Saturday, March 26, 2016
They buried my
youngest brother, Thomas Eugene Norman, today. He was 59 years old. Everyone
was there at Sunset Memory Gardens, east of Tampa: his widow, Diane, his
constant companion and partner since they were teenagers; his three sons,
Tommy, John and Joseph; his five grandsons, Thomas, Jacob, Justin, Elijah and
Jax, our mother, Lucille Norman; our middle brother, Danny, Aunt Alice Walker,
and all the nephews and nieces. They told me on the telephone that Tom had a
lot of friends, and many attended. My mother mentioned names I hadn’t heard or
thought of in decades.
I wasn’t there. I was confined in a North Florida prison three hours north, visiting with my
wife, Libby. Thinking of all the family
gathered for Tom moved me to reminisce about our family, and Tom’s role in it.
Tom passed away in his sleep sometime during the night of March 15, a sad day
for the Norman family. In talking with my mother on the phone many times since
that night, I was able to learn details of our family life I never knew or had
forgotten.
Our middle brother, Danny, was two
years, eight months old, and I had just turned seven when our youngest brother
was born on September 21, 1956. We stayed with our grandparents, Bebaw and
Memaw Walker, who lived down the road outside of Redwater,
Texas, 15 miles west of Texarkana
for the five days our mother and Tom spent in the Texarkana hospital. Funny, I remember more clearly Dan’s birth, when I was
four, than Tom’s three years later.
I do remember clearly the morning
after Tom’s birth. All my aunts and cousins attended Redwater High School,
which housed all twelve grades. My first grade class consisted of sixteen boys
and four girls. Years later, in Florida,
I wondered how the senior prom went for my class.
I don’t have fond memories of
Redwater High. My teacher, Mrs. Johnson, a bulldog of a woman with a dark
mustache, seemed to take an instant dislike to me, and I suffered through
numerous paddlings for little or no reasons. Later I speculated that someone of
my older relatives had offended her in prior years, and she took it out on me.
When you’re a child, it is difficult to understand the actions of adults.
We were lined up for a
fingerpainting exercise the morning after Tom was born. Mrs. Johnson had a line
drawing of a barn, grass, tree and sky, red, green, brown, and blue paints, and
each student was allowed to dip his or her finger into one of these colors and
apply it to the paper. I wanted to fingerpaint my own drawing — artistic
instincts kicking in early — but that was not to be.
When I’d made my way to the front,
and it was my turn to dip my finger (I chose the blue), I said proudly, “Mrs. Johnson, I have a new baby brother. His
name is Tom.”
I’ll never forget the mean
expression on her face as she stared down at me. “So?” she said.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard one
tiny word that hurt my feelings so much as her “So?” At that moment I must have despised her. I had no snappy
comeback. I pressed my blue finger on the drawing, wiped the remaining wet
paint with a tissue, sat at my desk, and suppressed the urge to cry. I never
cried at her paddlings, and I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of seeing her
meanness affect me.
Before Tom was born we’d lived in a
small white house on a hill, rented from the Clary’s, an older couple who had a
large brick home next door. Leila Clary was a nice lady, and from at least the
age of three, my earliest recollections of her, she would bake cookies and
invite me in for tea. I was usually playing alone or with the dog outside in
the yard, my bare feet and legs perpetually dirty, and before she’d turn me
loose on her spotless floor, she’d pick me up, put me in her sink, and wash and
dry all the dirt away.
We called her husband, Tom Clary,
“Mister Tom.” All I can remember of him was a tall, older man, wearing
suspenders and a hat. Looking back through time with my child-eyes, I’d
describe him now as “Lincolnesque.”
The Clary place, where we lived, was
small for a family with two little boys, and with a third child on the way, no
way could we stay there. Memaw and Bebaw rented the Bonham place, a much bigger
house with property down the road, and our Uncle Albert and Aunt Bonnie
Thornhill rented the George place, past the Bonham place. When the Thornhills
bought a house and moved to Texarkana,
Memaw and Bebaw moved into the George place, and we moved into the Bonham
place, twenty dollars a month rent.
