The Florida Panhandle has some of the most beautiful beaches in the world. Its white sand makes the water a beautiful, translucent green color. It’s a place that pops off of postcards. Last weekend, the weather was definitely not from central casting — it was cold, drizzly and gloomy. But a quirk in how I see things is that I can find beauty even in the middle of the gloom. Last Sunday, I went for a walk along the beach and saw the sun struggling to burn through the clouds. There were patches of the trademark green water. The sand was white but not quite as vibrant. But the sea oats and scrub had patches of brown and yellow that gave a warm glow.
Last weekend, our nephew Ian got married to his wonderful girlfriend Lindsay at the town hall in Rosemary Beach, Florida. It was a grand affair — one of the happiest weddings I can remember.
They’re off to a good start.
During the reception, a voice from behind me said, “Are you Marshall Ramsey?” Considering 99.9% of the crowd was from the Atlanta area, it caught me off guard. Maybe someone else besides us was from Mississippi? I turned around and saw a woman about my age. She was attractive but I didn’t recognize her.
“Yes.”
She replied, “You took me to the senior prom.”
I looked again and sure enough, she was right. It was Tammy Wayne, who had gone with me as a friend. We ate, went to the dance and then I dropped her off afterwards. She was dating someone else by that point. I went off and had fun with my friends.
It was nice night.
I didn’t see her again after that.
Thirty six and a half years later, there she was.
We caught up on three decades of life, I introduced her to Amy and my middle son. I couldn’t hear well (the band was amazing and loud and I’m deaf when things starting getting the least bit loud). I did hear her say a couple of times that I hadn’t changed.
I drink Formaldehyde after all.
She is a good friend of the bride’s mom. I’m uncle to the groom. What are the odds?
She walked away and I didn’t see her again after that.
Life is totally random. And I’ll probably bump into her again in the nursing home.
If you are thrown off the boat, you can either thrash around in the water or you can swim. Of course, you need to know HOW to swim — that’s helpful. Panic causes the thrashing. I can tell you from experience, if you think you are drowning, you get tired very quickly. Easy, measured strokes can take you were you need to go.
In 2008, the newspaper business started cutting people. For two years, I lived in fear as my colleagues got laid off around me. I ended up having stomach issues and had to have a couple of procedures to make sure something wasn’t wrong. Stress is a killer in more ways than one.
Twelve-years ago this week, I was thrown off the boat — with a rope still attached to my leg. After coming back from running the Marine Corps marathon and raising $13,000 for charity, I was made part-time at the Clarion Ledger. (And my dog died — If my mom had been hit by a train, it would have been a country song) It initially cost me my benefits (which were later restored) and half of my salary. I still did six cartoons a week — which meant the paper got me for half off. They told me that I could get another job — which I did to keep my house. I got a job at SuperTalk. Soon all the promises made to me like “you can work from home some” went away. I was sitting in the CL building at 6:00 a.m. sharp. I’d get home at 6:30 at night and then do it all over again the next day.
I was thrashing in the water.
Back then, I was afraid because I didn’t think I could do anything else other than draw editorial cartoons. Today I know better. I am a storyteller.
Twelve years ago, the management at the Clarion Ledger did me a favor. I am grateful to them. First of all, they didn’t lay me off. Being part-time, I still had some money to survive on. Second, their business decision allowed me to start making some business decisions of my own. I published books, I got better on radio, I did TV and I now work with a great team at Mississippi Today.
There were some costs in those twelve years. But as I look back this morning, I thank God and need to get busy swimming.
My dad, Dave Ramsey, graduated from The University of Tennessee in 1959. I graduated from there in 1991. Talking UT football was our currency — it was the one thing I knew we could always talk about. I’d love calling him after a game and sharing notes. It was a tradition that started on September 6, 1980 when he took me to my first UT game. Tennessee had just expanded Neyland to seat 98,000. The day was crowded, hot and electric — My blood turned from red to orange. That’s the game when Herschel Walker ran over Bill Bates. Georgia won the game but lost a prospective student. In awe of Neyland Stadium, I looked at Dad and said, “I’m going to school here.”
A piece of art that I drew for the Graduate Hotel in Knoxville. Dad and I are in the middle.
Six years later, I did.
When dementia cast a cold shadow across his mind, I could no longer call him up and chat about OUR Volunteers. Dementia is like getting an advance on grief.
I would love to hear his hot takes on the Vols big win over Alabama.
This much I do know: He’d love Josh Heupel and would love seeing Neyland Stadium back alive like it was on that hot day in 1980. I know I do.
A few years ago, when I was in Neyland, I walked down at the end of the game from the club section to where Dad and I sat on that hot September day. I plopped onto the aluminum bleacher and I sat for a moment. I closed my eyes and was transported back to 1980. The stadium came alive. I was 13 again. I could feel Dad sitting next to me.
As Amy and I were driving home from our sons’ university Saturday night, I listened as Tennessee finally got the Alabama monkey off its back. I looked off to my right and saw the sky in North Mississippi glowing a beautiful bright orange. My hand reached for my phone to call my Dad.
Good morning! I’m going to start writing a quick blog with a few thoughts everyday. Remember to check out my work at MississippiToday.org — the best damn newsroom in the world (I am showing a little bias here).
DOUBTING THOMAS: My friend Neil talked about where to find faith. I spoke with Katie Eubanks from Mississippi Christian Living magazine yesterday and we touched on it as well. I half-joked that I am not qualified to talk about the subject because my first name is Thomas after all. I have wrestled with it when faced with unexplainable evil. But as I posted on Neil’s Facebook page, I think I can sum it up like this: “Neil, I was just pondering what faith means to me (I know, heady stuff for a Thursday morning). I think this sums it up. I was taught that faith meant I must convert others with my words. But if you get faith in your heart right, you don’t have to beat others over the head with your words. It just comes out in your actions. And those actions are what puts it into others’ hearts.”
