I Want To Be Like Ike

I Want To Be Like Ike. My Uncle Ike, that is.

 At age 90, he doesn’t really walk anymore. He shuffles, sliding his feet along, barely lifting them off the floor. He is attached most of the time to an oxygen concentrator by means of a long tube. He still lives alone, though he thinks about moving to an assisted living facility often. He knows the day is soon coming. For now, his daughter and son-in-law live on the next block and help him live as independently as possible.

Franklin Isaac Smith was born in southern Alabama in 1923. He grew up during the Depression as the son of tenant farmer in southwest Georgia. In a family of six children, three boys and three girls, he was roughly in the middle of the pack. My father was the youngest of the six and every time I visit, Uncle Ike never fails to tell the story of how he named my father, Jack.

Most of the things I know about my father’s early life, I have learned from Uncle Ike. All three boys slept in the same bed, under heavy quilts in the winter, in a home that was made of unpainted wood. The floorboards had gaps in places, and on those rare occasions that snow visited that far south, it would dust the top of the quilts as they huddled underneath.

He can tell you all about picking cotton, putting new soles on old shoes using a “shoe last” and being poor and not even knowing it because everyone else was too. After a tour in the Army, he went on to be the first in the family to go to college. He later received his Masters in Education from the University of Alabama. He married Alice Kaiser from West Virginia, whom he met at Bible Training School in Cleveland, Tennessee. They have one daughter, Karen.

Uncle Ike has a gift; many gifts, really, but one in particular that I have tried to develop myself. He has a habit of blessing people. He did not tell me this. Before she died, Aunt Alice told me how when they were out at the drug store, or grocery store or doctor's office, he would always find a way to bless people. One example will suffice. Once, at the grocery store, a young man and his wife were shopping with three small children. He notice the couple was exasperated after herding them through the aisles, trying to keep small hands from the temptations within their reach and it showed. Uncle Ike stopped and said in that soft as butter southern dialect, “Sir, is this your fam-ly?”  “Yes, sir,” he replied. “I noticed you as I was comin’ down the aisle and I just wanted to tell you what a beautiful fam-ly you have.” “You must be so proud of these beautiful children and your lovely wife.” Aunt Alice said that in a second, the furrowed brow and exasperation gave way to smiles as pride replaced tension. “He does that all the time,” she said.

Blessings to you all,

Jerald