt a little bit conflicted as a child, because I knew he wasn’t supposed to cuss or drink. But you know, the years have taught me that we are all subject to human frailty and none of us are perfect. Dad was devoutly religious and as genuinely converted as anyone who has ever professed to be a Christian. He loved to sing hymns from the Baptist Hymnal; he had a loud baritone voice that carried above those around him and sometimes embarrassed his children. My children feel the same way about my singing today. He was a wonderful example to his family and his community and he was not ashamed to display his faith.

   Even though the climate was almost diametrically opposed to his childhood, he found ways to teach his boys the things that he loved so much. He took us on fishing trips to the pitiful lakes around Sweetwater and the rivers that rarely had any water running in them. He showed us how to hunt game birds in the mesquite flats of west Texas and he took us on camping trips whenever possible. We went on campouts with the church youth groups, scouting camp trips and sometimes just family outings to teach us the wonder of the great outdoors. When we visited our Aunt Ethel and Uncle Grant in Oklahoma, we went on excursions into the woods and fishing expeditions on the rivers and ponds on their place.

Uncle Grant was surely Dad’s soul mate as a woodsman; they became fishing and hunting buddies for the rest of their lives.

   I have often thought that Dad was a pioneer born out of season. He was never happier than when he was out in the open, blazing a new trail or tramping down familiar paths to show us the wonders that he had already seen. We camped out in New Mexico, and various places in West Texas and we always felt safe because he was there. Sweetwater is the home of the famous Sweetwater Rattlesnake Roundup, but we weren’t scared as long as Dad was close by. He knew every tree and bush by looking at their leaves and shapes; he taught us to respect nature and how to preserve that which we encountered. He would have been as comfortable in the company of Davy Crockett as he was with anyone. I don’t know how he learned so much; perhaps his father instilled it in him during his first ten years, or his late summer trips to East Texas or  someone imparted it to him at the Home; regardless, he was the genuine article. He loved to hunt game birds and once he returned from a hunting excursion in the snow covered prairie of Throckmorton County with a number 2 washtub full of quail that he and a neighbor had killed. Hunting and fishing were like second nature to him. I regret that I did not pass on the same traditions to my own children, but times changed so much in our generation.

   During my formative years in Sweetwater, Dad and Mother enjoyed the release that occurred across America, as soldiers, marines, sailors and airmen returned from the war and began life anew. It was an idyllic time to celebrate life for those who had survived the horrors of war, and honor those who didn’t come home. In the late 1940’s and early 1950’s whole neighborhoods came together and just celebrated life. Friends and families would gather at someone’s home monthly in the summer, for dinner followed by dancing. Dad was a good dancer and together, he and Mother would steal the show for me. As a young boy, I sat on the neighbor’s wood floor in an out-of-way corner, and marveled as I watched Dad twirl Mother across the dance floor. They danced to 78RPM records of pop and country western songs, and because we had several German families in the neighborhood, they danced to waltzes, schottisches and polkas for hours at a time. Mother and Dad were like bookends and everyone who met them envied their close relationship; they were admired simply for who they were, and the great love and respect they shared. But life was as good as it would get for Dad and Mother; the great challenge of their lives was about to come swirling in like a West Texas tornado.

   Mother was diagnosed with lymphoma in 1952 and it started an extended battle with cancer for the next nine years of their lives. After surgeries in the small town hospital, Mother and Dad decided in 1954 that she could get better treatment in a larger city. Dad had hoped that they could get the medical help she needed back in Marshall, Texas but it wasn’t to be, so after one year in East Texas they moved back to Fort Worth, Texas. Everyone’s life was put on hold, gone were the good old days of dining and dancing and anything hopeful. Life was what each new day brought; nothing more; nothing less. Dad was barely surviving monetarily, I can remember when he couldn’t make the $70 a month rent payment and he couldn’t pay the doctors or hospitals. How he managed to pay for the needs of three teenage boys, I will never know; but we didn’t lack for any necessities and Mother got all the medical treatment possible at the time. Our world was turned upside down, but we kept our faith in God and He kept us together as a family.

   Mother finally succumbed in March of 1962 and Dad’s long struggle to save her was finally over. I was a senior in High School and the only child left in the house. He and I moved to a rental trailer house that was about 22 feet long. It had a sofa that made down into a bed, a tiny kitchen, and a small bedroom; I didn’t care because I knew that he needed to be away from where he had been. After a month, we moved into a small rent house near the high school and then a couple of more months after I graduated, we moved to another small house that rented for $40 a month. I knew he needed his freedom to flee back to East Texas, but he hung on to make sure that I was settled. Mike was married and in the Air Force and Ted was married and had a job; so they were alright and he didn’t worry about them.

