Everett Tillman Warnock

As we get older, it’s easy to forget – a fact of life we all face. Some things, we want to forget. Others… not so much.

I have very fond memories of my grandparents – in particular, my grandfather on my dad’s side. Everett Tillman Warnock. We called him “Papa”. Mom, dad, my sister, my two brothers and I piled into the 2-door Plymouth Fury III (one of us typically asleep in the back window ledge…) and traveled the six hours to Waycross, GA to see them at least twice a year. I spent many summers there – running barefoot through the dirt streets, fishing, and helping out in the shop.

Recently, my grandfather was posthumously honored by my cousin, Billy (or “Bill”, as he’s now known in professional circles) and his wife, Becky. There’s now a study hall named after him at Auburn. He was an out-of-the-limelight kind of man - and would have been far too humble to want or expect something like this. However, no one is more deserving.

If you didn’t know my grandfather, and you simply looked at his resume, you’d probably wonder… “Huh?” “A study hall?” “For a man with a 6th grade education?” However, if you knew my grandfather, you’d know that a more fitting tribute couldn’t exist. With some help from *my* dad, let me reflect…

Papa was born in 1903. He grew up on a farm, and married a 15 year old farm girl, Edith (“Granny”, to us) when he was 19. They raised 6 children (all born at home). He worked as a farmer, drove road machinery, sold furniture and retired with his own furniture repair business (which, to him, meant going to work for himself.)

For someone with “only” a 6th grade education – he was brilliant. I’m guessing he didn’t know what the word “Algebra” meant, but he could do complex math problems in his head, and solved logic and algebraic problems with a pencil and a napkin. He loved puzzles! I remember him getting his first calculator (very late in life) and being amazed at what it would do. He had a remarkable memory, and could name all 159 counties in Georgia. He knew the county seat, population and neighboring counties of every one.

He drove a furniture route - with hundreds of customers. He knew every single one by name. He also knew their families, and he knew the personal family situation of each one. When he started in 1942, he was making $18/week. He worked a six-day week and yet, he always had time to stop along the route and, with my dad in tow, take time out for a little fishin’ along the way. He drove over a million miles during his career, commuting 100 miles/day late in life to a job in Homerville, GA, and had only one serious accident the entire time (when he hit a cow in the middle of the road!)

His grandfather fought in the Civil War. He used to tell us stories about his grandfather and about his life growing up. Stories abounded – from “Huck Finn”-like stories of him rafting down the river to the story of his uncle whose ingrown toe hurt so bad that he shot it off (yep!) – he was always telling stories!

He was a tinker and an inventor. If he needed a “custom” part for a piece of furniture or a equipment, he made it – by hand. He rebuilt organs– blowing each of the little metal reeds to find one that was “out of tune.” He built a beautiful piece of furniture for me – a small chest - out of scrap wood, cigar boxes and metal tobacco cans. It’s a piece I’ll always cherish. His greatest invention (at least to us kids) was box with a squirrel’s tail in it (his “mongoose trap” (“the fastest animal alive”) that he used to scare customers, friends and family – anyone who even remotely showed an interest!

For the most part, he was skeptical of things he couldn’t see or understand. He doubted man landed on the moon (he was convinced that it was staged.) He witnessed the invention of television – something else he never understood (but that he enjoyed none-the-less!) He was around when they invented moving pictures (movies), the airplane (flown by the Wright brothers the year he was born), television, the refrigerator, WWI (he was too young to serve) and WWII (he was too old!), and remembered moving into his first house with indoor plumbing and a bathroom. And, despite being skeptical of things he couldn’t see or didn’t understand, he knew who God was, and what it meant to be a Christian. He joined Crawford Street Baptist Church in 1943, and served faithfully as a Deacon until he died in 1978, just shy of his 75th birthday.

So, as I read the plaque attached to the memorial for my grandfather, I realize that the words engraved there – “spirit, perseverance and a sense of purpose” really don’t do him justice. And yet, they describe him perfectly.