THE BEST AND WORST OF TIMES

It was the best of times and it was the worst of times. These are the opening lines to Charles Dickens book "A Tale Of Two Cities". This could describe life with my father Willard Aaron (Bill) Segroves for the almost thirteen years that I knew him. All of his friends and family called him Bill but he was just daddy to his children. The best of times was from my birth in 1950 until I was about ten years old. The last three years of his life were the worst of times. How does a man evolve from the best father in the world to being a monster? I have asked that question thousands of times in the last 61 years but I can only speculate. On this Fathers Day I want to honor the best of times with my dad but first I want to talk about the worst of times. Most people can honor their father on Father's day without reservation but it is more difficult for me. Through the years loved ones have tried to console me by saying your father was a good man and he loved your mother. Or they say your father would never have killed your mother if he had been in his right mind. Somehow I can't wrap my mind around what happened, however. Or the part that mental illness might have played in everything. It is too complex for me to understand. I can relate to why a person would want to kill himself because I have thought about it many times. Not in a serious or obsessive way but I have thought about it. I think that most people do whether they admit it or not. How does a man on the other hand kill the mother of his children and his unborn baby? Maybe one day I will know the answer to that question.

My father never drank to the point that he was visibly drunk except on special occasions like New Years. I remember one particular New Years Eve when he was so drunk my mother had to drive him home passed out in the front seat. Usually his drinking consisted of a six pack of beer before going to bed while watching the late show on television or Jack Paar. When we moved to 6222 Henry Ford Drive in Charlotte Park subdivision I was nine. At first this was the ideal life. Our subdivision was new and new houses were being built all around us. This meant plenty of scrap lumber to build tree houses. There were woods all around our house to play in. Daddy and I worked hard clearing the brush from our back yard. About this time daddy traveled to South Pittsburg Tennessee where he bought enough fireworks to set up a fireworks stand but he never got a license and we ended up firing off most of them. We had every kind of firework that you could imagine and created armies from among the neighborhood kids. We chose up sides and shot them at each other. My best friend Frankie Marerro and I explored the nearby Cumberland River and rode for miles on our bikes along what would later become I-40. Daddy showed us how to hunt possums and I kept several under our house. This life was about as close to a "Leave It To Beaver" type of life as you could get.

Then my father started drinking heavily. He drank so much that for days and weeks at a time he couldn't work and so my mother had to work at the store. She was not the manager that my father was and the employees took advantage of her, stealing my father blind. I recently read where this is one of the biggest reasons businesses fail is because of employee theft. One night when daddy was somewhat sober I asked him to get some help and to my surprise he agreed. I didn't recognize him anymore and it scared me. I wanted my daddy back and I wanted this obnoxious stranger to go away. He checked himself into a local sanitarium and dried out. For a short while things were good and then he fell off the wagon. He kept going back for treatment and would dry out and then he would go back to drinking again. This behavior became a regular cycle for a couple of years. Mother and daddy would have violent arguments. I remember two Christmas Eves in a row that were totally ruined in this way. One day daddy was standing in the kitchen with his back facing our garage. The door was open and he was so drunk he fell backwards down the steps slamming his head against the concrete floor knocking himself out cold. I just knew he was dead and called my mom at work. She told me to make sure he was still breathing. She said that if he was breathing just let him sleep it off. Another time daddy was driving drunk and I was in the passenger seat. We were traveling down Church Street when I saw a city bus stopped to pick up passengers. He sideswiped the bus and turned right on the next street. I don't think he ever knew that he hit the bus. This was during the time that cars did not come with seatbelts. Another time I fell out of my tree house knocking myself out. I also cut my eyebrow and I needed a few stitches. Daddy was drunk so my sister Donna quietly backed the car out of the driveway so she could drive me and Mark to the drugstore. From there mother took me to the hospital. Donna was fourteen and didn't have a drivers license. My brother Mark and I were sleeping in a front bedroom that was next to our parents bedroom. Mother and daddy were fighting and the noise woke us up. We ran screaming into their bedroom where daddy had my mother penned against the wall choking her with one hand and trying to hit her with a nightstick. Our screams seemed to bring him to his senses and he let go of her. He then fell back heavily on the bed and just sat there with his head buried in his hands. Mother tried to calm us down by telling us that we didn't need to worry because she could handle him when he was drunk. The next day she had bruises all over her neck and I found out years later that he had nearly killed her that night. This was when she realized she had to find serious help for him. She would try to have him committed to the state mental hospital in the next few days.

One day mother and I walked into the house after she picked me up from school. We found pills strewn all over the place and heard moaning coming from the bathroom. Daddy was slumped over on the toilet because he had overdosed on pills. Mother called an ambulance and they were able to pump his stomach saving his life. I can't tell you how many times since that I wished he had died that day. My Aunt Viola, his oldest sister, had him committed to Madison Sanitarium where he was given shock treatments. Mother was having to leave us with my grandparents in East Nashville while she worked at the store. At first she tried to take us back and forth to school in West Nashville but this became too much so she enrolled us a Bailey which was a few blocks from my grandparents. Daddy moved in with us after he was discharged from the hospital. Mother found out she was pregnant at some point but only a few people knew. On the morning of January 16, 1963 daddy dressed to take us to school. I will never forget the look on his face. I happened to glance at him and the look on his face grabbed my attention. It was void of any emotion and he had a thousand yard stare. Without speaking a word he drove my cousins Roy and Alton along with my brother Mark and I to school. After returning home at 10>05 AM while my mother was sleeping peacefully in my grandparents front bedroom he pointed a nine shot 22 caliber pistol at the left side of her head and shot her three times. Then he shot himself in the right temple.