   I finally got a good job and as I planned for my marriage, he prepared to regain his freedom. Freedom from the constant worry and stress of insufficient money, inability to meet the needs of his sons, inability to save the woman who had completed his life. And he needed the freedom to choose to do something instead of being forced to do it. His pioneer spirit was calling him back to the woods and the lakes, back where he might find peace again. He stayed for my marriage in May of 1963, left me the home to live in, and headed east to his beloved Marshall. I felt relieved that he could finally have the freedom to do something for himself again.

   He met Hattie and they married in 1964 in Marshall, Texas. Over the next twenty years, they built two homes in Woodlawn, Texas and then lived in Lindale, Texas and once even moved to the Ouachita Mountains in Oklahoma. She stayed faithfully by his side, caring for him and yet knowing that he could only give her so much, because Mother was the love of his life. He fished in Caddo Lake, Lake O’ The Pines, Black Bayou, Cypress Bayou, Mountain Fork River and countless other places I have never been. The undaunted spirit of the pioneer was renewed and my Dad found joy after the great tragedy of his life. He moved to a lakeside community in Lindale and became the song leader for a small church there. When I visited him once, we sang old hymns at the top of our voices and drowned out all those around us.

David, Ted, Dad, Mike

   When I took my children to visit him, he showed them how to fish and he took them on boat rides on the Cypress Bayou, and he fried white perch in a big black cast-iron kettle on a wood fire beside the bank of the river. Once, he took me fishing at 4:00am in a dense fog and we paddled upstream in a jon boat to a place on the swollen Mountain Fork River; where he knew we could catch brown river trout, and we did. He cooked venison for me, that he had hunted, and he loved to eat catfish at the Big Pine Lodge in Caddo State Park. He was a master at a barbeque grill; he grilled everything from rabbit, squirrel, quail and carp to chicken, pork, venison and beef. He grew large gardens everywhere he went, all of his life, even in West Texas. One of my greatest pleasures was going to visit him during harvesting season; depending on the season he had beans, sweet potatoes, sweet corn, peas, okra, onions, tomatoes or strawberries.

   Dad could do so many things well, yet he never boasted or sought recognition for his achievements. He was proud of his family tradition of bricklayers though; he would point out a church or a bank and show me how meticulously it had been constructed by his father or his brothers. Although I always felt pride in his accomplishments, he would tell me that his brother H.T, or ‘L.T.’ as he called him, was the best bricklayer he had ever known. He had his moments of frustration and he was occasionally short of temper. I remember once when he couldn’t get his car to start, he furiously stomped the gas pedal while he shouted out every expletive that the Navy had taught him. The car of course, didn’t start. He was like that, full of passion to get something done and quick to react when something got in the way. Though at the time, I unfairly judged him, I have since learned that I am as human as he. He had many wonderful years, regained some of the lost years, lived life to the fullest, and he gave those around him some wonderful memories.

   But, they were not all glorious years; the years of smoking Lucky Strikes and Camels finally caught up with him. He developed emphysema from his years of smoking and he had long, horrible coughing spells that would tear out your heart to hear. He carried around an oxygen bottle for his last few years, but he continued doing many of the things he loved so much. Ted had a farm in Lindale and Dad would go down and plow up a huge garden and share it with Ted and his family. But his visits to the hospital became more frequent and his coughing became uncontrollable.  Finally, while visiting with Ted on the farm, Dad’s over-exerted heart failed in the midst of his final convulsive cough. On March 18, 1983 he died in Ted’s arms, and though it must have been traumatic to Ted, I have long envied him for that singular honor and privilege that God blessed him with that day. Dad lived 72 years, one month and 24 days.

   He was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery where he always longed to be; deep in East Texas and next to Mother. No wife could have wanted a more devoted husband or a better provider for her family. No children could ever have wanted a more caring and nurturing Dad.

   Perhaps born out of time and season, in another era he might have been a pioneer sodbuster on the American prairie or a trapper in the great American West. But beyond his great desire for hunting, fishing and gardening; his nature was to give of all that he had to those he loved. He made great sacrifice and suffered great sorrow, but he lived life to the fullest and he gave his children a shining beacon to aim at. When I read the statistics of today’s world, and how many children grow up without a father, I revel in my good fortune, and I despair that others could not have shared this wonderful man who was, My Dad.

Alford Theodore “Steve” Warbritton

REQUIEM

By: Robert Louis Stevenson

                
    Under the wide and starry sky,

 Dig the grave and let me lie.

    Glad did I live and gladly die,

     And I laid me down with a will.

        This be the verse you grave for me:

        Here he lies where he longed to be;

          Home is the sailor, home from the sea,

                   And the hunter home from the hill.

Written by David Warbritton exclusively for the Warbritton Family