Roy Exum: Oh Yes, I Loved West

  • Tuesday, March 28, 2017
  • Roy Exum
Roy Exum
Roy Exum

One of my most beloved friends died early Saturday morning at the age of 67. Then again, West Oehmig’s only brother – King – died a couple of years ago at 63 so it wasn’t by happenstance I remembered Abraham Lincoln’s famous line: “In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count, it’s the life in your years.” Here are two brothers who lived larger than any other pair I can name, trust me.

I’ve watched West milk every minute out of every day since we sat together in kindergarten. I dare say I knew West better than most of my other friends. That’s because my daddy came from central Mississippi and I was taught the genteel nuances of the South from the very beginning. In the last century, the world has gotten away from knowing a family instead of only several in it, but I cherished the way I was taught to love the family. I’ve loved every Oehmig who ever lived and that, my friend, is what’s called true riches.

I was incredibly lucky myself. I was born into another big family, mostly newspaper folks, and started banging on a manual Royal before I got out of high school. I landed in the sports department – called the “toy department” by the somber in the business. In those first few years every time I would go to the Chattanooga Golf and Country Club I’d pay unfailingly my respects to “Mr. Will,” the Oehmig family patriarch.

Dressed in an elegant suit even on a hot summer’s day, Mr. Will would sit on the veranda and sip his gin-and-tonic, watching foursomes as they played in on No. 18. We’d talk, yes we would, and he wanted to know what I knew. I’d tell him the funny and the sad and he made me feel it was all important. Old men must never forget how much kindness can influence and mold the young. I remember “Mr. Will” to this very day.

“Mr. Will” and his wife had four boys – Bill, Von, Dan and Lew. By the sixth grade I not only knew each, but I’d been fed by all of them, welcomed to the table like I was somebody. West’s momma Mary was one of the four legendary King sisters. They were the most beautiful girls ever in Chattanooga and I also knew them each and every one. They really were gorgeous. Besides Miss Mary, there was Miss Henrietta (Sies), Miss Kate Orme (Dickinson … Peggy’s mother) and Miss Tallulah (McGee), who blessed us with King, Frawg, and John.

What I am trying to convey is that I knew the whole crowd, the grand sum of all the parts. Try to grasp this. I was once told there are always some in any family who can bring down the thunder but what’s that matter? It is the family that is the lightning – thunder is just noise; lightning does the work. That’s the way it was with the Oehmigs.

I didn’t call them Mister or Miss just out of respect but more out of admiration. In the old South, when you came a man who could stand alone, this a few years out of high school, your body language would change around your elders. A young man began to matter yet, at the same pace, your elders became so much smarter it was almost hard to bear.

Up until then I called each of them “Mister Oehmig,” but then those names morphed to more personal respect. Mr. Bill, for example, was married to a lady I called Miss Amy. Mr. Von was married to Miss Margaret, who – as a Chenowith --was the most sophisticated matriarch ever out of Columbus, Ga. Mr. Dan was married to the wonderful Miss Tilda and, of course, Mr. Lew belonged to Miss Mary.

If you loved and revered a non-relative, you honored their presence by calling them by their familiar first name but with a salute in front of it. That's how I was brought up from the time I was still in short pants. Nobody in an established family in the South thought a thing about it … you get down deep in the Mississippi Delta and the older families all do to this day. Everybody I’ve ever known called my grandfather, “Mr. Roy.” It is all about respect and admiration.

Traditions were sacred. Miss Amy was the first aristocratic lady to ever offer me an adult beverage in a silver tumbler. You dad gummed right it was wrapped in a heavily-starched napkin that was tucked just so, and, with ice forming on the outside of the sterling, the napkin ever crisp. If luck gave you a second, it would always come with a new starched napkin. That’s what Miss Amy knew. That’s the Deep South we all grew to understand. And to cherish.

Mr. Bill and his Louisiana-blessed bride had four children. Britt we all called “B.O” because it was not just a perfect schoolboy insult, those are his initials. Britt would never allow me to dwell too long around his sisters, Donna and Ruth, and then there was his younger brother Will. He played football at Baylor, just as his dad played there and at LSU, but then came the tragedy that rippled all across town.  Back in the late ‘70s, it was as though the world just stopped.

