I received a note from a reader last week chiding me for writing about the Okefenokee so much and that he and others were tired of it. In fact, I have done only two columns on the Okefenokee this year, but I did allow mining proponents and opponents to express their positions on the subject. So that’s four columns total. Is that overkill?
Ironically, as I was mulling his comments, the next eight consecutive responses I opened were urging me to keep the issue high-profile. Bottom line: I think most of you are not tired of my writing about the Okefenokee. You are tired of the stalling tactics under the Gold Dome as our intrepid public servants and assorted bureaucrats try figure out how to dig themselves out of the morass they have created for themselves and for me to keep the pressure on. But either way, please allow me to change subjects this week and for a very good reason.
It is not my normal practice to eulogize close friends who have passed away in this column. For one thing, I seem to be losing close friends at a rapid rate these days and that could mean a lot of eulogies. But today is an exception.
Eleanor Downs Callaham, better known to the world as Bootsie, passed away recently at the age of 91. She and her husband, Jim, had been our next-door neighbors for more than 40 years. When you move to a new location, you don’t have much option in selecting your next-door neighbors. If we had been given that option, we would have chosen the Callahams.
I had known Jim Callaham’s father at Southern Bell when I was a rookie manager. But not his family. Over the next four decades we got to know each other well and never a cross word was exchanged in all that time.
The Callahams had three children. We had two. All pretty much the same age. Collectively, we watched them all grow up, leave home, get married, birth a few babies and then watched the babies grow up, too. We were also there in the tough times for each other. They lost their oldest son, Brian, and a few years later we lost our oldest grandson, Zack.
In short, they were ideal neighbors but that isn’t what this eulogy is about. This is about how Bootsie Callaham changed the trajectory of my life. Bootsie was an outstanding artist. Portraits. Landscapes. Seascapes. Still life. She could do it all and do it well. Much of her work was by commission and I don’t think she ever had a dissatisfied client.
I was pretty good at drawing. In high school, an aptitude test indicated I might become a cartoonist. That wasn’t to be. I found myself in the business world and focused on climbing the corporate ladder as fast as I could. My right brain and sketchpad got shelved and the left brain and corporate-think took over. When I retired as vice president of BellSouth Corporation and then as a managing director of the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games, the left brain and I thought that was it.
Then one rainy Sunday evening in December, Bootsie Callaham knocked on the door and notified me I was going with her to an art class she had discovered. She knew I could draw and was certain the instructor, a young man by the name of Kris Meadows, could teach me how to paint. Looking back on it, I still can’t believe she talked me into taking up art, but she did. My right brain was delighted.
That was almost 20 years ago. Since then, and with a lot of encouragement from Bootsie and instruction from Kris Meadows, I have painted portraits of everyone in my family. Their dogs, too. The beaches at St. Simons. The mountains of North Georgia. Scottish landscapes. I have a painting hanging in the state capitol, the College of Coastal Georgia and at Kennesaw State University. I have given numerous paintings to my friends. I made it a point to never sell one. I was in business long enough. Painting for me is pure pleasure.
I was taught that we should all leave this a better world than we found it. There is no question that Bootsie Callaham did that. She made my world better and gave it new meaning by introducing me to art. In short, she changed my life. Now, you see why the eulogy.
You can reach Dick Yarbrough at dick@dickyarbrough.com or at P.O. Box 725373, Atlanta, Georgia 31139
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