My Story - Chapter 4

The Third Generation

All that medical drama makes for emotional reading.  Let’s go back in the past for a bit and see what got us in this situation to begin with.  Often credited to Nabikov, but it might have been someone else,  it’s often said that the playwright’s job is to chase his hero up a tree, then throw rocks at him.  Hitchcock would quote that adage and then give examples of it in his work. Don’t worry; I won’t leave my hero up in that tree forever, but he’s safe there–for now.

No matter who you are, your story starts with the family who raised you.  Your story starts with theirs, even if you were raised in some horrible Dickensian orphanage.  When I was little, my mother told me that some boys from the Methodist Children’s Home would be joining my Sunday School class.  Having never heard of the Methodist Children’s Home before, what she described to me sounded an awful lot like what I had just seen in the movie “Oliver,” even though she made a special effort to say how nice the people running the children’s home were, and I felt really bad for these boys who had to beg for more food.  I include this because the perceptions of a child stay with them their whole lives; they become particularly important if that child becomes an artist.

In Mississippi, the name Campbell means something very different from what it means in Scotland.  In Mississippi, it suggests business and civic leaders, particularly in the areas of education, banking, and hospitals.  That all began with my Great Uncle Boyd.  In Scotland, it means murder.

Greatness and prominence seldom make it into the third generation.  I am in the third generation.  In Mississippi, there’s an unofficial organization of third-generation leaders.  It's more secretive than Fight Club; we never discuss it or meet.  We recognize each other on the street but never acknowledge it.  The third generation is known for losing all their money and developing serious addiction problems.  

One way to break the cycle is to do something with your life that’s completely different from your forbearer.  Conrad Hilton built hotels.  Paris Hilton made “accidental” pornography.  You may not appreciate her work or her life, but I bet you know her name.  

Anderson Cooper’s great-great-grandfather built railroads. He became so rich and powerful that Teddy Roosevelt had to pass laws to curtail his influence.  Following the example of his mother, who also broke all the rules, Cooper may have never ridden in a train. He eschewed business and made a name for himself in journalism and, in many ways, changed the world’s perception of an openly gay professional.

My matrilineal family begins in Ireland, and my patrilineal family begins in Scotland.  Anthropology tells us that both originated in Africa, but it’s impossible to track back anyone’s lineage that far.  Both familial lines ended up in Central Mississippi, Hinds County for my mother’s family and Attala County for my father’s.  

Central Mississippi is not the delta.  Our soil is sandy, sometimes red with clay, unlike the almost black fecundity of the delta soil.  There are farms in Central Mississippi but hardly any plantations.  There were slaves in Central Mississippi, but not the armies of slaves found in the Delta.  There were no slaves in the Brady or Campbell families; they were too poor.  

William Alexander Campbell was born in the second year of the American Civil War.  Inheriting his father’s farm, Alexander, who became known as “Cap,” married his fourth cousin Carrie Boyd.  She bore him five children: Alexander Boyd, Robert Matthew, James William, Annie G. (who became the mother of my Cousin Robert Wingate, who would become important later), and Carolyn Delana, the youngest.

An accident and an infection left Cap with only one arm.  Despite that, he operated a general store, a construction crew, a small sawmill, a farm growing feed corn, and somehow, he got in the business of operating an ox team that is said to have cut most of the roads in Attala County.  My brother has the yoke from one of the oxen hanging on his wall.

I can’t imagine what having an amputation was like in Attala County in those days.  The only anesthesia available would have been ether or whiskey.  I suspect he used whiskey.  When his second child, Robert, broke his leg, Cap made sure the doctors did everything they could to keep it from becoming infected like his arm.  Robert would keep his leg, but it grew two inches shorter than his other leg.

Even though he had no formal education himself, Cap believed education was vitally important for his children.  He even used his construction team to help build the small brick school house in that part of Attala County.

As Robert’s leg was convalescing, he found it difficult to walk to school, even with his older brother, Boyd, helping him.  Cap rigged a cart designed for goats to be pulled by a dog, and the Campbell family made it to school with Robert riding in the dog cart.  

Although Boyd was the oldest, he was considered dour and silent. Everyone loved Robert and agreed he was destined for great things. When war broke out in Europe, Robert tried to enlist but was rejected because of his leg. Undaunted, Robert had learned to drive his father’s truck, so he put his studies at Millsaps College on hold and volunteered with the YMCA to drive an ambulance in France.

French, British, and American forces held the line against the advancing Germans in France.  Robert used his ambulance to deliver injured soldiers from the front line to a hospital further away.  Mustard Gas was one of the worst weapons used in World War I, and it would collect and settle in depressions in the landscape.  Driving back at dusk with two soldiers in the back, Robert inadvertently drove through one of these gas clouds because he couldn’t see it in the dark.  Smelling the tell-tale garlic smell of mustard gas, he drove as fast as he could through it, but by the time he reached the hospital, his fate and the fate of his two passengers were sealed.  He was dead from pneumonia within three days.  

Robert was buried in the American Cemetery in France.  His older brother, Boyd, bought a matching headstone for Robert to sit beside his own in the Bethel Church Cemetary in Hesterville, Mississippi, but there is no body in the grave.

Boyd Campbell was born the year before Millsaps College was founded.  A devoutly Methodist family, all five Campbell children attended Millsaps.  Our familial connection with Millsaps becomes an important part of my story.

After graduating from College, Boyd decided farming wasn’t for him. He went into education, first as a teacher but later as an administrator and school superintendent. It was in his position as superintendent that Boyd noticed nearly all the supplies used to operate a school were ordered by mail, and Mississippi Schools had to wait for weeks for their order to be delivered by rail.  That gave him an idea.

Borrowing five hundred dollars from his Life Insurance policy, Boyd and his younger brother James (my grandfather) began Mississippi School Supply Company and moved to Jackson.  

With no competition, and with Mississippi growing (slowly) in wealth and its dedication to education, Mississippi School Supply Company was a success.  It became such a success that it began to dominate the family.  When Cap died, my Great Grandmother Carrie was moved to Jackson to live in a house bought for her by her son, Boyd.

By all accounts, Boyd remained dour and difficult to know, but he found his niche in life.  From the presidency of Mississippi School Supply, Boyd would become a director of First National Bank, the treasurer of Millsaps College, and one of the founders of an organization that became known as St. Dominic’s Hospital.

Boyd’s story is not my story, but I share much more than just his name. Although I never met him, I was almost forty by the time I got my last phone call from a stranger looking for my Uncle Boyd. People who didn’t know me expected me to become what he was, and the expectation was palpable my entire life. It’s not as bad now because nearly everyone who knew Boyd is dead or convalescing, but I still feel it.