My father won at life and he leaves a lasting legacy

By Stan Caldwell

stanmansportsfan.com

What can you say about the best man you’ve ever known?

Everyone says that about their father at the time of their passing, whether the father deserves it or not, or whether the child means it or not.

But in this case, it really is true. My dad was the best man I’ve ever known. He was the strongest man, the smartest man, the most loving man I’ll ever meet. He was a devoted son and dedicated brother, a faithful husband, loving father and loyal friend, and he was someone who made friends easily.

He was a brilliant student and a skilled pilot who served his country with honor, a successful professional who became an authority in his chosen field and, finally, a doting grandfather in his retirement.

My father died this past Thursday at 3:27 in the morning, after a full life that lasted 89 years, 6 months and 24 days.

There are things I need to say about him, some of which I expressed during the eulogy I spoke at his funeral on Monday, parts of which I’ve included here, but others that I have thought about in the two days since.

My dad’s name was Albert Percy Caldwell Jr., and he’d have been more than happy to name me Albert Percy Caldwell the Third. However, one of his sisters jumped the gun and named her first child Albert, two years before I came along in 1955.

So, to avoid confusion, my parents worked out a compromise and I was named for my grandfathers, Stanley Friday and, of course, Albert Caldwell Sr.

I got to thinking how my naming would have changed if I had been APC3. I probably would have ended up being Albert Caldwell, rather than some shortened version. I couldn’t have gone by Al Caldwell; that was Dad’s professional name.

I guess I could have shortened it to Bert, but that doesn’t really tell you that I’m Albert; it could be short for Herbert, Egbert, Norbert, any number of something-berts. I might have gone by Percy, which could have been cool – it certainly would have been different – but on balance, I’m happy to have been Stanley.

I’ve shortened it to Stan for much of my life, especially professionally, much to my mom’s slight displeasure, but in recent years I’ve gone back to using Stanley for my personal business.

My father grew up in Columbus, Mississippi, during the 1930s and 1940s, where for much of that time his constant companion was his closest brother, Richard, coming 16 months after Dad was born on August 1, 1931.

My mother was the youngest of seven siblings; Dad was the oldest of six. So, while I have a couple of Friday cousins that I’m close to, I never really knew my grandparents on that side. Stanley Friday died a year before I was born, and my grandmother died when I was 6.

On the other hand, my dad’s parents lived into the 1980s, so I got to know them well, and we have a big boisterous family. They had 16 grandchildren and 33 great-grandchildren, and we have all stayed relatively close.

Dad and Uncle Richard both played football for S.D. Lee High School, and I grew up hearing about the games they played all over Mississippi in places like Greenwood, Meridian and Laurel. Dad was good enough to start at Lee High as a center, but Richard was the football star in the family.

He was an end – a tight end before that became a thing – and he signed a football scholarship to Mississippi Southern College, where he was known as Dick Caldwell. He was good enough to be named to the Southern Miss Sports Hall of Fame in 1984, after starring on teams that earned back-to-back trips to the Sun Bowl in 1952 and 1953.

One of the defining moments in my career came when I was first starting out as a journalism student at USM in 1983.

I had previously earned a bachelor’s degree in history, but I never really had a career path set from that course of study. So, when I made the decision to marry my wife, who was a nursing student in Hattiesburg, I decided to be a sportswriter and enrolled at the college to train as a journalist.

One of my first assignments for the Student Printz was to cover a USM football game against Louisiana Tech, so I was sent to the office of Ace Cleveland, the longtime Sports Information Director, to retrieve my credentials.

Now, Ace was known to be a trifle gruff with the student reporters who came through his office, but I was already 28 and had been around a bit. Still, he kind of harrumphed when I came to his office asking about a press pass for the upcoming game, until I told him my name.

“Caldwell?” he growled. “You any kin to Dick Caldwell?”

“Yep, he’s my Uncle Richard,” I replied, and from that moment on, Ace and I were buddies, and we would remain friends until his death in 1995.

“Your uncle was one of the toughest sons of bitches I ever saw,” Ace said, but Richard himself always said that my father was the toughest, strongest person he ever met.

And he was, too. My dad was Superman, in so many ways. He had an endless reservoir of energy, and he was a tireless worker who never left a job – and never let anyone else leave a job – until it was completed to his satisfaction.

He also had a heart full of love, for his parents, his siblings, his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

But his heart always belonged to my mother.

Dad met Mom in high school and pursued her with keen interest that wasn’t always reciprocated early in their relationship.

But she came around when he was in college in the early 50’s, and they were married June 2, 1953, a couple of days after he received his commission to the United States Navy as an ensign.

Dad’s original dream was to study at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, but when he didn’t get that opportunity, he did the next best thing and earned an NROTC scholarship to Ole Miss.

My Granddaddy, a die-hard Maroon, a mid-1920s graduate from what was then Mississippi A&M, wasn’t altogether happy about his oldest child becoming a Rebel, but he liked the idea of not paying for Dad’s college, so he accepted it.

Dad went to flight school at Pensacola, Florida, and earned his wings as a Navy pilot. He later flew anti-submarine patrols during the height of the Cold War during his four years on active duty. He spent 16 more years in the Naval Reserve, retiring honorably as a Commander.

