Simply Red...

“ Simply Red…”

I recall my second grade teacher telling me if I “ didn't straighten up and fly right, she would call my Mom…at home! That was 1953. My Mom now resides in an assisted living center near my home in Stillwater, Oklahoma.  She is occasionally admonished by the staff to “chill” or they will call her son…at home! Role reversal of parent and child has its little moments, and I have now come to know the entire facility staff on a first name basis.

Despite firmly attached labels and colored signage attached to helium balloons, my Mom still aims the portable phone at the TV and talks to the channel changer. Interestingly enough,  I believe she has better luck than I do at home with my  over priced multimedia device which to my surprise will occasionally and without warning  open my garage door.

The stiff-upper-lip mantra of “pre Boomer” sons and daughters passing each other in the hallways of assisted living centers that house our aging parents is: “It could always be worse!” The mother of one such newly commissioned “role reversee” would toss channel changers in the trash along with used tissue when she had finished adjusting her television. For a solution, my friend bolted her channel changer to a table. When that became unworkable, he adjusted the TV to her favorite channel, super glued the TV controls, and explained how to plug and unplug her TV to an electric outlet. Problem solved!

Yogi Berra supposedly said, “It’s amazing all the things you can see when you take the time to look”. Many untold stories lie silently and desperately in the hallways of assisted living centers of our communities. These untold stories are fascinating.   I moderate a “Talk Soup” session for a group of men every Wednesday morning in a local assisted living facility. The men’s ages range from 80 to 100. We discuss current events, but more importantly we share old stories. I want to videotape those stories for family members.

My Mom once lived in another assisted living facility before we moved her closer to our home. When I visited her, I was always welcomed by a huge man who was also a resident. He spent most of his days in the common living areas greeting people when they entered the facility. I did not know much about him because sadly I wasn’t looking. I later researched his life for his memorial service.

 He was 89 years old when he died. He was born in West Texas as the 9^th child of 11 brothers and sisters.  He learned how to break horses and play a guitar equally well. He played football for Baylor University, but withdrew from college to volunteer for WWII. He became a well known singer and story teller in the Pacific Theater, and he was featured in a 1940’s lead article in Colliers Magazine which called him “The Texas Troubadour of The Pacific”. He won the Bronze Star. After the war, played and sang with Hank Thompson throughout the United States. He returned to Baylor, obtained his teaching degree, and taught special needs children for 33 years. He also found time to work as a horse wrangler for 32 seasons at special needs children’s camps in Arizona. He later served on Baylor’s Board of Trustees.

In the final seasons of his life, he moved to Stillwater. A granddaughter, whom he had raised as a child, quietly cared for him.

Our assisted living and nursing facilities in the United States and similar facilities in the world house are now homes for many forgotten men and women. We should listen to their stories.

The big man who greeted me in mom’s former assisted living center was known simply as “Red”. But he was so much more. I wish I would have seen more when I looked. He was the “Texas Troubadour of the Pacific”. He was so special to those he encouraged and inspired during his lifetime. But in the final stages of his life, sadly unremembered, he lived quietly and anonymously in a nursing facility.

Four rows of family members sitting in an otherwise empty funeral chapel tearfully clapped in cadence to an old 1945 recording of his favorite Hank Williams song “Jambalaya”..

To every unsuspecting person he greeted, he was the big man in the lobby who was known simply as “Red”.  But the real Albert L. “Red” Cheek” was the spirited and generous “Texas Troubadour of the Pacific”. 

I have been honored by his acquaintance.