Everybody has family stories. Mine are kind of different, mainly because my family was pretty weird. There were people who were genetically part of my family and people who were spiritually part of my family, and because of this, my family stories can start to cover a pretty wide range.
If you get too old to be an active member of the Junior League, you become what they call a “sustainer.” I’m not sure if they mean, do you sustain the organization, yourself, the ideals of the Junior League, or the community you’re in? My mother was a Sustainer most of her life, and she was probably more active as a Sustainer than she was as an active member of the Jackson Junior League.
I like the word “sustainer”; it suits me. If anybody ever asks, “Boyd, what the hell did you even do today?” I’ll answer, “Man, I have been sustaining all goddamn day, and tomorrow I’ve got some sustaining to do. I’ll be sustaining this whole week, but we can have lunch on Friday if you want.”
I would sustain a piece of German chocolate cake if I had it. It came to my surprise to find out that there isn’t a place in Germany where they make things from chocolate, pecans, and coconut. They don’t even have pecans in Germany. The cake is named for Mr. German, who made a sweet baking chocolate. The pecans came from Texas, which is why the recipe originated in the Dallas Morning News. Mississippi Pecans are better, but that’s not a part of the story.
I’ve sustained a lot of things. I sustain art, theater art, music, monster movies, dance, sculpture, and especially writing. I sustain Mississippi, the United Methodist Church, The City of Jackson, Kappa Alpha Order (sometimes), but most especially, I sustain Millsaps College, and I suppose that’s what this story is about.
There came a time in Jackson, in the sixties and seventies, when the wives of remarkable and successful men decided it was time for each of them to take up a vocation or an avocation of their own to prove to the world that they were every bit as remarkable as their notable husbands—but not as successful, at least financially or politically. That would be a scandal. That changed in my generation. I know guys who proudly admit their wives accomplished far more than they ever imagined for themselves.
One of the first of these independent women was Katherine Speed. She took up sculpting. As a child, she allowed me to visit her studio, where she was sculpting a dancer. It changed my life. My mother was very crafty (the kind of person who made crafts, not somebody who was sneaky, although she was), but she decided to go another route. She took up with an organization that later became known as “The Stew Pot,” where she solicited my labor to scrape seventy years worth of oil and grime off the floor of an old gas station they were given so they could feed the hungry since passing around a basket of fish and bread doesn’t work in Mississippi, due to the heat and humidity. Willie Kroeze took up with Steinmart. I don’t know if they could have run the Jackson store without her.
A number of prominent Jackson housewives took up painting. In that way, they were no longer “housewives,” a term that had come to be held with some disdain; they were artists, and they were very good ones. These women became the core of the Jackson Watercolor Group, which I’ve written about before and probably will again.
As a child, I had a keen interest in painting because my brother was an artist. Before he lost his mind, he was one of the most remarkable artists I ever knew. Schizophrenia made it difficult for him to sustain his thoughts, and that changed his art entirely. He was still a very good artist, but I couldn’t see it because he wasn’t the same person I knew before. I resented the loss of my brother, even though part of him was always still there. We’re learning that there are ties between schizophrenia, ADHD, and clinical depression, both of which I have in spades. I was very lucky not to develop schizophrenia in my life, although I would have gladly taken it if it meant he did not.
Because of what happened with my brother and because of my (sometimes pretty advanced) learning disabilities, my mother was leery of this business of me going into the art of any kind. She thought it would be safer and more logical if I just concentrated on becoming “normal” or at least pretending to be; then, my father could set me up in business, and nobody would ever know that I was almost eight years old before I could read by myself.
She was amenable to the idea that I could maybe do art as an avocation, perhaps as a serious hobby, so long as I kept things in their proper perspective. Toward that end, she set me up with painting lessons with Alice Riley and began introducing me to her friends who were painting with much more seriousness than she would have ever been comfortable with me doing.
