My grandfather Loy was born September 16, 1884, the same year as future President Harry S. Truman and "modern" Italian artist Modigliani came along. It was the year Mark Twain wrote Huckleberry Finn, a well-loved and hilarious American classic now under fire due to our national romance with the ideology known as "political correctness." (I imagine Huck would probably have a few words to say about that, don't you think?)

In the world of politics, 1884 saw the election of Grover Cleveland as President. British Prime Minister William Gladstone (with Queen Victoria's support) wanted to restore British rule and soothe British pride in the region of the Sudan, so he sent the well-known and hugely popular general named Gordon to mop up the mess previously created. General Gordon arrived in Khartoum in 1884. If you saw the movie (Charleton Heston portraying Gordon), you know what happened - terrible bloodshed and another defeat for Britain. I'll bet anything Huck would have loved to hear about the fight.

Popular composers of 1884 included Cesar Franck, Brahms (who wrote Symphony No. 3 in F major, Opus 90 that year) and Gustav Mahler. In the world of the arts, the pre-Raphaelite movement was in vogue; 1884 saw the completion of "King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid" by Edward Burne-Jones.

On a more practical note, 1884 saw the invention of the first steam turbine engine (by Sir Charles Parsons) and the discovery of the tetanus bacillus (by German physician Arthur Nicolaier). 1884 was also the year the first undeground rail - or "tube," as they call it - was constructed in London. On another continent, the course of history was forever changed with the discovery of gold in the Transvaal, leading to the rise of the great South African city of Johannesburg. (Facts gathered from The Timetables of History, New Third Revised Edition, edited by Bernard Grun.)

I imagine that few, if any, of these world events caused much of a ripple in Lincoln County, North Carolina, the birthplace of my grandfather Loy. I know nothing of his childhood, other than the fact he was only twelve years old when his mother died. The governess who came to look after he and his siblings became his step-mother about a year later. From that point forward, I can say with certainty he was raised in a very prim and proper Victorian household.

As a young man, Loy went off to Trinity College (now known as Duke University) to study. I've been told by his daughters that he graduated with honors.

School must have been easy for Loy, because amidst his massive mental gifts was a photographic memory. Virtually everyone I've interviewed who knew him says he was really, REALLY smart - a true intellectual. All my aunts, as well as my mother, agree that Loy could virtually quote every word Shakespeare wrote by heart. My mother is fond of relating how he would try to amuse her when she was pregnant. He'd attempt to perform Shakespearean plays by himself, taking a stance on one side of the room while speaking one part, then moving to another spot and performing that role, and so forth. (The fact my mother has no love for literature in general or Shakespeare in particular went over his head - which only goes to show intellect and discernment are two very different things.) Loy was also deeply appreciative of the poetry of Tennyson and Longfellow.

The photographic evidence shows he was remarkably handsome at this stage of his life.

Loy was a very genteel person - a real gentleman, according to those who knew him. He was soft-spoken, courteous and mannerly. He had genteel friends. His daughter Dorothy said of him, "He was a gentle soul, artistic."

Loy always dressed up (another universally acknowledged fact); going without a white shirt and black bow tie was simply unthinkable to him, even when he was engaged in some kind of casual labor, such as gardening. He was never known to come to the table in short sleeves. (Miss Annie, do we see some of your training here?)

Loy is said to have had an extremely sophisticated but hilarious sense of humor. It has been variously described to me as "dry," "sly," "sophisticated," "marvelous" and "refined." One of  his daughters put it this way: "They weren't big, broad jokes. If you weren't tuned in, you wouldn't have gotten them. You needed the inside tract to understand."

After college, Loy taught school, becoming the Principal at Granite Falls, North Carolina. While teaching at the tiny little mountain town of Old Fort, he fell in love with one of his students, Miss Bessie Christine Stirewalt.

True to his nature, after her death in 1947 he just couldn't resist tacking underneath this picture of her a typed segment of poetry which reads,

"...Behold her there,

As I beheld her ere she knew my heart,

My first, last love; the idol of my youth,

The darling of my manhood, and, alas!

Now the most blessed memory of mine age."

Eventually, the two of them eloped, marrying on a westbound train in the mountains of North Carolina on April 28, 1910. Excerpts from the newspaper account read as follows, and give us some interesting clues as to just what their circumstances were at the time.

