Like many, I went down to the parade and celebration honoring Capt. Larry Taylor of Signal Mountain on Monday.
I had parked my car near Georgia Avenue at a coin-only meter spot, left the remaining crumbs from my sandwich lunch in the car, and walked downhill through the heat and found a shady spot at Fifth and Market streets.
While this parade was obviously patterned greatly after the local Armed Forces Parade every May, it seemed to have a little extra pep to its step, at least in my mind, so I was looking forward to the special occasion.
Early on, the car carrying Capt. Larry Taylor, wife Toni and apparently 1968 rescued soldier Dave Hill quickly passed, and I might have missed it if I had been looking away. He was identified with a sign on his car, but in contrast to all the attention leading up to the event, there was no fanfare. He and Mr. Hill kindly waved to the small crowd along the street, and one person nearby said to their child, “Look, there he is,” or something like that, backing up my thoughts of the low-key style of his arrival.
Hamilton County Mayor Weston Wamp and a few others walked down the street not long after he passed or almost with him, with Weston’s parents, former U.S. Congressman and Mrs. Zach Wamp, walking with them more inconspicuously on the sidewalk. I also saw state Sens. Todd Gardenhire and Bo Watson on the sidewalk a few moments later.
There were also three or four marching bands or collections of bands, including maybe a Marine one, during the roughly half-hour-plus event, and that added a lot. For me, it is hard for even a Medal of Honor recipient to upstage some brass instruments blowing or a pounding set of drums. If there were ever a Medal of Honor recipient who could play the drums, he or she would really make for a great parade, although I understand Capt. Taylor did sing in choirs at the University of Tennessee.
I also saw a Cobra helicopter flying back and forth on Second Street and the river near the parade stand, although it would have been nice if it had flown along Market Street where we parade viewers were. But I guess it was near where Capt. Taylor was by then.
I could not help but draw the contrast between Capt. Taylor’s helicopter in 1968 that was involved in attacking the enemy and rescuing Americans in a tense moment, and this one, which was there simply as a gesture of goodwill amid a relaxed time of celebration.
After enjoying the parade, I tried to look for whatever shade I could find as I walked down to the stage area near the Tennessee Aquarium at Broad and Second streets, thinking I might have to wait 30 minutes or so for it to begin, based on the schedule I saw.
But to organizers’ credit, it began right as the last part of the parade passed. Parade emcee Chip Chapman very briefly interviewed Capt. Taylor as it was ending, and I was looking forward to hearing what else the war hero might say in the actual ceremony.
About 8 or 10 people spoke after being introduced by my old Baylor football teammate Frank Hughes. They included everyone from several generals to politicians like Congressman Chuck Fleischmann, County Mayor Wamp and Chattanooga Mayor Tim Kelly. Mayor Kelly pointed out the unique fact that he had formerly done business with Capt. Taylor as a car dealer without knowing he had been such a hero, while Mr. Wamp cited him as someone who enjoyed success after attending local public schools.
It was neat hearing all the different styles of speaking, and the collection of all of them would be good for a speech student to study. For whatever reason, military people always seem to have a certain style of speaking, and this was noticeable to me. That included when Gen. B.B. Bell took off his coat and traced the Medal of Honor history from Jacob Parrott receiving it for the Andrews Raiders event in the Civil War near Chattanooga to Capt. Taylor’s actions.
There was even a woman brigadier general who spoke, which was nice and showed how much the military has changed since Capt. Taylor’s daring 1968 helicopter rescue in Vietnam when he was a first lieutenant. And Medal of Honor recipient Staff Sgt. Leroy Petry spoke, too, and I even saw a bearded Bill Coolidge, the son of another Medal of Honor recipient, the late Charles Coolidge, among the crowd.
And Dave Hill, who had started the push for Capt. Taylor to receive the Medal of Honor after being gratefully rescued by him, gave his own articulate style of speech in blue jeans and boots.
Sadly for my sake, however, there was not a single word spoken by Capt. Taylor, other than a brief sentence or two of appreciation when emcee Mr. Chapman had earlier stuck a microphone up to him. Perhaps it was due to the physical strains of the parade and ceremony that a speech would have added to. I did see him helped down the stairs into a wheelchair after the event, perhaps more for convenience, so I know it was not an easy day for this octogenarian physically, even if it was likely gratifying for his soul, as it was for others.
