Today's tale is an old-fashioned love story about a man named Gilbert Holliday.
“That’s ‘Holliday’ with 2 L’s,” he said to me, with a laugh, to make sure I got it right for the paper.
For many years, I carried in my wallet a barely legible and brief note scribbled on a tiny piece of paper. I happened onto an impromptu interview with my old friend one day down at the Y in my hometown of LaGrange, Georgia. So, I quickly grabbed paper and pen so I would not miss even one detail of his story.
Gil had been playing basketball at noon with the “boys down at the Y” for several decades. The “Y,” as we always called it, is the facility where many of my buddies and I spent thousands of days and nights playing ball growing up. As the boys got older, they started a noon-time league on that same old Hoosiers-like floor. It was kind of an “exclusive” club for regular members; but I was blessed to be able to play on my trips home from Texas since they all knew me either from growing up or from the writings in the paper. It was a good workout and always helped me work off some of the amazing cooking that Grandma put on her table. On this particular trip it did something even better.
I had known Mr. Holliday since probably the 1980s; but it was on this trip in 2001 that I was able to get to know him better. On that visit, Gil was in a brief ball-playing retirement due to some ailments. He was well into his 80s by this time and moved very slowly up and down the court; but the boys at the Y were always gentle with him. He did not move fast, but he had made a determination to keep on moving for as long as he could breath.
Gil inspires me today to try to be playing a little ball when I’m 80.
Even though he was unable to play that day, he still came on over to the Y and took his place on the sideline, for which I'm thankful. It was between games when I sat down by Gill and had one of the best visits down at the Y I ever had. With the ball bouncing in the background, Gil told me his story, which I immortalized in part with my scratchy notes on a torn-off piece of paper. I know I missed some important details, but I remember the most one.
Her name was Julia.
The mere sound of that name was like the singing of angels to Gil Holliday. I could tell by the gleam in his eye when he talked of her.
“When we married,” he said, his eyes shining, “we owned a 1925 T-model Ford.”
Then he added quickly, with a laugh: “Looked gorgeous to me.”
I scribbled that little note down, with a bit of a smile, because I was not sure whether he was talking about Julia or the ’25. I think both.
Julia was his life, but he was pretty crazy about that T-model, too. He got to talking about both of them with such a joy that you felt you were almost there with him as he re-lived the story. He said that he and Julia were driving along one time – I think it was on their honeymoon, or they may have just been courting – and the creek flooded and covered the railroad tracks and stranded them. Of course, it didn’t bother Gil at all to be stranded with his girl. There was the inescapable evidence of that by a slight crack in his voice, an unmistakable glow of love in his face, and those sparkling eyes.
Gil and Julia were married for 57 years, until her death in 1996.
After our visit – cut short for the next game – I reached out to shake his hand with great respect. I was proud of him and of his story; and I thanked him deeply for sharing his life story, a story that could be summed up in that one special name. Through the years, I’ve heard a lot of stories playing ball down at the Y, but I’ve never heard one like that. I never got to see Gil again. I had hoped to see him when I came back home later in the summer.
But when I got to the Y he wasn’t there. Immediately I asked my old ball-playing buddy Ken Carter, and Ken told me that Gil died, too, just a few months ago.
Then he added, “I think he kind of grieved ‘til he died.”
I was not surprised at that at all. I knew he would never lose that little gleam in his eye for Ms. Julia Holliday.
"That's two L’s, remember,” he said to me, with a laugh.
Oh, I couldn't forget: Two “L’s.”
Seems fitting.
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