Rotunda

Today while editing, THE AVE MARIA DIARIES, I reread this entry to the blessed Mother and found it especially moving with the recent passing of Senator Kennedy. I was reminded, we didn't hear the word Rotunda once.

DADDY
Entry 6
Dear Mary, I hope you are not getting tired of me, but this is helping me remember that I am a good person. I am a good person. My Father, God Bless Him, was an enthusiast of learning as much as one could in a span of an hour. I realized, he had probably only had a few hours to learn anything, because he was always working. And before working, there was of course the war.
My Daddy was a hero to me even through our most brutal years, my early to late teens. Which is yet to come at this point so I will not divulge that yet. He was rock solid and looked at times like Charles Lindbergh or a young Marlon Brando. I couldn’t tell him those kinds of things because he didn’t like Charles Lindbergh, Marlon Brando or anyone remotely inclined to be famous. He hated the Kennedy’s, “ a brood of liberal Catholics out to ruin the world for the rest of the hardworking men and women of the world.” Therefore, it was to me a shock at President Kennedy’s assassination why our family stayed glued to the television, even eating all our meals on metal TV. Trays, watching for any hint of what might come next.
When I questioned my Daddy, “Daddy, why is Momma crying, I thought we didn’t like the Kennedy’s.”. He turned to me and said, “Kitty, not liking someone has nothing to do with respect. We don’t like the Kennedy’s but we will respect them by watching the proceedings from the rotunda and the actual funeral tomorrow.”
Rotunda.
That first magical word I learned of architecture and grace. Everyone had it on his or her lips that week.
Rotunda. Just saying the word gave one the feeling that they were special and somehow a part of the whole ceremony.
My Mother must have said the word a hundred times a day.
“Yes, the body is still in the Rotunda”. “No, they haven’t moved the body from the Rotunda.” “Did you see, Jackie as she walked in the Rotunda.”? For a nation obsessed with one single word it wasn’t long before the images of that great man lying in the Rotunda would bring to my mind the single most important thing my Daddy ever taught me. I may not like someone and may not like their politics, I may even despise the kind of person they are, but I will respect every man for exactly that reason alone-I am everyman.

To my Daddy, most people were pretentious and most people were on a path to hell. My Daddy had a hard time growing up. His Mother was a saint. Saint Maude. And his Father was an invisible devil. Not “The” Devil, but a devil just the same. Invisible, because he left my Daddy and his family while Daddy was a young boy. There were days when my aunts kept dust covers over the holes in the roof of their house so the “good” furniture wouldn’t be ruined in rainstorms. Days hadn’t always been bad. Before my Grandfather left, he had made a fortune in timber and actually owned the first automobile dealership in Tusckaloosa.

Although it was primarily a forbidden topic, my Aunt LeeLou confided in me one afternoon that there were apparently many “other” women involved and my Grandmother was a Saint so it took me years to fully understand the tragedy and the shame of it all for my Daddy.

My Daddy lived in the high school gymnasium his senior year in high school because his Mother and sisters moved to Birmingham and he was considered the most promising athlete to ever come along in Tuskaloosa County. Moving to Birmingham would have hindered his opportunity to receive a football scholarship to play at The University of Alabama in Tuskaloosa. So rather, than move with his family, he stayed behind living in the high school gymnasium. His “rent” was offset by the fact that he kept the furnaces churning on the cold winter nights. He did janitorial jobs and helped out where needed. I am sure that his only compensation for this sacrifice was the fact that the following year he would become a star running back at the University of Alabama. Fate had other ideas.
He graduated in May 1940 and he was admitted to the United States Army in June 1940. He never had the opportunity to play for The University of Alabama, but he had another dream by this time. He wanted to become a doctor and help people. He had recently gone through about of tonsillitis and had his tonsils removed. The surgery took quite a while to get over and it was during this convalescence that his body and mind helped him dream a new dream.
Again, fate intervened to make the outcome somewhat dismal in his mind. He returned from the war, penniless, like most young surviving WWII soldiers. He was a fast talker and had never met anyone who didn’t immediately love him or want to help him. He and his brother, Buddy, opened up a small little service station on the outskirts of the university outcroppings and name it Snappy Gulf. Known for the speed of service one received there it quickly became one of the most prosperous service stations in the whole state of Alabama. It became a bit of a service station and philosopher’s palace all rolled into one. My Daddy helped anyone he could, anytime he could. He believed in the common good of mankind, yet he had been around the block enough to realize that there were hustlers out there as well.
He served up gasoline with a moderate dose of philosophy. It didn’t matter if you wanted his advice or not, you got it. Life was, for him, a walking moral message.
He had seen the gore and violence of the war. He had lived in a high school gymnasium. He had lost his Father to the wiles and villains of the “other” women. In his heart, he wanted everyone to find what he had found.

Jesus.

How could you fault a man who had been on the other side and had miraculously found his way to the good side? It is just that along the way he misinterpreted the whole thing in the way the whore in church often does and did a 360 and anything that remotely resembled fun or a good time was the way of Satan.

My Daddy insisted no matter how poor or deprived our family was to become that we must always have a subscription to National Geographic. And so it was this very magazine that allowed my mind to expand and explore where most of my friends were totally obsessed with the Beatles and the frenetic crazy pace of 1965. I wanted more than romance and the fleeting fantasy of a group of English mop heads deciding my future. I wanted and desired more. I wanted to follow in the footsteps of Madame Curie or Lindberg. I wanted to discover new worlds like Columbus or plan and execute grand palaces like the Taj Mahal. National Geographic transported me to other worlds and I was determined to live in this life as someone. Not just an average run of the mill someone.
I totally desired, hoped for, and felt that I was entitled to something marvelous from life.

I was the Don Quixote of my peers, and though most of them had no idea who in the hell Don Quixote was, it did my heart good to know that I knew. For in this secret knowing, I had accomplished my hopes.
So, it was that church became to me that cool oasis of civility and creativity. Church, the building was the embodiment of what it was. A building, people and ideas. It should not be misunderstood that I ever got anything out of church because on the contrary I did.
I found God in Church and Jesus and all the saints, sinners, disciples and thieves that everyone else did. It was just that right away I knew that everyone had it all wrong. I just knew. It was like an innate gift that lived deep within me. A present from God Himself.
I told my Sunday School teacher one day that I knew I was special to God and she called it blasphemous and hypocritical. She said it was a shame that I couldn’t see the face of Satan himself in my very face. I left the room in tears and ran down the long, green linoleum hallway as if I were ascending the golden stairs of Heaven itself. I had to get to the bathroom and check. Could you really see Satan in my very face? Was I a spawn of Satan and not the anointed angel that I felt myself to be? My eyes were swollen from the tears, yet it was clear to me that the teacher had it all wrong. All wrong. In my face was just one other person. My Father.