As an interesting sidenote, I did not learn until last week that Dad was officially a Korean War veteran, because he was commissioned a few weeks before the armistice was signed between the two sides in the conflict.

After leaving active duty, he embarked upon a career in petroleum refining, and he became something of a somebody in that field. He knew the oil refining process frontward, backward, sideways, inside, outside and all around.

He wrote articles for Oil and Gas Journal, the professional magazine for the petroleum industry, and after he retired, he was in demand as an expert witness in the field and earned a tidy side income as a freelance consultant.

He capped his career in the 1980s, when he was hired to run the large Tenneco refinery in Chalmette, Louisiana, where he did some of his finest work.

The Tenneco refinery had had multiple issues, and the plant workers were on strike the day he first arrived in early 1979. Just the year before, an explosion in a tower at the refinery had killed 16 workers, due to a serious safety lapse.

Dad was a quiet man, but he had a presence that commanded respect. I got to know some of the hourly guys at the refinery in El Dorado, Kansas, when my brother and I worked there during our college days.

One of them who was a union rep told me how much regard he had for Dad.

“He’s a tough negotiator, but he’s fair. He’s smart and he takes care of his people,” this man told me, and that describes Dad to a T.

He was tough, but he was fair. And he used those attributes to help resolve the strike, then he changed the safety culture at the plant, turning it into one of the safest in the industry, and ramrodded a huge $600 million expansion project that made it a state-of-the-art facility.

My parents had four children, of whom I am the eldest. I have a brother two years younger, Kevin, then two younger sisters, Mary Jean and a trailer, my sister Caroline, who is 15 years my junior.

My brother Kevin and I are close like Dad and Richard were, as he was with his other two brothers, and he set for us an example of what a real man, a real daddy, is supposed to be.

For a long time, Dad was literally Superman, someone whose strength was gargantuan, almost other-worldly. But that began to change in the mid-90s.

One day, he offered to help some older ladies get their car out of a ditch into which they’d gotten stuck. Dad went to push them out of the ditch, slipped and broke something in his back.

He was never quite the same after that. He had a surgery, where a bone graft was taken from his hip and fused onto his vertebrae, that didn’t really take and caused more pain than it relieved, pain he self-medicated with gin.

Still, he remained active, taking trips overseas with my mom, taking the grandchildren on trips, tending his garden – a pursuit at which he had few peers – and enjoying life with my mom at the house he built on five acres along Dickinson Bayou in Texas, southeast of Houston.

Finally, though, time took its toll, and after years of stops in Hattiesburg, his last visit came in 2017, when he and Mom made a special trip to see my son Stephen receive his commission as a Second Lieutenant in the Army National Guard.

Dad loved his country, loved his service on its behalf, and was proud that his grandson had carried on the family tradition of service to the country.

Monday, at his graveside service with full military honors, Stephen presented the flag, “on behalf of a grateful nation,” to my mom, and that was the moment when my composure broke.

Even as disciplined as he is as an officer, Stephen fought for his own control and he said afterward that it was the hardest thing he’s ever done.

Nevertheless, this whole experience was about as positive as it could have been. Although he was rapidly breaking down physically, Dad was with-it mentally right up to the final three days of his life, still reading books about military history, his favorite subject, and getting my mother’s affairs in order.

When his final illness came upon him last week, he lived long enough for all of us to gather and pay our final respects, then passed away peacefully at home, with Mom by his side.

My wife, who escorted countless patients to the other side of life during her career as an RN in ICU at Forrest General Hospital, was with him at the end. Her expertise was her gift to him – and to the rest of my family – and she was happy to offer it.

Stephanie’s father died when she was 12, and she lacked a true father figure until he came into her life and he became Dad to her, as he had been to the four of us kids, as he would be for all the other of my siblings’ spouses.

In the days following his death, we all recalled stories, looked at old photos, laughed a little, cried some, and leaned on each other to get through this difficult period in our lives.

I am so appreciative of the support I’ve gotten from friends here in my life, some of whom I know well, others who only know me by my writings, or my presence on social media. There are too many to name; just know that I love you all.

My father was a larger-than-life figure, and I’ve spent my entire life trying to live up to him and his ideal.

One of the proudest moments of my life was in 2015, when he and Mom came through Hattiesburg and we all went to eat barbecue at Leatha’s.

I had recently started my job as SID at Pearl River Community College after a long career at the Hattiesburg American, and as we were leaving, he turned to me and congratulated me.

“You’ve earned it,” he said, and in that moment, I felt like the king of the world.

So, I know he was proud of what I’ve done with my life, just as he was proud of what Kevin, Mary Jean and Caroline have done with theirs, with the way his 11 grandchildren have turned out, all of them enjoying success in their chosen fields.

My daughter, Sarah-Jean, who also spoke at Dad’s funeral, summed it up best in her eulogy.

“He succeeded; he won at life,” she said. “He anchored all of us, and now it’s time for him to rest. And he’s earned that rest a dozen times over.”

My father was a great man, the best man I’ve ever known. I am honored and humbled to be his son, and I will miss him for as long as I live.

Stan Caldwell is a veteran sportswriter with more than 35 years of experience in the Hattiesburg area.