Danny and I were playing in the yard
after our mother and baby Tom came home from the hospital. Mister Tom walked
down to our house to visit. The Clarys had a soft spot for our young family,
and he came to see the new baby. Mama brought Tom out for Mr. Clary to see him.
“What’s
his name?” he said.
“Thomas
Eugene Norman,” my mother said. Our father’s name was Eugene Norman, but my
mother told me she hadn’t named “Tom” after anyone, she’d just liked that name.
Mister Tom beamed. “You named him after me.”
My
mother was too polite to say otherwise.
“He’s
the best-looking one yet,” Mister Tom said, leaning closer to get a look at
the infant. He would visit every now and then to check on the progress of Tom,
always very proud of his namesake baby.
Tom was barely two years old when we
moved to Florida from Texas in 1958. Dan was about
four-and-a-half, and I was nine. Layoffs at the Lone Star Ordnance Plant and
the steel mill in Daingerfield left my father unemployed with a wife and three
children to take care of. We stayed with our father’s older brother, Rufus
Norman, and Grandma Berta Lee Norman, in Dade City
while Daddy looked for work. Later, we stayed with his younger sister, Eloise,
in Lakeland, until Daddy rented a house outside Plant City, in Dover,
east of Thonotosassa.
Things didn’t work out, and we
returned to Texas for a few months, until
Daddy got situated in Tampa,
got a job with Booker and Company, and rented another house on a hill near
Highway 301 and Fowler Avenue
in Thonotosassa. If you can spell it and pronounce it, you must live there,
people said.
There we were, father, mother and
three brothers, in another little house on a hill, a thousand miles from “home,”
on the edge of an orange grove in November, 1958. With few close neighbors in
the country, we boys entertained ourselves, exploring the orange grove, the
woods, and nearby fields. Once a week, Friday afternoons, we’d go to Temple
Terrace, a few miles away, to the “Kwik Chek” Winn Dixie grocery store in a
little strip mall with a Walgreen drug store, Ben Franklin dime store, and a
hardware store. With our small allowances, we three boys usually headed as fast
as we could to the dime store.
Tom learned to hustle for his money
from a young age. He was no more than three years old when he went into the
flower business. I can’t recall the exact date, but it must have been in the
fall of 1959 or spring of 1960.
We lived in the little white house
on a hill off East Fowler Avenue,
rented from Arthur Wetherington, a wealthy farmer/rancher who owned the orange
grove and property that abutted our large yard. We had a number of large,
native grapefruit trees growing at either side of our house, plus a wide
variety of Valencia, Hamlin,
and Temple
oranges, four tall avocado trees, a lime tree, two big jacarandas, Australian
pines, and hibiscus. Between the rows of the orange grove grew every kind of
native wildflower you could imagine.
Little Tom was drawn to the
wildflowers, and would toddle along the edge of the grove and pick a few of the
flowers. He would carry them around, then when he returned to the house, he
would thrust out his hand, offering the wilted bouquet to Mama, who praised him
effusively.
P.D. “Pal” Stokes was the choir
director at Harney
Baptist Church.
He was fairly well-off in 1950’s terms, an independent cattle buyer whom I
worked for in years to come. In his
travels in his pick-up truck, he would occasionally stop at a large chicken
farm in Masaryktown, north of Tampa,
and buy several flats of eggs, wholesale, from a friendly old Czech woman. He
would keep a flat of 2 ½ dozen eggs for himself and his wife, Verna, and give
away the rest to various church families. He was a good, generous man, and
never visited empty-handed.
One day, Mr. Stokes was sitting on
our front porch visiting when Tom returned to the house with a scraggly bouquet
of half a dozen or so wildflowers for our mother. Mr. Stokes smiled when Tom
came up the steps and asked, “Are those
for me?” and reached out for the flowers. Tom thrust the bouquet toward Mr.
Stokes, who took them. “Why, thank you,
Tom,” he said, sniffing the blooms. “No
one ever gives me flowers.” Mr. Stokes reached into his pocket and handed
Tom a shiny silver quarter. “Here.”
