Condolences

Condolences to my friend David, his mother Mary Ellen, and all of their extended family. David's father, Edward, 92, was a World War 2 air force veteran (pictured above with his air force unit) and retired postal worker whose ancestor came to North Florida as a Yankee, part of the Freedmen's Bureau (I actually came across the original North Florida Proctor's name in the Freedmen's Bureau records). He married a descendant of North Florida plantation owners and had my friend David and his two older brothers. David and I were housemates during his second year in college, the year I was on leave, with our friend Andrew. The three of us had run cross-country and track together in high school, and David and I were also in Latin together. The summer before my senior year my family (sans our father, newly divorced) moved to the same street that David and his parents lived on (in the oldest house on the block - across from where our friend Susie had lived with her parents). David, Andrew, and our friend Brant were also fraternity brothers at Florida State. Other than the year he lived with us, David lived with his parents in that house the entire time he was in college and grad school (much like I did episodically), until he got married and started work as a college professor. I remember visiting David - and his parents - and seeing him in the midst of work on his dissertation on an old word-processor. David's mother is very much a gracious Southern lady, while his father - somewhat older - was gentleman-ly and very industrious. I'd seen him out in the yard or out walking to and from the nearby Albertson's (where David worked in high school) and elsewhere on the busy, no-sidewalk Bradford Road. I know he also went out to the family's land near Lake Iamonia. I imagine in very recent years when our Tallahassee visits have become last frequent that he's been a bit less active. But we'll miss seeing him around the neighborhood when we do visit. His funeral will be tomorrow in Tallahassee.

The next day, Saturday, in Tallahassee will also be a memorial service for Abby Potter, a friend of my mother and ours who was married to another World War 2 air force veteran, Tom Potter, who died several years ago. The Potters retired to Tallahassee and were active in our Tallahassee church, First Presbyterian, and in Democratic Party politics and in other voluntary activities (including working with my mother and many others to start the Leon County Shelter several blocks from our church. Abby Potter was also very active, with my mother, in the American Association of University Women (AAUW). In fact it was on the way to an AAUW meeting that Ms. Potter got into a terrible car accident, at Lake Bradord Road and Orange Avenue, that injured her neck, and from which she never entirely recovered. As with the Proctors, Mr. Potter was very much the gentleman (after the wreck, he became among other things Ms. Potter's driver), and she was very much a lady (though not originally Southern). They cared about people, were personal but not pompous, passionate but not power-hungry. Mr. Potter fought emphysema for several years, they sold their Lake Bradford home to move into Westminster Oaks (the Presbyterian retirement center east of town where many of Mom's friends live), and then - just this fall, several years after her husband's death - Ms. Potter left Tallahassee to live near several of her kids in Pennsylvania (where Penny, Mom, and Jacob once visited them). We missed her after the fall, as we do now, and him too. Condolences to their extended family.