Roy Exum: ‘Uncle Tat’ Was Special

  • Thursday, June 16, 2016
  • Roy Exum
Roy Exum
Roy Exum
I am proud to say I have loved Lee Anderson ever since I could first recognize him. So when my ‘Uncle Tat’ died early Thursday morning after a vivid 90 years, I was flooded with an indescribable warmth. I believe he was the kindest man who ever lived and to know, deep in my heart, that he was with his Savior, that his glorious mind had immediately been restored and that he was never sharper, the day suddenly became one of life’s true milestones for me.

My mother, Helen, was the oldest of Roy and Elizabeth McDonald’s five children. There was also Martha, Betsy, Frank and Nancy. Lee Anderson was married to Betsy and, even in my earliest years, stretching back to when I could first remember, I knew my ‘Uncle Tat’ was some kind of special. Both of us worked for my grandfather most of our lives at the Chattanooga News-Free Press and he was easy and away one of my dearest friends.

Of course, we were also a little different. Lee could pass the most critical Army inspection on any given day of his life. While he was an immaculate dresser, his gift was for detail; his pocket handkerchief was perfect, his tie clip a very prescribed distance from his belt, his shoes always buffed to a glow. Not a hair out of place, his manners and mannerisms impeccable. Alcohol never touched his lips nor did a cuss word ever come from them. ‘Tat’ was what every man should aspire to be, while I admittedly am not.

Then again, he didn’t have near the fun that I did. When he finally bought his first Corvette, I’d already had four of the beasts. He had owned a classic Thunderbird some years before and longed for another sports car so I think I was more excited than he was that “VAAA-room” was coming back into his life. I raced to the parking lot to see his new burgundy dasher and then ran faster back into the office. “Uncle Tat! Uncle Tat! Corvettes don’t wear white-walls!”

But, no, he said he loved the look so be it. Down through the years, when some politician would do something really dumb or a member of Chattanooga society was caught doing something they shouldn’t, he would catch my eye and say with a grin, “Corvettes don’t wear white-walls!” Another favorite saying between us was when some public figure would do something too showy or flagrant to the point of embarrassing. “A Cadillac never needs to squall its tires!”

Tat and Betsy’s daughters – Corinne and Mary Stewart – were two of our favorite cousins and more than once Tat would be accused of nurturing me to follow in his footsteps. Yet he never treated me like a son … no, we were best friends. On any given day we would chat four or five times and I kept him up on the snappier side of life.

Another big misconception was Tat taught me how to write. I can only wish. The truth is everybody helped me get better but I will say he was among my biggest cheerleaders, often praising this article or that column but never, not once, did a critical comment come from his mouth. Believe it or not, we both typed exactly alike, using two fingers on each hand like lightning until, years later, when I adapted my infamous one-hand technique.

For that matter, I can boldly and very truthfully say I never heard Lee Stratton Anderson say an unkind word about anybody. Not once. The two of us were sitting in my grandfather’s office one day when Albert Gore popped his head in the door to say hello. Lee and I both stood to shake the senator’s hand, but my grandfather, his glasses slipping down to the bridge of his nose, said loudly, “Albert, I do believe you are the most dangerous man in America!” I thought I was going to wet my pants from trying so hard not to laugh, but my uncle, ever the gentleman, smiled at Gore and, as if nothing had happened, said quietly, “Albert, I will be with you in a moment.” That was Tat.

Whenever Tat would go out of town, be it business or pleasure, David Cooper and John Wilson were the only ones he trusted to write what he might have written under the masthead. One day we were having lunch together with several other writers and I told him I had some pretty pointed views and sometime he ought to let me pick up his slack. The table exploded but to this day I am wondering what was so funny about that?

Then there came one Saturday night, very late, when my arm troubles were raging and the pain wouldn’t stop. A well-meaning staff doctor loaded me with far too much of a certain drug in my hospital room and I went into a roaring case of anaphylactic shock. Had it not been for two nurses coming back from a late snack they wouldn’t have caught me in the elevator wearing only a pair of plaid boxer shorts with blood spurting everywhere from where I had torn out the IVs in each arm.

My immediate family happened to be out of town that night so when I came out of the vapors Tat’s face was the first one I saw of those gathered around the bed. I acknowledged him in some fashion or another and he had tears in his eyes as he said, “I’ve never been so happy to hear your voice in my life.” Funny, but I’ll never forget that. We were forever that close.

He adored life and lived it with a dignity, a grace, and a gentleness many will never know. Every Friday night he and Betsy would eat with the Ben Hadens, the Jack Evans’s and others of their dearest friends, and his tennis game was another of his passions. But outside of Betsy and the girls, the newspaper was his crowning glory. Years after the Alzheimer’s horribly hampered his dictionary of a mind, he still would constantly say, “I’ve got to go … I’ve got to get the paper out …”

What made our deal so incredibly special was because, for years, I shared Tat’s enthusiasm and his unequaled zeal. Lee was the newspaper’s main editor but I never answered to him. My supervisor, as it were, was my grandfather. My mother, whose realm included Lifestyle among so much more, also dealt only with her father. That way there was never a cross word, any resentment or silly competitions between us. We were all glorious friends who worked together, went to church together, enjoyed friends together, laughed and cried together. And the Sunday lunches, oh glory!

Trust me, it may have looked rosy but for years our lot was hardly a land of milk and honey. We walked across a union picket line for over five years, then the Chattanooga Times allegedly spent over $35 million of the New York Times’ money trying to flatten us – and darn near succeeded. Roy McDonald had long before convinced us we could endure any of life’s storms if we stuck together and that is what happened time and time again.

At some point back in the ‘80s my writing style began to attract attention. Some of my stories were picked up by big magazines, I already knew a lot of big-name writers and I started getting calls from newspapers in major-league cities. One magazine in particular offered me an obscene amount of money. I adored the several years I worked for WRCB in addition to the paper so there was also some thought I could be funny as a “color commentator.”

It kept building and building until late one afternoon I went into my grandfather’s office and told him this might be my big break, that several different groups wanted to fly me up north for a round of interviews. My grandfather nodded like he understood my opportunity but then said, “I can’t let you do that … the family needs you too much.”

Early the next morning – we used to get to work around 4:30 a.m. to get the afternoon edition on the streets before lunch – Tat came into my office and told me, “I know how you feel … you would do well anywhere … but if you’ll trust in the Lord, I can assure you things will turn out perfectly. They will, but the fact your family needs you just might be the most rewarding thing you’ll ever experience as long as you live.”

My Uncle Tat was right. Just as he so beautifully illustrated with Betsy, his daughters and now grandchildren, a man’s family is the only card that can trump any other in life’s deck. It has been said that we can make a lot of choices in our lives but no one can pick his family. Had that been the case, Lee Anderson would have surely been one of my first-round picks.

One more quickie … the “Legion of the Miserable” has forever claimed that if my family had not owned a newspaper, my fate in life would have been listening out for the two dings of the bell at some gas station, scrubbing bugs off a windshield.

I used to get some downright hateful mail and I was sharing one of the worst with Tat after a deadline one day. He read enough of it to really get tickled and surmised the author might have been dead on. “You know, you are lucky your grandfather owns this paper …”

I couldn’t help myself, “Well said … well said indeed, by the man who married the boss’s daughter!” As a sip of Coca-Cola spewed from Tat’s lips, I thought we might have to run him in for hernia surgery he was laughing so hard. His eyes watering and his sides splitting, he laughed harder than I had ever seen him. What wonderful days. What fun.

I loved my Uncle Tat.

royexum@aol.com

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