My Uncle Awford Nathaniel Cook

Awford, what an unusual name! Where my grandmother got it, I’ll never know. His full name is Awford Nathaniel Cook. Since I lived with my grandmother (Ma) and Grandfather (Pa) after my mother’s untimely death, Awford was around a good bit. He was their youngest son. I tormented him by calling him “Aukie Sudie.” I have no idea why, but I do know that my father was a real big jokester and prankster- so he probably put me up to it. When I was real little, about 3 years old, we lived in Elba, in an apartment connected to the Boutwell Pound Cake Bakery. Oh, my goodness, that place smelled so good. One day I was being a pest to Awford, and he told me to go over to the bakery and get a pound cake and tell them to “charge it.” Being a good little girl and “always doing what I was told”, I did just that. The Boutwells gave me the pound cake (they were also our landlords) and into the house I came, carrying the fabulous cake! Aukie Sudie was real “got off with”, as he put it – embarrassed is the plain English word. That taught him a lesson!

When I was about 5, we moved to Enterprise. During that time, Awford was in a band and played a steel or “Hawaiian” Guitar. Ma and Pa did not like him doing that because he would be in “bad” places to play. Also, during this time, Awford either joined or was drafted into the Army. He came back home in short order, though, because he was blind in one eye. Now that is another tale to be told.

When My Dad, Uncle Daniel, Uncle Audley (another one for the “believe it or not names”) and Awford were very young, they lived out in the country and were playing “war” outside. Someone shot a “China berry” and it hit Awford in the eye. Now, all these boys were playing, shooting at one another, but my Daddy always said it was him who shot the China berry into Awford’s eye and “ruined his life”. Daddy always did love to “carry the cross” for everyone’s sins (real or imagined.) I think I inherited the trait.

Awford was a hard worker. He ran milk routes for years for Foremost and Paschal Dairies. That was back in the days when milk was delivered daily to the door. He would get up way before dawn to make his deliveries. Since Awford was a good-looking boy, except for that “put out eye”, he started “going with” a cheerleader from Samson (they pronounced it Sampson) High School. Her name was Sylvia Ann (he always called her Syvieanne). He loved that woman more than any woman has ever been loved, and thought she was the most beautiful woman ever born. Not only was Syvianne from Samson, but she was also of the Church of Christ faith. Now, you would think that Church of Christ would be pretty close relative to the Church of God that Ma and Pa attended, but honey, Ma said “those Church of Christ folks don’t even have musical instruments in their church. How can you “sang and Praise God” without a whole band to back you up?”

Well, he married Syvianne anyway, and that was the source of many a tear for Ma. After all, Awford was her baby boy! On top of getting married, they moved to Andalusia – about two hours (back then) from Ma’s house. Awford said that they had to put the alarm clock between two metal dishpans in order to hear it so Awford could get to work on time! To make matters even worse, if possible (her being of a bad faith, moving all the way to Andalusia, and not hearing that alarm clock), Awford bought a brand new, first generation, red Chevy Corvair! That car looked like high cotton to me, but, oh my goodness, “that thing is a death trap,” Ma and Pa squalled!

Well, we have established that things couldn’t get much worse, but the fit hit the shan when Ma went home to Andalusia with Awford and Syvianne after a visit and Syvianne rode in the front seat and Ma rode in the back seat of that death trap. Ma groaned and grumbled about that back seat and that car for weeks! Ma was so limber, she probably folded herself into that back seat easier than I could have.

Awford and Syvianne had been married for a few years and along came Clay. He was born on the day that JFK was elected – Nov 8, 1960.  During Clay’s early childhood, Awford would take Clay over to Ma’s house on Pledger Street in Enterprise (Awford and Syvianne had moved back to Enterprise by then) for a visit and to play with other grand young ‘uns. Ma was the general babysitter for the local grand young ’uns at some time in our lives. Sometimes, Clay would mess up his clothes, so he would wear my sister, Bobbie Sue’s, dresses. Ma loved to talk about Clay wearing those dresses.

