Roy Exum
Back when I was a teenager and acting badly, one of my inflicted “therapies,” as it were, was to attend every meeting of the Christian Athletes group. My mom had long since quit trusting me to get there by myself so an absolutely hysterical group of grown men would fetch me to make sure I behaved going and coming back.
I’d pile in the back of Pem Cooley’s old station wagon with Pete Branton, Nick Senter and Lat Latimer and off we’d roar. Now forget the biggest difference was that they were all Elders in the church and I was the only one in the car with pimples.
You talk about laughing! They were funnier than the Jackie Gleason Show and those trips were not only one of my life’s blessings, throughout the years to come they would each rank among my dearest friends.
So now you’ll know why I cried pretty hard this weekend after I got word that Lat’s granddaughter, a pretty 19-year-old girl named Marie Graham Carpenter, had fallen to her death off a bluff on Signal Mountain. I didn’t know Marie, but I sure do know the family, and, when I get to heaven’s gate, I’m going to ask pretty early on why my beloved Lat had to endure so much heartbreak after helping rescue so many rascals like me.
Pem, Pete and Nick are already with their Lord and Lat, who is now battling dementia in a pretty tragic way in a healthcare facility, isn’t too far away. Then again, let me tell you a little about what has made him and his still-beautiful Lane perhaps the strongest Christian witnesses I have ever known.
If I had a dollar for every kindness that Mr. Latimer has done for people we could put a dent in the national debt. He was real big in Shoney’s back when the strawberry pie was almost as good as cruising through the drive-in. His love for golf and those who play it resulted in some cherished conversations all across the South and led many playing partners to the Lord. Don’t worry, I can still name names.
Well, the Latimers had the most fun kids you’ve ever met. One, named Lane like her mom, married a guy who went to McCallie who we all knew best as Spanky Carpenter. His real first name was Neel, which we never knew until he and Lane went as missionaries to Papua New Guinea.
While they were there, they not only saved lives but they made them – my stars, Spanky and Lane had eight kids. Each of the Carpenter children were immediately blessed with the Latimers’ merriment and laughter and love for the Lord, but, some years back, Spanky died of a massive brain hemorrage while back from furlough in Jasper, Ga.
Lane brought the children back home and the way I have it figured is Marie was at her mom’s house on Friday after they had just been made aware of another family tragedy.
You see, a different one of Lane’s children had recently given birth to a baby girl in Virginia and there were some severe complications with the infant’s heart.
So just hours before Graham would fall to her death, the gut-wrenching call had come that eight-week old Gwenyth Carpenter had died on the way back to the hospital. The infant’s aunt, Marie, was actually walking the mountain trail in the late afternoon, trying to get a grip on her own grief, when her tear-soaked glasses slipped and, as she tried to grab them, then fell about 100 feet.
Well, all I could think when I heard about this weekend’s double dose of misery was about my old buddy, Lat, and wondering if he knew what had happened with his eyes now vacant in the hospital. The last two times I went to see him he didn’t even know who I was, but, brother, I’ll never forget him.
There is one thing that was odd what when I’d go. I would always take the biggest box of candy I could find. I’d tell him that was so the other “inmates” would visit his room and he’d laugh so hard his eyes would wet up. In my one-sided conversation, it was also deeply curious to me that he’d always laugh delightedly at my punch lines. I guess what I am saying is how’d he know when to do it?
I mean, Lat wouldn’t talk, wouldn’t focus, and wouldn’t react so why is it he would start laughing – the same way he used to when he and the other men would take me to those FCA meetings long ago? I don’t understand it. I never will until one day, hopefully, I get the chance to ask in Heaven.
It’s not lost on me, not at all, that Marie Carpenter’s dad got to finally hug her sometime Friday. In my way of thinking she got there just in time to help with baby Gwenyth, too. So, yes, as I struggle every time a kid dies, I can also give my humble thanks that Lane knows better than most about God’s “bigger plan” after years with Spanky and all the kids in New Guinea.
And here’s another guarantee; when Lat gets there everybody better be ready to laugh and I’m talking about until late at night. Just you wait until Pem and Pete and Nick come around. You can bet the other Angels will have to tell ‘em all to hush. Trust me, I know, because I used to ride in the back of the station wagon.
May God bless the Latimers.
royexum@aol.com