On Friday, March 25, 2022, Charlie was asked to
give a brief speech at the Women's History Month program sponsored by the Lake
C. I. Gavel Club/Toastmasters group. Here is his speech and some family photos
from "LIFE IN PRISON--A Photo Exhibit."
Each of us owes our lives to our mothers. In most
cases she had the greatest influence on us. In order to explain how several
women besides my mother impacted my life over these seventy-two years, I must
give you a brief history of my family.
During World War II, a long time ago, my future father was a seventeen-year old
Georgia farm boy who convinced his sickly mother to sign the papers allowing
him to join the U. S. Army. At eighteen years old he was carrying a heavy
Browning machine gun in the Philippine jungles, fighting against the Japanese.
He survived the war and travelled to Dade City, Florida, where his mother and
brother had moved while he was in the military. He drove a fork lift at a
citrus packing plant by day, drove a taxi cab at night, and hustled players at
the pool hall in between.
There was no work in Texas. My mother and a friend joined a busload of young
women going to work at the packing plant in Dade City. My father saw her and
was smitten. My mother was eighteen when my parents married. My father had just
turned nineteen.
Three weeks before I was born in September, 1949, her doctor told my mother
there were complications with her pregnancy. There was a good chance that the
mother, the baby, or both would die.
If she were going to die, my mother wanted to be with her mother and family in
Texas. My parents packed up their meager belongings in a 1938 Chevrolet that
had seen better days, and headed on a thousand-mile trip to Texas. My father
carried thirty-six quarts of oil in the car trunk, and every thirty miles or so
he had to stop and add another quart to the smoking Chevrolet. They had no
money for motels, and slept in the car on the side of the road for the three days
it took to reach Texarkana.
The doctor at St. Michael's Hospital told my parents that they could save the
baby or mother, but not both. They chose to save the mother.
The doctor cut me out of my mother's womb and tossed my lifeless body in a
steel pan. Fortunately for me, a young doctor didn't want to discard the
newborn, and frantically worked to revive me, alternately dipping me in hot
water, then cold, to shock me, a medical technique called a contrast bath. It
worked. The young doctor saved my life, but my mother faced a long recovery.
My mother's younger sisters, eight-year old Alice and eleven-year old Patsy
stayed with my mother and took care of me. My grandmother, who I called Memaw,
was there every day tending to both my mother and her miracle baby. Although
they were little girls, my aunts helped nurse my mother and me back to health.
For the rest of our lives Alice, Patsy and I shared a special relationship, a
bond broken only by death. Their love and devotion to me, as well as Memaw's, continued
to support me for years, as my mother struggled through two more difficult
pregnancies, and beyond.
Memaw was a skilled story-teller. At night in the dark before bed, with only a
single candle flickering, we implored her to tell us ghost stories and tales of
our pioneer ancestors' encounters with wolves, panthers, and Comanche Indians.
Her example of hard work, love of family, and her faith in me sustained me, taught
me, and helped me grow into a man who does his best.
In the late 1990's I had already served over twenty years of a life sentence
for murder. Don't ever think that learning to write and telling your story
won't change your life. It changed mine. Because of my published writings I
became friends with a famous newspaper columnist who took an interest in my
case. He wrote an article about me that was published worldwide. He called on Governor
Lawton Chiles to grant my pending clemency application for a wrongful
conviction for murder. At a Wednesday meeting with my family at the Capitol,
the governor agreed to sign release papers the following Monday.
My bad luck — the governor died on Saturday. No clemency.
My good luck — a woman in Jacksonville read the newspaper article, was
intrigued, and wrote me a letter. I wrote her back. A few months later she
visited me, and I met the most extraordinary person in my life. She accepted me
the way I was, and I accepted her. We shared remarkably-similar views on
politics, religion, music and life. It was like two sides of the same coin,
reunited.
I could talk for hours about my true love, Libby, but now I have only minutes.
Suffice it to say that Libby has stood by my side like no other, travelling
long distances to visit me in a succession of prisons across Florida. I asked
her to be my wife and she agreed. We have been together over twenty-two years,
and our love continues to grow and strengthen. That has kept me alive. No doubt
I would have given up hope years ago were it not for her.
Love can be found in the most unlikely places. In my life from the beginning, I
have been blessed by God with women who loved and cared about me, and by doing
so have given me strength and taught me to love in return. In first Corinthians
13:13, St. Paul wrote, “...and now...the greatest of these is love.” I am
living proof of that.
Thank you.
March 25, 2022
Redwater, Texas, circa 1952
Charles’ grandmother, Velva Marie “Memaw” Walker, holding Cherry, her youngest
child. Charles is firmly in Bebaw’s strong grasp. Uncle Junior’s commentary:
“Mama and Daddy, Charlie and Cherry, on Bonham’s place behind the big house.
That barn is the scene of a million corn cob fights.”
