John Albert Walker, Sr., my dad

 

Daddy and me

some losses are heavier to bear than others,

though my voice finds it hard 

to find harmony with another

my soul does not,

and when I look through the door

I can still feel resonance with others,

deep within me,

some who have gone past my todays

are as if behind a closed door,

blocked off from feeling still real to me

that must be what it means to compartmentalize,

to order one's life with neatly-closed boxes

that are safely shut,

and more for the head to catalogue

than for the heart to notice, and reel,

I lost my father as I just turned 14.

and I can't find how to let him go,

last night I woke 

and I felt the door of his passing wide-open,

I felt absence, loss, regret,

for in my adolescent cockiness

I did not see him fully,

but rather I saw him as impediment to my willfulness,

now when I empathically seek him,

I see the fullness of the effort of his life,

I see a heart that could not be contained

within the walls that pressed in on him,

walls like the Faustian bargain

some of our earliest North American ancestors made

to use the benefits of the enslavement of others

to further our own possibilities,

the Civil War stepped in

and thwarted such a foundation 

built upon the sand of wrongness,

Daddy used football, 

his mind seeing how to connect the team together,

serving as captain of the team,

and his body, as he told me, able to bull its way forward for 2-3 yards,

football got him to Furman University, 

out of the stifling heat of summer in the Low Country,

a college where his mind could be appreciated and exercised,

where he could make connections with thought and people

and find himself valued for the best of who he was,

he got out of South Carolina to East Tennessee,

where he still had to use football

as the entry into jobs in education,

though his gift with mathematics,

the truth numbers can reveal,

was always a valued part of the repertoire of him as teacher,

when he found his calling as principal 

of a junior high school in Knoxville,

Tyson Junior High School,

he found a way to see the students truly,

to see the staff truly,

and to help them all move past the walls

that held them back,

I heard of "Mr Walker's Club,"

a gathering of middle school aged boys

who might be at risk

but who also might soar if given the right help,

then he died,

I think he saw in me great potential,

and he nurtured it well,

"Just wait till you see my Little Henry!"

people have quoted him as telling them,

I ache to fulfill that incipient promise he saw in me,

like Daddy I have sought with my life

to treasure my roots

and to also transcend them,

finding ways forward that are worth our being born,

Daddy, I see you,

I honor you,

I appreciate you,

I love you,

you did well with the hand you were dealt.

by Henry H. Walker

February  28, ‘25