CHOP SHOP. Gannett, which is a different Gannett than I worked for but is behaving just like the old one, announced another round on draconian cuts. I will admit that when I read it, it triggered my PTSD. I experienced numerous rounds of cuts and layoffs from 2008 to 2019, including being made part-time and losing half my pay. I am sitting here feeling that fear all over again and a touch of sadness for my friends who still work at the Clarion Ledger. They are good people doing good work under bad circumstances. I wish them nothing but the best. Mississippi needs every journalist it can get. (The TANF scandal and the water crisis are prime examples of it.) I sit here this morning grateful for my Mississippi Today family.
I heard from a public figure who spoke to my son’s class yesterday. He was complimenting me on my son’s answers. It was the kind of call as a parent that you hope to get. I called my son and recapped the conversation. He got some great advice about networking from the guest. So — this is not a post about my kid (of whom I am VERY proud.) No, it’s a reminder of what an influence mentors and guest speakers can have on kids. I appreciate that public figure for taking the time to speak to students.
Hurt people Hurt people. Watching the news coverage out of Ukraine still and listening to Putin’s nuclear threats. Having known a major narcissist, I always joked she didn’t have nuclear weapons or she would hav used them to protect her broken ego. That’s what’s going on with Vlad. It’s sad so many innocent souls have to die because of it.
Happy 247th birthday US Navy (picture is a painting I did of the USS Alabama.
We encounter people everyday. Like leaves floating by in a stream, they might make a momentary impression as they move from our mind’s eye. But occcasionally, someone comes into our lives and changes our world. I can think of a handful of people like that — but none have changed my life quite like Maggie Hurley.
I worked with Maggie at Pope High School from 1991-1992. Her husband Ron had lost his job as a pilot when Eastern Airlines went on strike and Maggie went to work as a high school custodian to make things meet. I liked Maggie and quickly became friends with her. She was old (45) but was funny and was a really hard worker. One day, she came up to me and said, “My daughter broke up with her boyfriend, how’d you like to meet her?” I thought, “Your standards for your daughter are pretty damn low — it’s not like I’m going to be a doctor,” but I agreed to the offer. Saturday morning, Maggie brought her daughter up to the country club where I worked on the weekend (I’ve always worked 24/7) — and promptly locked her keys in the car. So I got a couple of hours to get to know her daughter. She was short, skinny and had short hair. She also had big blue eyes and was really cute; she didn’t say much either.
This summer Maggie flew down to our house and I picked her up at the airport. We drove across the dam toward our house and I looked at her and said, “Everything you see this weekend is because of you.” No truer words have ever been spoken. Yeah, Maggie is Amy’s mom and my mother-in-law. Yeah, we have had our moments over the past 31 years. But I am grateful for her and how she changed my life for the better.
Photo of the first wave on Omaha Beach by Robert Capa.
Sunnybrook Nursing Home sits upon a small hill overlooking a quaint river valley in a rural part of the state. The backside of the main red brick building, which was built in the mid 1980’s, sports a giant picture window that looks out over rolling hills. Looking out, you could see nature. Looking in, you could see one shriveled old man in a wheelchair.
His name was Arthur Cummings.
Wrinkled, bald and scarred, Arthur Cummings looked every second of his 97 years. One of the last of the Greatest Generation, Arthur had stormed Omaha Beach during the first disastrous wave on D-Day. He was one of the few survivors from his Higgins Boat and still carried small pieces of shrapnel in his arms and legs. Those pieces of metal, and the nightmares caused by them, were his remaining souvenirs of his heroic actions on that blood-soaked beach.
Arthur Cummings earned a Purple Heart and a Silver Star and a promotion to sergeant and was, by every definition of the word, a genuine hero. But he ‘d have traded being a hero for peace of mind. Peace was something that didn’t come with the end of the war. For the rest of his life, the night brought him nightmares, filled with whizzing bullets and screaming Germans.
No one at the Sunnybrook Nursing Home knew that they had a hero in their midst. They just knew Arthur as the really old guy who sat in the chair by the window. Arthur liked to watch the clouds peacefully float by — something he had promised himself he’d do for the rest of his life that first night in Normandy.
A staff member brought Arthur his pills. As he handed him the small cup, he noticed his small Army pin on his collar.
“Were you in the Army?”
Arthur, just glad that someone spoke to him, lit up immediately.
“Yes.”
“Where did you serve?”
“Europe. I was part of D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge.”
“Wow! World War II? That’s amazing.”
Arthur had not even told his own children about his time in the Army. They had just suffered from the trauma he brought home with him from the war. They had both died recently — his daughter and his son had had cancer. His grandchildren didn’t come to see him. So he sat alone looking out the window.
“Tell me about D-Day,” the young man asked.
“Did you see Saving Private Ryan?”
“Yes. Was that what it was like?”
“I have no idea. I couldn’t relive that day by watching a movie. But I will tell you this much — Life is like storming a beach that you know you won’t make it off alive. The further you get up the beach, the more people fall around you. The longer you last, the more death you will see. Here’s the thing, though. You quickly realize that every second it precious. While you might have wasted time before you came ashore, once you are under fire, you are in the moment. Yes, you are scared. But you are also alive — until you aren’t. It changed my whole perspective on life. Every step up the beach is a gift. Don’t forget that son. Don’t forget that.”
“Yes, sir.” The staff member took the paper cup from Arthur.
Arthur swallowed his pills and watched the kid walk away. Then he rolled his chair back to the window and watched as the clouds floated gently past.
