John Walker, Jr., passes away

Johnny

a father,

from South Carolina’s Low Country,

where the soil is rich

and so is the burden of history and heat,

gifted with an intellect that set him apart

and enough football skills 

to get him to college,

the first to do so in his family,

football skills and a master’s degree

 make him marketable as a teacher,

so he escaped the Low Country for opportunity

in the cool mountains of East Tennessee,

a mother,

rooted in the rich farm life 

of East Tennessee

and the intellectual will

 of a New York grandfather

who escaped the cold 

and the limited opportunities

 of a 14th child,

gifted with an intellect 

that set her apart--

devoted to learning and to her family,

burdened by the restriction of choice

when culture forgets truth,

and thinks being a woman 

narrows your possibilities,

man and woman found each other

from out of the loneliness 

that too much intellect can create

and from an equal excess of heart

that flowed from each to the other,

 and to all,

a son is born

and all their universe centers upon him,

as he grows, he, too, can feel set apart,

as his intellect drives him to places

few others around him seem to see,

his heart, too, big enough to hijack him,

so much of the man we saw

is the mind in full flower,

yet fertilized and directed by the heart,

racing to figure, to connect dots,

even those no one else sees,

in his last years when illness and stroke pummeled him,

his doctors pronounced that Johnny with half a brain

had more brain than they with a full brain,

a drive to him, as to so many first-born,

and maybe even more 

to those named junior

to someone extraordinary as senior,

excelling in school, 

his brilliance rewarded with high grades

and a ticket away from East Tennessee to Duke

where he again excelled in class

and then won a ticket to Columbia Law School,

Daddy died before he could know of either success,

of the honors that showered upon Johnny in school

and in the practice of law,

brilliant in understanding bankruptcy law

and for decade after decade  his law firms successful

due to his knowledge, his skill, his hard work,

the teacher in his parents also in him,

the occasional course at U.T. Law School

and the annual refresher of law

 across the state,

Tennessee Law Institute,

the inexplicable made accessible,

like Grandmother,

 he could not abide English mistakes,

there is a correct form

and woe be unto any who don’t follow it,

including protocol rules of seating

 at a wedding, or at a Thanksgiving table,

his approach to God best facilitated

with the rules clear and God manifest

in the Word and in the Practice,

his thirst to know, to learn, to experience

rewarded by A.F.S. with a summer in Switzerland 

that led to a lifelong love affair 

with people and place of that extraordinary country,

a passion that drove him to return year after year,

even taking his mother there once for holiday,

returning to ski slope,

to tradition, to being honored for being special,

to mountains that draw him to their beauty and to their power,

to pull him from the ordinary into wonder and grace

and away from the humdrum and limiting

that birthplace can be for one,

a driving need to be differentiated from the other,

our ancestors must have felt within them

a call to be elsewhere, to the different,

to the opening-up of possibility

that a change of place, a change of longitude, latitude,

can allow if one can but grasp it,

and Johnny grasped it, 

in his schooling, in the pull of Europe,

in his politics, so contrary

to what cultural homogeneity counsels,

politically, the different, to him, 

important to include in the whole,

a cook who knew the male can provide

for his kids, for the family, for the taste buds,

a father who doted on kids, on his kids,

 and on his grandkids, on his nephews, his niece,

and who loved any time

 Duke sports overwhelms.

he did the best he could,

can any of us wish for more?

from his brother, Henry Walker