Model B →
When I was about a month old and apparently healthy, a doctor told my mother Emma Lee in the strongest terminology of the day that she should have her tubes tied and never become pregnant again. He said that she did not have the physical attributes for a safe and successful delivery. With her stubborn Scottish genes (which I inherited, by the way), she ignored this advice and was pregnant again by the time I was barely one year old. She wanted to have babies and lots of them. Doctors be damned!
My father Earl Campbell May had a wonderful job during the Depression. The young Mays enjoyed a privileged lifestyle. He was an officer in the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), an agency established by President Roosevelt to educate and employ underprivileged young men. He was an instructor at a large CCC camp built in eastern Kentucky in the small college town of Morehead about 100 miles east of Danville.
I—Jackson—had been born at the hospital in Danville in June of 1936, Earl and Emma Lee’s first child. My birth was an occasion for dire medical circumstances. Mother was in labor for days in the hospital, as I refused or was unable to escape the womb. When I was finally delivered by Caesarean section, the doctor warned all the family that the situation was critical and that mother and baby might not survive. Happily, we both persevered and lived!
Especially relieved was her doctor, the renowned Dr. J. Rice Cowan. After graduating from the local Centre College (where he later became Chairman of the Board of Trustees) and then from Harvard Medical School, he had returned to his hometown.
My younger brother's nine months in the womb were uneventful. Although vexed with Emma Lee about the pregnancy he had warned against, Dr. Cowan delivered Richard Fleming May without complications by Caesarean section on the 22nd of March 1938. He was a healthy baby, weighing just shy of 7 pounds. Mother and new son came home in a few days.
There was no apparent reason my parents chose my brother’s first name—Richard. His middle name Fleming was the maiden name of our mother. For a while, life went on without incident. Years later, I asked Mother why she had chosen the name Richard. She mumbled, and her answer was vague.
When I was born, my father had prepared a poster titled MODEL A, a take-off on the world-changing automobile built by Henry Ford. As a talented photographer, he displayed lots of pictures of me in various poses. He was proud to show off the poster that became a topic of conversation at both the camp and at church. Naturally, the arrival of Richard called for another poster, hence MODEL B. One of his poster captions read, "When Babies are made, they will be made by Earl and Emma Lee." More babies like Jackson and Richard, but fate would dictate otherwise.
The Ides of May, the 15th of the month, arrived. In the wee hours of that morning, Earl awoke to discover that Richard had stopped breathing in his crib at the foot of the bed. He instructed Mother to telephone for emergency medical assistance while he administered mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. The operator did not answer—she was asleep. Poor baby Richard did not respond. Distraught is an understatement for my parents’ anguish.
What seemed a perfect life was shattered for no apparent reason. Why would God take away such a beautiful little boy, loved so much and adored by his family? Of course, no one has an answer to this riddle.
On a sunny spring day in eastern Kentucky, the youngest May boy was buried with multitudes of grieving family and friends gathered. His grandfather, Professor Noah May, recited a poem he had composed. There was not a dry eye anywhere. The father and mother were despondent.
As though heaven sent, a legendary local banjo-playing minister was able to bring some consolation into their life. Buell Kazee was the minister at the local First Baptist Church. Although the Mays had attended the Presbyterian Church, they found solace in the sympathy that exuded from Buell. He was persuaded to sing a cappella his version of "Amazing Grace" at the service.
Buell, exceptionally charismatic and multitalented, was one of the best folk singers ever to come from the mountains of Kentucky. He started playing the banjo at age 5, graduated from Georgetown College (Kentucky) majoring in English, Greek, and Latin, and had made many recordings. Buell Kazee and Earl and Emma Lee became life-long friends. Staunch Baptists for the remainder of their lives, they found solace and balm for the pain of their lost boy in religion. Yet, over a long lifetime, they never fully recovered from the tragedy of that fateful day in May.
“Amazing Grace” is played often in the Baptist Church. On at least one occasion, I noticed tears streaming down my mom's face, smearing her perfect makeup. Then I did not understand and did not know what to say. Today, I know.
Requiescat in pace, my dear brother Richard.
