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 22nd, 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 23rd,
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
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