Clay was several years old when Awford got a Foremost Dairy job in Selma AL. Awford later changed professions and opened a grocery store there and, despite being robbed at gunpoint dozens of times, he ran that store for decades. He began to get to know everyone in town and was highly regarded as someone with compassion and love for all his fellow man. Not too long after they moved to Selma and opened the store, they had a daughter, Greta. Both Clay and Greta worshiped their dad. He loved them and they stayed with him many times in the store. Greta tells me about spending days with her dad and riding her skateboard in the store between the aisles.

I had not seen Syvianne for years, when I saw her at an aunt’s house for a Cook family reunion in 2001 – the week after 9/11. She was in a wheelchair and her health was generally declining. I felt bad about resenting her a little all these years, after all, she had written “please reduce” in my precious autograph book when I was in the 4^th grade! She was my idol and I had fallen short (or wide) in her eyes when I was 9!

Nevertheless, Awford loved her more than life. She never recovered, ended up in a nursing home and passed away in 2008. While in the nursing home, she fell into a coma for 20 days. Awford would not leave her, night or day. He believed that there was still life in her-even after doctors had told him she was brain dead. One of the nurses came to him one day and told him that she promised that she would take as good care of Mrs. Cook as he would, so that he could go home and get some rest. He said that no one knows how she likes to be cared for but him. She said, “You may not remember, Mr. Cook, but when I had 3 small children, I came to your store, and they were hungry. I had no money. You filled up my trunk with groceries.” She reassured him that she would care for her. Greta recently told me about this incident, recalling that that was the first time her dad had left Syvianne in anyone else’s care. Miraculously, Syvianne came out of the coma and lived eight more months – I really believe that was the power of love.

Awford had sold the store so he could be with her all the time in the nursing home. He stayed with her almost constantly, but Syvianne did not like sharing a room at the nursing home, so Awford took on 3 jobs to pay for her private room. He got up at 4 AM to deliver the newspaper and then delivered drugs for a drugstore in the afternoons, in addition to working part-time at a store. The rest of the time he was with Syvianne – he even slept there in a chair. This is the power of love.

Daddy and I rode up to Selma to visit them shortly before her death and we met him at their home on McDonald Street in Selma. This was the first time I had ever been to their home. I usually went to the store- because that is where he was most of the time. There was a picture of Sylvia when she graduated from high school. She was very pretty. I commented on it, and he said she was still beautiful to him. That’s the power of love.

After her death, he went to the cemetery twice a day and was just miserable. He found a little run-down building and opened another grocery store. He was in his 70’s and, apparently, came to terms with the chance of foul play popping up. Greta said she talked with him, and he had said that he was so miserable, that if something happened to him there, he would die happy. She told him to open it with her blessing!

Once, not too long before my Daddy died in 2010, I went by to see Awford on one of my many driving trips from Texas to Alabama to visit relatives. Greta came to the store to take care of it while Awford took me to lunch. While we were gone, a mentally deranged black man came into the store and told Greta that he and she had a “beautiful blond headed child together.” He wouldn’t leave. Greta had asked an older black lady, who had been a customer and friend at the old store and now at this one, to stay with her until Awford returned. Greta had called the police and they were there when we got back from lunch. Awford explained to the police that he knew the man and he was not dangerous, just mentally ill. He had such compassion for everyone. The black lady who had stayed with Greta had tried to get Greta to give her the gun. She said that she would shoot him, that she’d shot people before! She had on a gold sequined baseball cap and said she was a “Hoochie Mama”; and that she would kill him. That was quite an interesting visit!

In May of 2013, shortly before Awford passed away, I went, again, to visit them. He had tried to get Greta to make him some of that “flat “cornbread. It was the kind Ma used to make. She didn’t know how and told him that when I got there, that maybe I could do it. Lord knows I tried, but I don’t think it hit the mark, but he said, “it was pretty close.”

As I look back on his life, one thing about Awford’s life will resonate with me always. Caring and Love. He loved his parents and visited them often. He loved mankind, in general, and left a legacy of kindness and compassion to the entire city of Selma. His daughter sees people regularly who recognize her as his daughter and relay special memories to her of good things about her dad. He loved his children and stood up for them when he was needed. He loved his wife and did until the day he died. He was a wonderful man.

This is the power of love.