I Miss Him: (Still) Saving Mr. Charlie’s Trees
Believe it or not, I’m still at it! Been off the grid because lots of activity behind the scenes.
Working with a French documentary producer on a pitch for a major European broadcaster. Very time-consuming: tons of information to translate from English to French then synthesize in a professional format. First 12-page draft done and sent to him, waiting for his feedback to do next draft. Will keep you posted. Send energy. Trailer tracking up views on YouTube, link below.
Meanwhile, found my eulogy for Charlie, read at his funeral in 2003. Charlie gave me the world. I’ve added a few lines for clarity.
(Cairo, Georgia, July 25, 2003)
My name is Aliss Valerie Terrell. I’m the daughter of Charles Terrell’s youngest brother, Paul Kenneth Terrell, who at the age of 21 was a decorated hero in the Korean War, a Navy medic with the First Marine Battalion. Unfortunately, he came home with severe PTSD, before anyone knew what that meant, and he had a hard time being a dad to me during my childhood. The fortunate part is that I got Charlie as a surrogate father and spent quite a few summer months with him as a kid. We lost touch after my dad passed but I found him again in my 20’s and got to know him again as an adult.
I’m speaking today because the family asked me to say a few words about Charlie’s love of poetry and opera and how he shared them with me when I was little. This has helped me focus on happy memories instead of falling into a well of grief.
Before I continue, I want to say how proud I am to come from this family of heroes. Next June marks the 60 thanniversary of D-Day, the Allied landing in Normandy, France, where my uncle James Irby Terrell played a part, stoking the boilers below decks on the battleship Arkansas at Omaha Beach. After his 8 hour shifts in 104° heat, he would go up on deck and witness the carnage on the shore and the bombing of surrounding towns. He survived to support the troop landings at Iwo Jima and Okinawa. He was then 22 years old. Irby is here today, sitting in the front row. On behalf of everyone in Europe and the Free World, I want to say thank you, Irby.
So…. imagine that you are five, six or seven years old, just learning to read and write. You’re sitting out on the porch on a sweltering summer evening with Uncle Charlie and Aunt Margaret, in Rhode Island or Georgia, helping to shell peas or peanuts or snapping beans, and you hear this in Charlie’s Georgia voice, slow and deliberate, in a low, almost questioning tone, detaching each syllable, emphasizing the consonants and diphthongs:
Boh Da Thone was a warrior bold:
His sword and his rifle were bossed with gold,
And the Peacock Banner his henchmen bore
Was stiff with bullion, but stiffer with gore.
He shot at the strong and he slashed at the weak
From the Salween scrub to the Chindwin teak:
He crucified noble, he scarified mean,
He filled old ladies with kerosene….
Those are the opening lines of The Ballad of Boh Da Thone, written in 1888 about the Anglo-Burmese War, by Rudyard Kipling, one of Charlie’s favorite poets. You can guess of course that Charlie identified with the rebel bandit more than with the British colonizers.
Charlie was passionate about poetry, all poetry, from light verse to love lyrics and descriptions of nature, but he seemed to especially enjoy narrative, rhythmic stanzas with a good plot and a historical or philosophical twist. The works I particularly remember him reading to me were by Kipling, William Shakespeare and Omar Khayyam. I honestly did not understand every word, but his sense of drama, dry humor, love of words, and the sound of his voice were magical and held me spellbound. Later he loved to recite “The Guitarist Tunes Up” by Charles’ Darwin’s granddaughter, Frances Darwin Cranford.
With what attentive courtesy he bent
Over his instrument;
Not as a lordly conqueror who could
Command both wire and wood,
But as a man with a loved woman might,
Inquiring with delight
What slight essential things she had to say
Before they started, he and she, to play.
He was truly a romantic.
