Kingsport Spirit

September 24 would have been my brother Larry’s 77th birthday.

The same year I started first grade, he started college. I’m told he was thrilled to have a baby brother, but with that age difference, our relationship was always a little different. By the time I was growing up, he was already building a family of his own. His first daughter arrived when I was 10, another when I was 12, and a third as I was entering adulthood. I essentially grew up alongside his family.

Larry died in 2003 at just 54. I was 42, with two young children still at home, and until that day I had never known life without my brother.

Age has given me a different perspective on his loss. Mom was 72 when Larry died. Dad was 78. Had Larry lived, he would now be 77 — almost exactly the age my parents were when they had to bury their son.

That realization stops me.

I will never forget Dad that day. He was a World War II and Korean War veteran, a man who had seen unimaginable things. Yet it was the first time I had ever seen him cry — and he cried uncontrollably. Beneath all that strength and experience was simply a father grieving his son.

Watching him also changed the way I understood a familiar phrase from Scripture: “He gave His only begotten Son.” I had heard those words all my life. Seeing my own father grieve gave them a depth I had never understood before.

Dad lived another decade. Mom nearly another 15 years.

Larry and I had always assumed we would someday care for our parents together. Instead, that responsibility became mine. I managed their final days and remain grateful that both were able to die at home, as they wished, in familiar surroundings.

Nothing prepares you for watching your parents become vulnerable and dependent, making decisions you never wanted to make, arranging their final affairs, and eventually sorting through a lifetime of memories.

The roles reverse. Suddenly they are on your mind every minute of every day, much as you must have been on theirs during your formative years.

That is why I often say, “Check on the caregivers.” You seldom know the weight someone is quietly carrying.

A former colleague who had lost both parents once described himself as an “adult orphan.” I never liked the phrase, but now I understand the feeling. When something significant happens, my first instinct is still to pick up the phone and call Mom, Dad or Larry.

Then I remember.

I share this not for sympathy, but because I’ve learned there are many others carrying similar losses who need to know they aren’t alone.

Larry immersed himself in community, and inspired me to do so, too. In his case, Knoxville. He chaired the United Way campaign, supported regional economic development and invested in causes that helped children escape cycles of poverty through education and opportunity. His fingerprints remain, from the Larry Fleming Campus of the Boys & Girls Club to the Larry Fleming Operations Center at KUB.

His greatest legacy, though, is his family. His daughters, grandchildren and great-grandchildren are flourishing, now spread from Florida to Southern California.

And wherever they are, they are still Tennessee Vol fans.

That would have pleased Larry immensely.

I’ll never forget a niece bringing an Auburn fan home to watch Tennessee play Auburn. When they scored, the young man made a very restrained gesture of celebration. Larry lunged across the ottoman, grabbed him by the collar and said, “Look, son, in this family we’re Tennessee fans.”

The young man apologized and left.

She eventually married a Tennessee fan.

Lesson learned. Problem solved.

This weekend I’ll be back in Knoxville for Tennessee-Texas. I’ll pass reminders of Larry and remember Big Orange football, family weekends, laughter and moments that seemed ordinary then but have become priceless.

The people we lose stop aging. Their influence doesn’t.

Happy 77th birthday, brother.

Your family is flourishing. Your community still bears your fingerprints. And all these years later, you are still part of who I am.