Now for the best of times. During the good times in the 1950's there was never a better father than Bill Segroves. I always enjoyed being with my dad. He worked constantly. The drugstore opened early in the morning and he would be there most days until closing, which was at 11:00 PM. We were a family owned business and I never felt like my father was away too much because many times, when we weren't in school, we were at the store. I still love the image of my father smiling with his arms folded and leaning back against the counter in his white shirt, bow tie, or regular tie wearing black pants and smoking a cigar. He was never dressed casually while working. Or he would be standing back in the prescription department filling prescriptions. His customers seemed to sincerely like and respect him. They were predominantly black and this was in the segregated south. It was not love and respect based on fear or of knowing your place. I felt this respect because they called my dad "Doc" and I was little "Doc". I think it was because of watching my parents and the way that they related to people, no matter what their class, station in life, or skin color that I have benefited from to this day.

Even though daddy worked all the time he always found time for us in every area that a kid could want. He enrolled me in Little League baseball and he never missed a game. One or the other of my parents were always at my practices. I wasn't a great player and I sat on the bench a lot. This was not like it is today when every kid gets to play whether they are good or not and everybody gets a participation trophy. When I did get to play it was mostly right field. Occasionally I was a relief pitcher or played second base. More than a few times I cried because I didn't get to play in a game. It wasn't my dad's fault that I was a mediocre player because he was always playing pitch with me and teaching me the fundamentals. He taught me the fundamentals of how to hold the bat, how to field fly balls, grounders, and how to play the bases. My shyness was a large factor in how I played. I did great in practice but when I got in a real game I was too hesitant and cautious. Every kid loves to fish and daddy was an avid fisherman. He took us every time we were able to go with him. Many times it would be just me and him which was good quality time together. Most times daddy was catching fish but I would get bored and start throwing rocks.If I was catching fish I was okay but I never developed the love of fishing that daddy had just to sit there and commune with nature. Swimming was another thing that daddy loved. He could easily have been a champion diver. In the summer time we always spent a week down at Chickasaw State Park near Henderson Tennessee. The family rented one large cabin and our family, his cousin Howard along with Howard's wife and daughters shared a cabin with us. Didi, Roy, Alton and her boyfriend "Gigs" also stayed with us for a fun filled week of swimming, fishing, and fellowship. Sometimes my sisters Carolyn and Faye, who were my dad's children by his first marriage, would go with us.

Whenever we were at home we were swimming at area lakes like Lake Louise, Old Hickory Lake, or Cascade Plunge at the fairgrounds. There he would draw a crowd to watch him dive from the top of the diving tower. Performing the "swan" and "jack knife" dives among others. I was scared of the water and in old home movies I could be seen wearing a life preserver. Mark on the other hand loved the water and as a baby would jump off into the deep water without hesitation. Of course daddy was there to catch him. Daddy also took us hunting. He hunted for dove, squirrels, and rabbits. In the late 1950's there was a go kart craze. Go kart tracks were being built everywhere and he was constantly taking us to ride them. He would take us kite flying and we would go to Centennial Park and fly balsa wood airplanes. So I can honor that good father that he was on Fathers Day. A really good man that I knew for the first ten years of my life. In those years I cannot say enough good things about my father. Much of the good in me like my work ethic, self discipline, love of country and love for family I owe to my father. When it came to discipline my father didn't shout at me, slap me in the face or spank my butt with an open hand. He would take off his belt and whip me hard. I can only remember three times that he ever did this. Many parents would call it abuse today but these were probably the tenderest moments that I ever had with my dad. I was always deserving of punishment and after I had a little time to cry and settle down he would sit down beside me on the bed and put his arm around me. Then he would ask me if I understood why he had whipped me. He then would tell me how much he loved me. Then he would say something that I have never forgotten. He said son I will not always be here and you must learn to be a man one day. There was no way I could have known how prophetic these words would be.

The main problem facing this country today is the lack of fathers in the home. When I was a child about 95% of white families had a father living at home and about 90% of black families had a father living at home. Today only about 70% of white families have a father living at home and about 30% of black families have a father living at home. The lack of fathers in the home contribute to the rise in crime, illiteracy and dysfunction. Blacks make up 13% of the population but are responsible for 50% of violent crimes. Black neighborhoods in the inner cities were safe before Johnson's War on Poverty. As one former 1960's civil rights activist put it when whites were at their worst blacks were at their best. During the War On Poverty the government paid women money when they had children as long as there was no father in the home. The government has incentivized bad behavior. This has also led to higher crime and dysfunction among whites. When you add the removal of prayer and Bible reading from the public schools in the early 1960's along with radical feminism we have seen the deterioration of the nuclear family. After my parents died I went to live with my Aunt Didi who was my mothers sister. Didi was a single mother raising her own two children and now she had my brother and I to raise. I could never repay her for what she did for us. She was the only thing keeping us from being wards of the state. If not for those good years with my father I don't know if I could have made it through the bad times of my life. Although I think I have been a good father I can't compare to my father during the good years. No child could have wished for a better father.