One of the first people she introduced me to was Jackie Meena. The Meena’s lived across the street. Her father, Lauch, played Gin Rummy with my grandfather, and Alice Riley’s father played with them as well. Jackie was fierce and fearless. She became one of the most notable painters in the South East.
After Mrs. Meena, my mother introduced me to Edwina Goodman. I say she introduced us, but I already knew Mrs. Goodman. Edwina was a member of my church. He husband, Bill, worked closely with my father for most of his life. Like Jackie Meena, Edwina Goodman was part of the Jackson Watercolor Group but also worked in oils. Although you could tell by their work that they were often trying to do the same thing at the same time, Edwina’s work was very different from Jackie’s. For one thing, Edwina had a sense of color that was very memorable and quite different from any painter I have ever known.
At Mrs. Goodman’s house, she showed me where she painted and the things she used to paint with, gave me a Coke, and talked to me for more than an hour about being an artist, even though I was just thirteen. Among other things, Edwina Goodman’s work inspired her grandson, William, who is now one of the more notable working artists in the country.
Now that I’m back in town, I decided that I needed to be part of my Sunday School class again. Among people who are sustainers of the United Methodist Church and Millsaps College, my Sunday school includes some of the most remarkable. Every time I go, I think, “I really don’t deserve to be here. I haven’t yet earned my place.”
I’ll start with Ed King. If you’re from the South, even if you’re not, you owe it to yourself to find out who Ed King is and what his life entailed. There are books about him and videos. He even has a Wikipedia page, although it doesn’t tell the whole story. If you’re white and a man born in Mississippi, then I’m afraid I have to insist that you really should find out who Ed King is.
The late Sue and Jerry Whitt were members of my Sunday school. Jerry came to Jackson at George Harmon's request to be the first dean for the Else School of Management at Millsaps. His wife, Sue, was one of our first teachers in accounting, particularly in the use of data information systems. When I was at Millsaps if I had a troubled heart, I would first visit the office of Sue Whitt, who would console me, then I would visit the office of Shirley Olson, who would kick my ass and tell me to straighten up. Between the two, I made it through just about every challenge. When Jerry and Sue left Millsaps, they became ministers, which sounds incongruous for teachers in a business school, but if you knew them, it’s not incongruous at all.
Kay Barksdale is in that class. She had many jobs at Millsaps, but her main job was to know who everybody was and how they were connected to the great chain of being that is Millsaps. Don Fotenberry was the Chaplain at Millsaps at Millsaps for something like thirty years. T.W. Lewis and the late Lee Reiff tag team taught Religion at Millsaps. Together and individually, they’re responsible for a legion of ministers practicing today, both Methodist and otherwise. Brad Chism was the first Millsaps student to become a Rhodes Scholar. After that, he became a principal architect for the political structure in this country for the last quarter of the twentieth century and the first quarter of the twenty-first. He’ll tell you that’s an exaggeration, but it’s not. He has one of the finest political minds there is.
This Sunday, the Millsaps Singers performed at church, and Ricky James preached. Ricky is the current chaplain at Millsaps; he was a remarkable student there before that. I’m slowly adjusting to the idea that members of his class are now in their forties. Ricky delivered a remarkable sermon that covered the rather important question of who was saved by Jesus, which was also the topic of Sunday School that day. His answer, and mine, is that everyone was saved by Jesus, although not everyone feels like they are availed of it.
Going into church, I saw Pat Taylor’s wife operating a table where they were selling items made by members of the church to raise money for our Missions. Pat Taylor was one of the young professors when we started the Else School of Business. When he first showed up, I thought to myself, “This guy is entirely too nice to make it at Millsaps.” He’s been there ever since.
Glancing over the plants, baked goods, and pottery made by Galloway Members and offered for sale for a good cause, I saw a small watercolor portrait of a woman’s face. I thought to myself, “That looks like Edwina Goodman.” but that’s impossible; Mrs. Goodman died several years ago. She’s no longer painting.” That’s when they told me that the family had donated some of her paintings. I asked the price, thinking it would be at least a thousand dollars. It was considerably less.