Tom took the coin instinctively,
opened his palm, saw it was a quarter, a princely sum to any of us kids, his
eyes widened, and he turned and dashed down the steps, running to the grove to
pick more flowers. If one bouquet was good, two bouquets had to be great.
From then on, Tom kept his eyes
peeled for Mr. Stokes. When he would hear the rumble of Mr. Stokes’ truck
coming up our driveway, he would dash out to the grove and pick a nice handful
of flowers. Mr. Stokes had a deep, rumbling laugh, more like a “Huh, huh, huh,
huh” chuckle, and he never failed to be amused when that blond-headed
three-year old brought him flowers. He always gave Tom some change.
This went on for years, and
sometimes proved an embarrassment for our mother, Dan, and me. Sometimes when
it was cold in the winter, there weren’t any flowers to be found, and Tom would
substitute a few weeds, grass stems, or leaves for his bouquet. He had no
shame. It didn’t matter to Mr. Stokes, either. It was the thought that counted.
Thonotosassa, Florida, 1965
ABOVE: (left to right) Danny, age 11, Lucille (mother), Charles, age 15, and Tom Norman (front), age 8, preparing to attend church service. When we were growing up, our mother took us to church and Sunday School virtually every week. In Texas, we attended Redwater Baptist Church. In Florida, we started at West Thonotosassa Baptist Church, then joined Harney Baptist. Our father, Eugene Norman, took this photo on Easter Sunday, 1965. We weren’t as glum as we looked.
As
the oldest, I usually set the pace, and over the years, whatever interest I
had, Dan and Tom were right there with me. I was interested in astronomy, got
an inexpensive telescope one Christmas, and the three of us would stay late
outside looking through it at the dark night sky.
On
the first day of school in fifth grade at Thonotosassa Elementary
School, my friend, Ernie Bennett, was so glad to
see me after the long summer vacation
that he suggested we fight before school started. We weren’t angry with
each other, we just liked to fight. We had a new teacher, Mr. Quintero, and
when he saw two eleven-year old boys swinging away at each other, he freaked
out, running over and separating us. He was so angry that he told us, fine, if
we wanted to fight, we’d do it the right way, with gloves, and he’d teach us.
It
turned out that Mr. Quintero had been a boxer in his younger years, and his
older brother had been a well-known professional fighter in the 1950’s. He sent
a note home to all the boys’ parents, asking if they approved their sons taking
boxing lessons to return the permission slip signed. Most everyone did.
The
next day, Mr. Quintero brought in some huge, sixteen ounce boxing gloves that
were like pillows to us, so we could learn how to box and not hurt each other.
That Christmas, I asked for a pair of boxing gloves of my own, and I got a pair
similar to the ones we practiced with at school.
One
of my friends came over, and we tried out the gloves in the front yard for
awhile, with Dan and Tom watching. Dan was about six, and Tom was four. We got
tired and thirsty, took off the gloves, and went inside for some water. When we
returned, Dan and Tom had put on the huge gloves that they could barely lift,
and were slowly swinging away at each other, toe-to-toe.
We
laughed and laughed. Even at that early age, both my brothers were serious
about boxing, and would beg me to practice with them. I would get on my knees,
they would both start swinging at me at the same time, and I would hold them
off while laughing at their serious demeanors. I was their human punching bag.
That
was the beginning of my brothers’ boxing careers. They would put on the
heavily-padded gloves, box with each other, then I’d get on my knees, down to
their level, and show them how to punch, jab, and defend themselves. As they
grew up, both Dan and Tom became very tough and skilled amateur boxers, never
fearing to go up against fighters their same size, after all those years of
practicing against their older brother.
Daddy
had hunted deer in Texas, feeding our family
venison for years, but the deer crop in Florida
was thin. Needless to say, come hunting season we would pile into Daddy’s
station wagon, and he’d drive us to a public hunting area in Pasco County.
He’d bought me a Winchester Model 94 .30-.30 deer rifle, and would dutifully
drive us around the woods for a couple hours. If a deer had happened to stand
in the road in front of our car, we might have had a shot at it, but that never
happened. That was as close as we came to hunting in Florida.