Or, maybe he is just not comfortable speaking in front of people, and no one can appreciate that any more than I – Mr. Anxiety -- can. But I still was a little disappointed as I left the ceremony with my small pocket tape recorder, which I had brought to capture his words. Even two or three sentences would have added greatly to the occasion.
But hats off again to him and everyone who made the ceremony nice.
I had written a story a few weeks ago after learning that Capt. Taylor had taken part in the military at McCallie, City High and the University of Tennessee before his Army service, and had also been Best Dressed at City and sang in some choirs at UT.
I went back later and found some McCallie annuals at the Chattanooga Public Library and learned he had attended McCallie through his sophomore year in 1959 and even played B-team football there.
I contacted longtime McCallie staff member John McCall, and he said Mr. Taylor had actually been a grade ahead of them until their sophomore year, when he joined their class before enrolling at Chattanooga High the next year and finishing in 1961.
Mr. McCall added in an email that, while he did not know Capt. Taylor well, he and his McCallie schoolmates were all proud of his accomplishments. “My classmates, friends and I are delighted to see that he is finally being recognized as a Congressional Medal of Honor recipient,” he wrote.
I had also seen local attorney Alan Cates at the Monday ceremony, and it dawned on me the two had been Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity brothers at UT together around the mid-1960s, based on a previous story I had written about Mr. Cates at UT. Mr. Cates also emailed me some thoughts of his memories of Capt. Taylor as a UT student after I reached out to him.
In part, he wrote, “Larry was a year ahead of me in school and was a terrific fraternity brother, always friendly and approachable. When I think of him, my image is of someone smiling in a very genuine way. He was very active in the UT Singers, had an extraordinary singing voice, and took the lead in our fraternity's winning performance in an annual interfraternity/sorority university wide singing group competition.
“He was also a highly ranking member of the Army ROTC unit at the university, but I am not sure whether he was overall student commander or otherwise, but I do recall his being highly ranked. We have maintained a friendship over the years, attending parties occasionally hosted by Larry and his wife, Toni, at their house on Signal Mountain, when their health permitted.”
While many Chattanoogans who have attended UT are aware the Lambda Chi Alpha house is in Fraternity Park over near the baseball stadium, when those two attended UT, the now-razed house was near 17thStreet and Cumberland Avenue.
And speaking of fraternity houses and laid-back music parties, I certainly took note of the passing of Jimmy Buffet on Sept. 1 at age 76. He supposedly learned to play the guitar while a member of Kappa Sigma at Auburn in the mid-1960s, about the time Capt. Taylor was finishing at UT, and that started his music career.
I know Mr. Buffet came to Chattanooga a number of times, visits that have been documented well by Local 3 TV newsman David Carroll in one of his books. I remember I saw the singer only once. It was in the summer of 1978 when I just graduated from Baylor School and was getting interested in attending concerts – and maybe beer drinking, too!
But to be honest, I never cared much for his music. I loved his early hit song, the melancholy “Come Monday,” but it was different from the rest of his “let’s have fun, relax and drink beer” kind of music. I have always been more into songs sung with feeling or ones that have a more up-tempo beat.
And if truth be known, I think I went to see the Jimmy Buffet concert that day of long ago with a friend mainly to see the Little River Band as the opening act.
But despite my lack of interest in his kind of music, I could certainly tell that night and since then that quite a few people did enjoy his style. Many of us need to let loose and have more fun – although some of us do it too much – so I could appreciate his role in helping reduce stress levels.
He was in his unique way an American music icon, and he certainly was an example of the fact that different kinds of people help the world go around. But I always wondered how he handled his own stress while running several big businesses designed to reduce other people’s stress levels.
The stresses of the world and how much we have solved our own collective problems in recent years have come to the forefront with the recent 60th anniversaries of two famous events in civil rights history, one joyous and one sad. They were the famous march on Washington, D.C., on Aug. 28, 1963, for civil rights and the Sept. 15, 1963, bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham that killed four young black girl worshipers.
I have enjoyed writing about the March on Washington in the past and learning how a busload or two of people from Chattanooga had driven up for the uplifting event. And I even learned how white National Park Service ranger Gordon “Gunny” Gundrum stood next to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. while he delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.
The ranger later said in interviews that he was not sure why he was assigned to stay there, but some last-minute staff reassignments kept him there all day – without getting a chance to go to the restroom. That, too, is being a faithful servant of Uncle Sam.