I have more art than I can possibly hang in my apartment, including an Edwina Goodman. Once they finish working on my kitchen floor, I have to have Mary Sanders Ferris out to figure out a way to hang, at least most of it. “It didn’t sell last year either,” they told me regarding the painting. That painting needed a home—the right home. I don’t have room for it, but my apartment is hardly the full extent of my universe.
The Millsaps Players inherited the entire third floor of the Gertrude Ford Academic Complex. One day, remind me to tell you the story of how it came to be called the “Gertrude Ford Academic Complex.” Edwina was a friend and ally of Lance Goss, who sat behind her in church every Sunday for more than fifty years. Every bit of wall art we have in the Millsaps Theater department is either a poster for a play or something painted to be a prop in a play. We have what used to be the school’s official art gallery, with very little art to hang in it. I thought to myself, “This painting needs a home.” I couldn’t think of a better home than the Millsaps Players, so I bought it and asked Pat Taylor if he would take it to school and deliver it to Sam Sparks, who took Lance’s Job. (Lance didn’t need it anymore.)
I told this whole story without mentioning the fact that Edwina Goodman is Bill Goodman's wife. Bill Goodman was the lead counsel for the state of Mississippi in the Ayers case, which I believe was the longest-running legal issue in the history of the great State of Mississippi. Bill was also lead counsel for Missco Corporation and Millsaps College. He was also the hero of a man named Joe Lee Gibson, who was a legend at Millsaps.
One day, J. Army Brown called George Harmon, who was the president of Millsaps. He said, “George, I want to give Millsaps a million-five. I want you to build a dormitory in memory of Bill Goodman, and I want you to pay me to build it.” Mr Brown had built starter apartments all over Mississippi. I lived in two of them. Some of you probably did, too. His idea was to build a dormitory similar to those apartments, with rooms with private baths and a kitchenette in them.
Normally, George had to chase people down and beat money out of them, but here, this guy was throwing it at him. “Well, Army, we’d be glad to take the money, there’s a spot where I’ve been thinking we could put a dorm, but, uh, I feel like you should know this, but Bill Goodman ain’t dead. We’re not in the practice of memorializing buildings in honor of people who ain’t dead.”
After talking to Mr. Brown, George called Daddy and told him the story. Daddy thought about it for a minute and said, “I would have thought Army knew this, but I had breakfast with Bill Goodman, he ain’t dead. This would be a pretty good deal if we could make it happen. Call Bill Goodman, work out something on the name deal , with him, and ask him if it’s legal for Army to give us money that we give right back to him to build a dorm.” Of all the buildings George Harmon erected at Millsaps, this was the simplest and the cleanest, even though he and my daddy both wanted to make sure it was legal to take money from a guy and then give it right back to them.
After an hour, Bill Goodman called back to say that it was legal to make the deal and that they could name the dorm after his Father, who was involved with Millsaps, but not for him because he wasn’t dead. We needed the dorm, and this was a good deal.
I heard this story from Daddy, George Harmon, and Bill Goodman. The price of the building changed a few times, but the details never did. The dorm is still at Millsaps. I don’t know what the plaque on it says now, but when it was built, it didn’t say Bill Goodman because, at the time, he wasn’t dead.
I try to meet every Millsaps student I can find. I try to instill in them the idea that even if they’re the first person in their family to go to Millsaps, even if they’re the first person in their family to go to college, now that they’re at Millsaps, they’re part of a large and ancient family going back five generations. That family includes people like Ricky James, Ed King, Lance Goss, Jerry and Sue Whitt, TW Lewis, Lee Reiff, Edwina Goodman, and me.
It’s quite a good painting. I don’t know how it didn’t sell. Sometimes, people have different ideas about art than mine. That’s ok. Hopefully, one day, some young person will see it and think about their own life as an artist. I want the painting to help them sustain something in themselves.
Watercolor Botanical Study by Edwina Goodman, Hanging at Galloway Memorial United Methodist Church