The
seeds were planted early, and both Dan and Tom became serious, lifelong
hunters, along with their sons, and put considerable dents in the deer and wild
hog populations of Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina.
Fishing
was more my passion, and Dan and Tom followed closely, far surpassing my modest
accomplishments in the years to come. Our father took us fishing at Lake Panosofkee
when he could, which was a highlight for us. Tom even worked as a Hillsborough River fishing guide for a few years. As
a teenager, Tom taught himself taxidermy, a lifelong vocation in which he
excelled, creating amazingly lifelike displays of fish and wild game. He even
preserved and mounted animals for Busch
Gardens and the Florida Game
Commission, and received national recognition for his art. Most recently, he
completed impressive works of African game animals, including a fearsome Cape
Buffalo for a wealthy businessman in Tampa.
LEFT TO RIGHT: Sandra Norman, holding daughter, Tammy, Danny Norman
(Charles’
brother and Sandra’s husband), Lucille Norman (Charles’ mother),
Eugene
Norman (Charles’ father), holding Timmy Norman (son
of Sandra and Danny), Tom Norman (Charles’ brother), Chrissy and Charles. Arjel,
the dog, in front.
This Easter Sunday photo was possibly the
last group photo taken of the Norman family. It was taken in the front yard of
our home on Grovewood, where my mother still lives. In this photo, my father
was 45, my mother, 44, Dan was 20, Tom, 17, and I was 24.
Even
in life-threatening situations, which occurred a number of times in Tom’s
eventful life, he showed a fearlessness that bordered on disdain of the risks
he faced.
For
many years, besides his taxidermy work, Tom worked for a tree service, a
high-risk occupation. When storms and disasters struck, Tom and his crews would
work with the utility companies to clear downed trees and help restore power.
Even before Hurricane Sandy struck, Tom’s crew was in New Jersey, poised to go to work as soon as
the devastating storm of the century passed by. For all the dangers of his job,
however, a twelve-inch creature came closest to taking Tom’s life.
They
were clearing land in a heavily-wooded area when Tom felt a stinging sensation
at the tip of his finger as he picked up a pile of brush. When he saw the two
holes in his finger, he knew what had happened — he’d been bitten by a pygmy
rattlesnake.
Tom
was an experienced snake handler. For years he had caught rattlesnakes, many
over six-feet long, and had never been bitten. He knew, though, that despite
their small size the pygmy rattlesnake’s venom was as deadly as that of their
larger cousins, the Eastern diamondback rattlesnake. Tom called 911.
His
finger was swelling and throbbing when he arrived at University
Community Hospital
in North Tampa. A young emergency room doctor
was doubtful of Tom’s claim to have been bitten by a poisonous pygmy
rattlesnake.
“How do you know what kind of snake it was?”
the doctor asked.
Tom
took out a peanut butter jar he’d had inside a brown paper bag. Inside the jar,
a pygmy rattlesnake twisted and squirmed, trying to get out. Tom had had the
presence of mind to capture the snake and bring it with him, knowing that
snakebite antivenin was species specific. The doctor, shaken, jumped back.
“I have to look this up in the book,” the
doctor said. “I’ve never seen a snakebite
before.”
Tom
was incredulous. “You’re an emergency
room doctor, and you don’t know how to treat a snakebite?”
After
consulting a medical book, the doctor told Tom
he would inject antivenin to counteract the snake poison. He told Tom
that he might have to cut Tom’s finger along its length if the swelling
continued, to relieve the pressure. If
the swelling got worse, worst case scenario, he could be forced to amputate the
finger.
A
few months before, this hospital had gained national notoriety when doctors
amputated the wrong leg of an elderly man. After they discovered the mistaken
amputation of the healthy leg, they had to go back and amputate the other one.
Tom remembered that.
He
told the doctor, “Before you do any
cutting on me, bring me a permanent marker.”
“What for?” the doctor asked.
“I know about this hospital,” Tom said. “I’m going to write, ‘DO NOT REMOVE’ on the
other nine fingers.”
The
doctor did not think that was funny.