Gastonia, April 28 - A wedding which contained all the elements of the romantic was solemnized in a parlor chair car on westbound passenger train 21, on the western division of the Southern Railway, Wednesday evening about 6:30 o'clock when Miss Bessie Stirewalt, a popular and attractive young lady of Old Fort, became the bride of Prof. Loy C. Cornwell, son of Mr. and Mrs. C.C. Cornwell of Dallas, this county. Harry S. Smith, pastor of Oazrk Methodist Church ...performed the ceremony in the presence of a few close friends...

The performance of the marriage ceremony in this manner was somewhat of a surprise to Mr. Smith, who was en route from Gastonia to Marion, where he was to have performed the ceremony that night. To his surprise, the prospective bride and groom, accompanied by her sister, Miss Margaret Stirewalt, Rev. Edgar Long, pastor of the Baptist Church at Marion, Mr. Clay Connelley, also of Marion, and possibly one or two others, boarded the train at a small station a short distance east of Marion. Finding Mr. Smith on the train, they urged him to perform the ceremony at once and the party retired to a chair car, which happened to be unoccupied by passengers, and there the sacred marriage vows were taken.

Prof. and Mrs. Cornwell remained on the train and continued their journey to Asheville, from which point they expect to go on a bridal trip to the North. The officiating minister alighted at Marion and returned to Gastonia, reaching home yesterday morning. It is probable that objection on the part of the bride's parents rendered it necessary for them to change their original plans, hence the hurry to have the ceremony consummated.

The groom, a son of County Clerk and Mrs. C.C. Cornwell, has for the past year had a position of Principal of the graded school at Old Fort. He is about 25 years of age.

Unfortunately Loy, although he had numerous other talents and abilities, was not a good provider. He and Bessie suffered from want much of their married lives. My grandfather was by all accounts a dreamer. He told his young bride they were going to set the world on fire, but my feeling is they both ended up rather scorched instead. In the words of his nephew, "He was a fine fellow, but he didn't know how to make money." One of his children put it this way, "Papa was very bookish and highly impractical." My mother pointed out he had no sense of time. His youngest daughter described this otherworldliness of his by saying, "He was a visionary."

Bessie addressed her husband as "Professor" all her life, which is kind of amusing to me, since he never taught at a university. For some part of his life my grandfather obtained work as a mail carrier in the beautiful city of Charlotte, North Carolina, where he was very impressed with the multitude of fine, stately homes. Later in life he returned to school, earning some degree or certificate from Duke Divinity School, after which he pastored several tiny mountain churches, something like a circuit-riding preacher of old. Congregations for which he preached included those in Harper, Dudley Shoals and Bakersvile.

Stories of this period of his life abound. The one I find most remarkable is this: one Sunday morning he arrived at his little mountain church to find it in flames. Since no one else was yet there, he - by himself - picked up the piano and carried it from the building! He was certainly not a brawny individual; quite the opposite, in fact. I know he did his best to pastor the little flocks he was given, and he bore many trials. One amusing example is the story of one occasion in which he was invited to the home of one of his congregants for a stewed chicken-and-dumpling dinner. There were flies everywhere, and the hostess jumped up and used her own (contaminated) fork to serve the folks gathered around her table. As fastidious and clean as her was, this must have been very hard on Loy. When he got home, he told his family, "You have to do some things for the Lord's sake."

My grandfather had qualities that me honor and respect him with a fervor strong enough to make me weep, yet he exercised them in such a manner as to bring hurt and suffering to his wife and children. On the plus side, he had an enormous heart made of pure gold. I am told he would not infrequently come across some poor little old mountain man or woman who was ill and in need of surgery but who lacked funds to pay for such treatment. Loy would put the person in his car, take them to the nearest hospital and pay for the operation himself. He would often bring home hitchhikers, literally clean them up with soap and water on the back porch, bring them a towel and then bring them in the house and feed them a meal. Afterward, he would talk to them about their souls. He gave constantly to people in need. He was a truly open-handed, generous and compassionate man.