He later was inspired to become a New York state ranger from the experience, saying to NBC News in 2013, “Through what I learned that day, I think it made me a better policeman, a more fair policeman and I tried to practice that always.” He thinks some music played before Dr. King’s speech helped calm the setting and prevent any rumored disturbances.
The Birmingham racially motivated bombing just a little over two weeks later was a somber moment, as those desiring civil rights realized how far the world still needed to go to reach Dr. King’s goal of people being judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
Sixty years later, with racial wholeness still a somewhat elusive goal, many are still hoping America can one day get closer to Dr. King’s ideals, even though positive goals have been achieved.
Speaking of Birmingham, on Thursday night I went to the Chattanooga Lookouts game against the Birmingham Barons at AT&T Field. I had wanted to see one more professional baseball game in person after visiting Camden Yards in Baltimore in late July and seeing the Orioles’ game unfortunately get delayed by rain for more than two hours before it started, a happening I previously chronicled in a travel story.
It was a wonderfully nice late summer night in a not-too-crowded ballpark, and the Lookouts won, 10-5, to snap a losing streak and add to the nice atmosphere. As far as my game stats, I had two hot dogs, a half box of popcorn, a large Coke, one Lookouts sweatshirt, and one T-shirt. The last two purchased items were an obvious impulse buy while enjoying being at the game, but hopefully I will wear them plenty.
Since I was there by myself, after about the fourth or fifth inning, with the small videoboard in the outfield only giving basically the players’ names and positions, I began looking at the two teams’ rosters on my phone to learn a little more about each player. And it was fascinating.
The players on both teams had played college ball at schools like Ole Miss, North Carolina State, and Pepperdine, and they all seemed to be representative of multiple states and regions, including the Bronx in New York. And some came from such places as Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic.
I realized how much a microcosm of America these minor league baseball teams are, and they are maybe getting a little closer than many aspects of America to people being measured simply by their accomplishments and nothing else, as Dr. King desired. In many ways, it was a nice revelation to me, even though I was aware of this on the major league level.
While the Lookouts have a nice large videoboard in the outfield, I realized my alma mater of Baylor School has installed one this fall. I learned that when I went to the first of three home games I have attended.
I quickly deduced that the old days of attending a high school game with only a pep or marching band have long passed. Let’s just say that at the first game against the team from Rabun Gap, Georgia, I actually thought I was at a dance party instead of a football game, as music would blare out of the loudspeaker between each play.
I even saw one player for Rabun Gap-Nacoochee dance on the line right before an important play near the goal-line late in the game. Could you have seen that happening at the Dallas-Green Bay Ice Bowl of 1967, when Bart Starr ran his famous quarterback sneak for the win at the goal about six months before Capt. Larry Taylor performed his act of heroism?
However, after that first game, Baylor must have had some internal meetings and maybe followed up on TSSAA rules about when loudspeaker noise can be made, because the videoboard has been less noisy and used much less in the following two home games. But the videoboard has still been able to provide fun for the students, including when a rap-style artist who is a student got to perform in the stands at halftime of the Lipscomb Academy game.
It was also a game attended by UT football coach Josh Heupel looking at top recruits on both sides. To my knowledge, however, coach Heupel did not break into any dancing on the sidelines during the music-playing moments.
That is actually not the first time that music has been piped over the speakers at Baylor’s Heywood Stadium/Red Etter Field. When I was a track runner at Baylor way back in the 1970s, coach Hugh Walker – whom I liked and who recently died at 92 – let us occasionally play music while we went through track practice. It made the workouts much more tolerable.
I started thinking that maybe Baylor can use that new videoboard for other events, like a movie night for students. And maybe they can invite less-privileged youngsters with whom they are involved through one of their community service projects to view something like that, too. I am not sure of costs involved just to turn it on, but the ideas seem endless.
Maybe they can even show Taylor Swift’s movie of her recent concert tour when that becomes available via streaming.
Music is definitely the soother of our souls. It brought people together at the famous 1963 gathering in Washington, D.C., at the parade for Capt. Larry Taylor, at Jimmy Buffet’s concerts, at the Baylor games, and even with the singing of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” at the Lookouts game Thursday night.
So, maybe music is the answer to the country’s ills and divisiveness we are still working to erase.
Let’s just hope it is done in a way that does not make this 64-year-old fear he has finally reached old fogie status, as I did during that first Baylor game trying to somehow avoid the constant and loud music!
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Jcshearer2@comast.net