By Willis Webb
Sometimes it seems that we are, to use a good Texas term, “snakebitten.”
Perhaps the handful remaining of my high school graduating class feels the same way. Tragedy enveloped us and put us to some severe tests early in life.
Dealing with death of someone close to you — a relative or good friend — is hard enough when it occurs at an age when maturity has come with lots of years of living. To have it happen in your teen years is extremely difficult.
Decades ago when I had to deal with this, neither I nor any of my classmates knew how nor were we prepared to face losing a classmate or relative, much less several in a short period of time.
Not that it is any easier when you’re older, but maturity and the witnessing of the effects of death on people in small towns has given you a bit more preparation and insight to such a shocking event.
During my senior year, and in a few short weeks immediately following, we had losses that shook our young bones through and through.
Less than three months before graduation, the boy class favorite and one of the most personable people you’d ever expect to meet, had his life end due to a freakish house fire. His parents worked and he came home after school to a house that had been closed up all day. Undetected by him, a natural gas leak filled the house. When he flipped the light switch, a spark ignited the gas and he was burned badly.
He lived for almost a week but with every inch of skin burned from his body, he succumbed.
For most of our class of 39, it was our first exposure to the death of a friend. The lingering death made it doubly tough to take.
There came the occasion then to do what friends and family do with the loss of a loved one — some sit in the funeral home in shifts with the body.
Let me tell you, 17- and 18-year-old boys don’t know how to respond. Most attempted to behave in a manner they deemed appropriate, but sitting with a casket containing a friend for hours presents most youngsters with a first-time experience that is scary, sad and sobering.
To “cover up,” some of the boys on the “night shifts” took to first exploring the funeral home. It was a first-time experience for just about every one of us. Some roamed around. Others crawled in empty caskets to show they weren’t afraid. Frankly, I’m sure that of the few of us left in this world 60 years later, are still a bit embarrassed by the shenanigans that occurred that night.
Within a few weeks of that sad loss, our class was dealt yet another tough blow — one classmate’s father, a man said to be given to heavy drinking and who some said had been “sick” a long time, took a hammer and as his wife slept, hammered her forehead repeatedly, killing her.
Shortly after graduation, two young men from that year’s junior class were killed in a car wreck on the infamous S curve on Old U.S. Highway 75 between Buffalo and Centerville.
For a small high school, with about 210 students in the four grades, this was a devastating loss and rattled most of us to the tips of our toes.
Five years later, one of our top students from our class, had passed through a college Air Force military program, gone to flight school and got his wings. He was flying a bomber in Arkansas and the plane never gained enough altitude. With engines failing, the plane crashed through the roof of a barn, killing the crew as well as some children in the structure.
It took a great many years for some of us to get past the feeling of being jinxed and doomed.
Willis Webb is a retired community newspaper editor and publisher of more than 50 years experience.
wwebb1937@att.net
