a life of love

 

Jimmy Tipton

I keep seeing Jimmy's eyes:

alight with clarity,

while also with the underlying humor,

inherent in the situation,

his deadpan delivery of a story hilarious,

his mind quick and deep,

and only his heart more impressive than his mind,

enter into his world,

and he saw you, knew you, loved you,

in his last years he could not slow down,

until his body forced him to pause:

too many of us needed him,

and he lived to be there for us,

particularly for his family,

for whom he would do anything,

also for his clients, his fellow workers,

with whom his work found meaning,

my mother thought he was one 

of the funniest people she had ever met,

and he helped her with her will,

set up an enduring trust

to enable her wishes to live past her body,

we got to know each other in high school 

where we partnered in debate

and joyed in the power of our intellect and improvisation,

law called to him,

and he answered at Duke Law School,

and interning in Winston-Salem,

he returned to Knoxville,

he felt a rightness in his first law firm,

and built a rightness with his own firm that he loved deeply,

to know Jimmy was of grace, of laughter,

and a longing to have even more time with him,

Jimmy's roots stretch way back in East Tennessee history,

where his ancestor was a rival of John Sevier,

his ancestry early in the settlement of Cades Cove,

the Tipton-Oliver house still there,

the land grant still in his papers,

Summer Transparency applesauce is also an East Tennessee tradition,

in my family going back to Boyd's Creek near Sevierville,

a tart apple that demands excessive sugar

to allow its amazing flavor to do its work,

we always shared that applesauce we made with Jimmy,

and I am sad that he can no longer savor it,

that we can no longer tease each other,

that the light that flared bright in his eyes, 

in his jokes, in his smile,

in the clarity of truth he lived,

has left this world for a better one,

Jimmy lived his faith in how he "did unto others",

just as Jesus admonished all of us to do,

a Light has gone out, except in our memories,

and in how we can choose to live our own lives.

by Henry H. Walker

March 20, ‘23