The
antivenin appeared to work, no amputation was necessary, and after a hospital
stay, Tom was released to return home; however, he had a delayed allergic
reaction to the antivenin, went into seizures, and was rushed back to the
hospital, to the intensive care unit, where he eventually recovered.
Faced
with possible death, Tom could still extract some humor from the situation.
When he recounted the incident with a straight face, his listeners could not
help but laugh at the way Tom described his life-threatening travails.
I
had to hear of my brother’s accomplishments from afar, through letters, photos,
phone calls and visits, having been continuously imprisoned since 1978,
thirty-eight years. I learned of the birth of Tom’s and Diane’s first son,
Tommy, in December, 1978, when my father visited me in the Hillsborough County
jail, a dark, dangerous, inhumane dungeon unfit for human habitation, where I
spent almost two years. I got my first peek at my nephew through bulletproof
glass when Tommy’s proud parents brought him for me to see. For years, when I
was imprisoned reasonable driving distances from Tampa, Tom and Diane would bring their boys
to visit Uncle Charlie. John was born in May, 1984, followed by Joseph.
A
photo of Charlie with his three nephews at the Polk C.I. visiting park in 1992
(below) is included in “Life In Prison —
A Photo Exhibit.” I never had children — my life situation precluded that
role — but I always felt as close to and
loved Dan’s and Tom’s children as though they were my own. To this day I am
thrilled when I call my mother’s number, and she asks if I want to speak to one
of my nephews or nieces.
LEFT TO RIGHT: Charlie’s nephews, sons of his youngest
brother, Tom:
Tommy,
Joseph, and John, 1992, Polk C.I.
Tom
and I spoke together on the phone barely a month before he died. I told him I
was working on obtaining a new parole hearing, and needed letters of support
from family, Normans, particularly my brothers. Tom asked me what I wanted him
to say. I told him whatever he felt
moved to say would be fine, and asked him to talk to his sons, too. Tom
told me that he’d always idolized his big brother, and my artwork had inspired
him to be an artist, too. I was very touched by his words, having never
realized the impact I had on him.
Monday
afternoon, March 14th, Tom and Diane visited with Mama after they
got off work, in our family home on Grovewood
Avenue in Thonotosassa, where we moved in 1969.
Mama told me they stayed about an hour, just talking, spending time together.
After
the funeral held this morning, I talked with my mother on the phone in the
afternoon. I asked her about that last visit. “Son, if I’d known that was going to be the last time I saw Tom, I would
have locked the doors, held him, and not let go.”
My
mother and brother, Dan, were crying, grief-stricken and heartbroken at the
sudden death of Tom. Everyone was, and we will all grieve in our own ways.
Being in prison, I feel helpless, hopeless, impotent to offer comfort to my
loved ones except through meager words. How I wish I could be there with them
to share the burden, but I can’t. All I can offer are my prayers and
encouragement to be strong, to keep the faith, secure in the knowledge that Tom
was a committed Christian, and his soul resides in a better place.
Mama
told me that Tom and Diane began attending the Church of Christ
in Thonotosassa some years ago, and their son, Tommy, and wife, Carla, take
their three boys there every Sunday. The pastor of this church, Brother Weaver,
conducted the funeral service, and touched our family with his words. He said
that Tom was not only a church member, but also he was his friend. No one ever
sat down with Tom and had a boring conversation, he said. He knew Tom well —
Tom was like that. He had strong opinions and he expressed them. Oftentimes his
observations of certain people were cutting, but extremely accurate and usually
hilarious. If you didn’t want to hear the truth, don’t ask Tom.
No
matter how unexpected our brother’s passing was, and before his time, the fact
that he died peacefully in his sleep, and not in some tragic accident, provides
a small blessing to his family, his loved ones.
Tom
was one-of-a-kind and much beloved. I could tell a hundred stories about him,
and, over time, as the empty place he left in my heart heals, I’ll put them to
paper. I miss him. We all do. Rest in peace, my brother. We will always love
you.
Charles,
age 36, at right, his youngest brother,
Tom, age 29, at left, and their aunt,
Alice
Walker, center, Zephyrhills C.I. 1986