On the minus side, however, it is a fact my grandfather didn't even have enough money to meet the basic needs of his own family, which makes this generosity to others less laudable than it would otherwise have been, in my opinion. He sometimes gave away possessions belonging to his wife - which surely must have driven her to distraction! Bessie and Loy remained married until her death, but I'm not sure how happy their union was. My grandmother has a very careworn appearence in all her photos, and I know she had to deal creatively with awful situations time and time again due to the family's poverty. One example her daughters told me (I never knew her myself, as she died before I was born) was that she'd tell her children it was time to go for a picnic when in reality she was trying to avoid a visit from the landlord because there wasn't money to pay the rent they owed. They moved around a lot, but by World War II they had a little house in Rutherford College, North Carolina which is still in the family.

Their children seemed to think that my grandfather was more refined than his wife, but I know he loved her very much. One instance of this is that he provided her with piano lessons when they were first married.

One humorous thing everyone remembers about my grandfather is his recklessness behind the wheel of a car. He was a very fast driver (is this genetic?), a fact that has been the subject of great mirth in the family. Aunt Mary once told me, "It seemed like we'd go 100 miles an hour. Mama didn't know enough to be scared. She didn't see danger on the road. Papa had a habit of looking EVERYWHERE BUT on the road in front of him when he was driving. One time he really did run his car clear off the road on the way to Hickory." One of his cars was a Ford without any brakes, one of his cars was christened "Henry J.," and in his later life he tooled about in a little Austin.

My grandparents had six children. Loy was a good father and loved all his children, but the girls all told me he was the kind of person who had difficulty expressing his emotions. Having reached puberty and attained adulthood under the strict Victorian rules of Miss Annie, this is not to be wondered at, I suppose. His children told me he was very caring and yet they felt he was emotionally distant. As one put it, "He seemed kind of far-off in our early years."

His style of parenting reflected that with which he himself received; he was very strict. Given the extraordinary beauty of his daughters, I can see why. He was very much concerned for his children's salvation, and the girls told me he spoke to them on the subject often, warning them about hell. They felt he was extremely straitlaced, also stating, "Papa didn't know how to be with children. He didn't have 'the touch.' He was very stiff."

Paradoxically, although he was dearly loved by all his congregations he was especially liked by the young people! He made a habit of attending youth meetings. I guess this is just one example of the fact that our lives are a process and that none of us end up as we began. Our characters evolve as we age and mature.

My grandfather was an animal lover of the highest order. Besides owning numerous cats and dogs over the years, I am told he even loved a pet chicken named "Chatterbox." Nobody could touch this bird but Loy. When Chatterbox died, he went up on a hillside and cried all day. His daughter told me he was forlorn for weeks afterwards. (Of course, this endears him to me.) Both he and his wife were extraordinarily fond of a family dog named Napoleon, and I have a copy of a heart-wrenching letter he wrote upon the death of this animal that makes even me cry, who knew neither the dog nor its owners. Dated September 19, 1943, it reads,

Dear Mary, Am very sorry to tell you that dear old Napoleon has left us. He passed away after a brief illness on Sept. 15th at the dog hospital, Charlotte. I took him down there on that day - arriving at the hospital about noon, and as the weather was warm and perhaps warmer where they caged him up - and when I phoned from Martha's about 7 pm that evening the Doctor said he died about 2pm from a convulsion. I am sorry I took him down there now - he might have done better here but we can never tell. Anyway he's gone and I am very sad and lonely without him. I can hardly stand it not to be able to hear his scratch at the door and his bark in the yard.

If you will read Tennyson's poem "Break, Break, Break," you will know how I feel. Tennyson wrote this after his best friend Arthur Henry Hallum died...

After his retirement, Loy became a representative of International Correspondence Schools, an activity involving taking to the back roads and working with urban mill populations to promote courses. Sometimes he taught them as well.

When he was around 60, my grnadfather developed cancer behind one of his eyes (which were of a beautiful blue, by the way). The eye on the affected side had to be removed so that the surgeon could get to the tumor. The only personal memory I have of him is a very vague one of an old man removing a glass eye - and this might only be a dream, anyway. Loy died at age 77 from prostate cancer. In a letter written to my mother dated January, 1961, he writes, "I am praying unceasingly and the Lord has greatly encouraged me - I live on the precious promises."

I look forward with much anticipation to knowing him better in heaven - he and I have a truckload of personality and character traits in common.