Charlie also introduced me to Grand Opera. Among my earliest memories are the glorious trumpets in the Grand March from Verdi’s Aida, the sweeping overture from his La Traviata, the poignant humming chorus from Puccini’s Madame Butterfly. (I will not attempt to interpret them for you now…)
Through words and music, Charlie took me around the world, to India, Burma, now Myanmar, England, Persia, Egypt, Italy, Japan…
He gave me the world.
As the years passed, he continued to explore both poetry and opera. I remember how thrilled he was a few years ago when he discovered the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin and his masterpiece, Eugene Onegin. Charlie traveled far to see Lucia Di Lammermoor by Donizetti and added that to his list of favorites. He loved Lincoln Center and the Met in NYC and was a donor.
Then there was the time he came to visit me in Paris and I submitted him to a contemporary opera by an obscure East German composer based on the Russian novel, The Master and Margarita. It was a gala Parisian cultural event, the last opera performed at the ornate 19 thcentury Palais Garnier opera house, before it was exclusively dedicated to ballet. I didn’t realize when I bought the tickets that there was not a single line of melody in the whole production. Instead, from our luxurious box seats, we witnessed violinists beating their instruments with their bows, an empty stage with the Rolling Stones being played backwards, and singers executing highly complex sequences of seemingly unrelated notes… Charlie was gracious and found enjoyment in the experience somehow.
What strikes me the most in all the stories that have been shared here today, is that Charlie’s life reads like an epic poem or the libretto of a magnificent opera. Singing was one of the few talents he didn’t possess, but in his daily life, he was every bit as vibrant as his favorite tenor, Placido Domingo.
Indeed, Charlie’s biography is a tale of early hardship, triumph over adversity, love lost and found again, and great accomplishments, ultimately humbled by human fragility -in his case, old age and illness.
As a child getting a taste of opera, I couldn’t accept the fact that there is no happy end. The characters never really live happily ever after. I guess I’ve grown up because I’ve finally realized that what stays with you is not the death of the hero, but the greatness of the human soul, the richness of our experience as human beings, expressing emotions that transform the lives around us, and the realization that we are at once limited and infinite.
Charlie gave me the world and he gave me glimpses of immortality and eternity.
He personified the ability to overcome insurmountable obstacles, sailing through life, diving to the bottom of the sea, climbing Mt Helena, planting a million trees for future generations, and touching so many people with his generosity and his high expectations. Now his example empowers us all to fulfill our potential and surprise ourselves by surpassing what we thought we could do on this earth.
Not the least of Charlie’s accomplishments is to have brought us all together here today in a community of spirit.
I’m very grateful for this opportunity to honor Charlie and express my amazement and good fortune to have known him and been part of his life.
Thank you, Jane Harris, for making his last days so peaceful.
There are many other Charlie stories I could tell: getting eaten by mosquitos at the bird sanctuary in Rhode Island, Wakulla Springs, where an alligator had just devoured a tourist, canoeing and more alligators in the Okefenokee, sailing at Shell Point in Florida and surviving a storm on the Fallen Lady sailboat he shared with the Tallahassee Chief of Police, how he taught me to stay safe from rattlers and heat stroke, drive a tractor, catch crawdads and catfish, the pony he borrowed for me to ride…how he loved his pack of mongrel rescue pups and the creatures on his land, including the fish, who came to meet him every morning for their feeding.
How we lost each other and found each other again after my dad died is another whole chapter.
In closing, here are four lines from the “Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam,” as translated by Edward Fitzgerald, in The Treasury of the World’s Best Loved Poems, which Charlie inscribed for me with these words, in his unique handwriting style with no caps:
“i can’t say the things i feel-neither can shakespeare nor khayyam-so to hell with it! maybe you know. chaswterrell”
“Ah, my Beloved, fill the Cup that clears
To-day of past Regret and future Fears:
To-morrow!-Why, To-morrow
I may be Myself with Yesterday’s Sev’n thousand Years”
©Aliss Valerie Terrell 2024
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Originally published at http://thankyouparis.wordpress.com on March 27, 2024.