Will and some of his dearest playmates were coming off the freeway in a van when a side door opened and Will tumbled out, instantly paralyzed. He went out to the Craig Center in Colorado, tackling his new challenge like it was a McCallie freshman, but complications set in and he never got to come home. That’s been years ago and some of us, I imagine, will never get over it.

Mr. Von and Miss Margaret, had star-struck children in Randy, Marion and Bid (Billy). “Vonny Boy” – as his older friends touted him -- and I got to be thick because of thoroughbreds. Once at Churchill Downs I told him about a small bay that had a huge heart. “Watch the Tote Board in the fifth … if “Stepping Stone” (or whatever the nag was named) draws the first three gates, the backside whisper is the bigger horses will drive him to the rail. If not, you bet all you are carrying cause he’s got wind (huge lungs). He can finish better than Man O’ War.” Darn horse came out of the No. 6 gate and won by nine lengths. Mr. Von giggled all the way to the “cash” window.

I’ve spent the whole of my life wondering why Mr. Dan and Miss Tilda were deprived of children. I now believe any offspring would either be President of the United States, the founder of Google, or Bernie Madoff. You talk about what would have been a technicolor kid. Might have been that nobody could put up with such a prize as that, but I’ve spent a lifetime wishing it had happened.

And then there is Mr. Lew. For years, we were paired in every celebrity golf tournament, not that Lew wanted it, but he was the best on the course and I was the worst. He took it in stride, me handing him a “pocket rocket,” as needed, and we won all the time on Lew’s strokes alone. Lew could have been Arnie’s equal but his dad would never allow it: there was no money in the pro game back in those days. (Sure, Palmer did die with close to a half-billion (with a ‘b’) but look it up – Arnie never won a first-place check over $50,000. Ever.)

I have tried as hard as I can to explain what only a Southern boy can see in a true Southern family. Many never will understand this, either: a family always trumps individual friendships. I understand it, West understood it, and that is the blessing West gave me his entire life. I have always cherished it, as I have always loved the one his closest friends called “Buster.”

How do I ever thank him for causing his entire family to love me? I know my entire family, down to the last one, loved him. I don’t know what I would have amounted to without all the Oehmigs but I sure do know it’s made me stand a little taller, a little straighter. Most of all, I know I am better than I might have been.

What I find peculiar is that when West died of heart problems last Saturday, it was the same way I felt when Rev. King died unexpectedly two years ago – ain’t nobody gonna’ get out of this world alive. Instead, I mourn for one of the grandest families I have ever known. West’s three sons, Lewis, Matt and Will, are maturing fast enough to soon fill in the chinks in the family tree and I’m told his daughter, Zeen, is as pretty as any of the King girls were back in the day. Their mom, sweet Gina, died unexpectedly about eight years ago, and it was a long time before West took a shine to his close pal Kate.

Oddly, I find I am not missing West yet. Lord knows I have been through enough thick and thin with West to keep the memories razor sharp until I join him at the Pearly gates. West will never leave me. But what I will also never forget is how, man oh man, both of Mr. Lew’s boys were part of something really, really special.

West, ole pard, you were evermore a dandy, a grand prince. Happy trails, old son. I declare I wish I could write about some of the hysterical stuff and the countless good times we have shared over the last 60 years but, now that you’ve slipped the surly bonds, I’m one of the last that’s left. That means I’d have to take all the heat by myself.  Ain’t nothing worth that. Oh, Mae Zest send her condolences. I know Lilly and Noodle-burger are sad, too.

Stand with the Savior and those who have gone before you, my dear, dear friend. It won’t be any time at all before the rest of us get there, not in the big picture of things, but, one last confession and this comes as sincere and as candidly honest as I can make it: I could never imagine calling you “Mr. West.”

* * *

The family visitation and memorial service will be held on Wednesday, March 29, at The Church of the Good Shepherd on Lookout Mountain.  The visitation will be from 1:30-2:30 p.m. and the service will begin at 2:30 p.m. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that contributions be made in West’s honor to The Chambliss Center for Children at 315 Gillespie Rd. Chattanooga, Tn. 37411. Arrangements are by Heritage Funeral Home.

royexum@aol.com

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