Now both Art and Ethyl are gone, and son Cliff is picking up the many pieces of their life together. Cliff flies corporate jets, so we have plenty to talk about besides his folks. He assured me that the pie crust table already is in a proper resting place where it will continue to be cherished. When we dined together, Ethyl ordered all the stuff our doctors want us to eat, while I ate “comfort food” next to her. No “Tsk-tsk-ing” came from her… a truly gracious lady.
I want to encourage more remembering of our native son, Bryant Womack. I borrowed the accompanying photos from the PCHA Museum and scanned them for you to see. They are important to me because they show us more about the young man than his Medal of Honor citation or his formal portraits can. Playing a guitar is fairly common among country boys, but playing a banjo is not. Bryant obviously loved life and shared his talents with family and friends before he went off to war. Rather than finding a way to shirk his duty, he answered the call in the only way he could, serving in the front lines as an unarmed medical aid man in order to save lives rather than to take them. This devotion to his fellow men cost him his life.
No more pickin’ and grinnin’ or ringing the banjo. Think about this as you view his portrait in his building or reverently view his simple grave marker at his Lebanon Church on Big Level Road.