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Dyre
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Commentary by Arnold Dyre
From year to year, I continue to marvel that my old friend Clovis is still here. Now 96 years old, Clovis has done a lot of living!
Preparing for Christmas this year while decorating Clovis’s Sunnybrook Estates Retirement Center apartment with a state of the art, fiber optic pre-lit Christmas tree, Clovis energetically entertained his nurse Tymeika, his housekeeper Ernestine, and me with a story from his youth before the rest of us were born.
Clovis told how he split stove wood for a week in preparation of his mother’s cooking Christmas dinner for 50 people on a wood stove. Then only 11 years old, Clovis was sent to get the turkey that his mother had previously arranged for from a local farmer, who lived seven or eight miles down the road.
Because it had snowed, young Clovis was permitted to go fetch the turkey in a horse-drawn buggy. He told how that on the way back home he urged the horse to a fast trot and had great fun sliding around on the ice-covered frozen dirt road with a plump turkey in a crate sitting on the buggy seat beside him.
In all the Christmases of Clovis’s long lifetime, when he went to get the turkey in a buggy, is the only white Christmas he remembers, but, Clovis will readily admit that he now forgets a good deal of things.
Some years back, Clovis vowed to live long enough to see Ole Miss again beat Mississippi State, but he has already forgotten the score of this year’s Ole Miss victory. Nevertheless, Clovis now says that he is almost tempted to live until Ole Miss wins again! Sometimes Clovis forgets whether he is now 96 or 97. Frankly, I believe old Clovis will make it to 97 or, maybe, beyond.
Although forgetful, Clovis is still sharp. He can remember in great detail the 25 bombing missions he made in the nose of a B-17 Flying Fortress as a gunner/bombardier during World War II. As one of a group of 50 trainees, Clovis was one of only three of that 50 to survive the war.
Clovis tells of the day when he finally arrived back on United States soil and saw countless American flags displayed for President Roosevelt’s last inauguration. He jokingly wisecracked to the other returning servicemen with him, “Boys, they heard we were coming home!”
Clovis has spent a long and productive life. He worked in the administrations of five Mississippi governors and also worked for former United States Senator Trent Lott.
Clovis likes to tell the story of when he and his son Gary (now deceased) were attending a Cotton Bowl game featuring the 2004 Ole Miss Rebels. Clovis says that, when he and Gary initially took their seats in the packed stadium, Trent Lott and his wife, Tricia, were only a few rows below them. Spotting Clovis, Trent enthusiastically waved and called out, “Hello, Governor!”
Clovis says that most everyone nearby turned around and looked and he heard one lady tell her companion, “He’s not the governor anymore!”
Clovis has never held political office, but I think he would have made a fine governor.
Because of my past newspaper articles about Clovis and my frequent references about him on Facebook, Clovis has become fairly well-known to many who have never actually met him. From time to time, folks will tell me to give their best regards to Clovis and, when I do, he is very pleased and somewhat surprised that people he does not know are asking about him.
I explain by telling Clovis that they know him because of my newspaper articles. This week, he told me that he wanted me to put a special message in my article from him to the folks who read the newspaper. Clovis said, “Tell them that I hope they all had a good Christmas, and I wish them all a happy and prosperous New Year!”
I joked with Clovis a bit, telling him that what he wanted to say was not very original.
He said, “Well, I thought about telling you to say GO TO HELL, STATE, but that would have been ugly, and I thought about telling you to tell them that I was going to live until Ole Miss beats both LSU and State, but that would be asking God for too much. So just tell ’em what I said and that I really mean it. May God bless them all.”
adyre@comcast.net
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