I first shook hands with Terry in late summer of 2009.
Callie and I had just started dating, and I was still getting to know all of the people in her life.
Aside from blood kin, Terry was arguably the most important person to Callie at that time.
He was big and strong. He hardly looked age 63.
“I’m fully retired,” he’d always say. “I’ll never go back to work. I spend four hours in the gym every morning.”
Terry had fully embraced retirement, and who could blame him?
Having grown up on the mean streets of Toledo, Ohio in the 1950s, Terry admittedly wasn’t the kind of teenager you wanted to run into, whether you were a resident or a merchant.
Terry was a typical young man of the fifties.
He loved fast cars and motorcycles, and he was not above lifting either one.
He once told me a story about a scheme he and his friends used to pull at neighborhood ballgames. They would try to spot ladies holding their purses carelessly from their arms.
“We would reach our hands inside the straps, pull the purse off and run,” he said.
When it came his turn one day, he had his purse picked out.
The only trouble was that his arm got tangled up in the straps, and the elderly lady he was trying to steal from had an umbrella in her other hand.
“She almost beat me to death with that umbrella,” he said.
Terry said his last brush with the law in Toledo was a doozy that involved a holdup and shots being fired.
A young adult at the time, he and his accomplice were facing several years in prison.
As luck would have it, though, the two went before a wise judge, who saw something there besides the street thugs and car thieves most in the neighborhood had come to know.
Instead of sending them to prison, he sent them both into the arms of the U.S. Armed Forces.
They were both on a bus to basic training the next Monday.
“He didn’t even know if the Army would take us,” Terry once told me. “He just told me that if he saw me again, I was going to prison.”
It turns out Terry made the cut right on the cusp of the U.S. escalation in South Vietnam.
He would eventually do multiple tours during the Vietnam War, rising to the rank of Master Sergeant, the most senior rank for non-commissioned officers.
Many of his friends perished, including his accomplice in the holdup in Toledo.
But Terry survived, becoming an Army Ranger in the Airborne Infantry division. I’m not much on military ranks, so I hope I got that one right.
He would retire from the Army in the late 1980s, and having been stationed at Columbus Air Force Base, just up Highway 82 from here, he decided to stay in Mississippi.
He earned a Bachelor’s degree and a Master’s from Mississippi College, and he went on to work several jobs in central Mississippi before retiring for good.
Callie and I would often double date with Terry and his loving companion Roxanne. It was always dinner and then the opera or a ballet at Thalia Mara Hall in Jackson.
Behind the rugged exterior of this ex-criminal and former Army Ranger was a cultured and eccentric man, who loved fine wine, and he ground his own coffee.
At the end of dinner, Terry would always grab the check.
“When you get to the point to where you make as much money as I do, you can buy me dinner,” Terry would always say.
He was both generous and wise to the fact that I was a struggling journalist at the time.
Anytime anyone in our family ever experienced a crisis, Terry was always there for support, both emotionally and financially.
Whenever I wanted to just sit back under the stars in Yazoo County, light a fire and talk history and politics, there’s no one I wanted to have that conversation with more than Terry.
A few years ago, when we were living in Tuscaloosa, I treated Terry to a day trip to the Barber Motorsports Museum in Birmingham. Barber has the largest collection of motorcycles in the world.
I’m not a motorcycle enthusiast, but Terry did appreciate all of the old Indian bikes, the Harley Davidsons and the countless others that lined the walls and floors of the museum.
A couple of months ago, Terry and Roxanne came to Indianola to see us for a day trip.
We had lunch at a local spot here, and when it was over, I grabbed the check and took it to the register.
“Thanks a lot for lunch, Bryan,” he told me as we exited the restaurant.
“You always told me when I made as much as you, I could buy you dinner,” I replied.
He laughed and said, “That’s right, I did.”
This past weekend, we said goodbye to Terry for the last time.
He left us on June 21 at age 73.
Per his request, his ashes were spread on Callie’s parents’ property in northern Yazoo County. It’s about the most peaceful place a person could hope to rest.
A military delegation was present, and a flag was presented to his granddaughter, Tabatha, as Taps played in the background.
His sons Mark and Rich, also retired Army veterans, were able to attend and help to give the war hero the sendoff he deserved.
I knew Terry for just under a decade, but I count him as one of the best friends I have ever had. He was as close to family as you can get without being blood kin.
I will miss his stories, his wit and our many conversations by the fire.
I’m not qualified to deliver a proper military salute, so this is my best shot at a civilian salute.
Rest in peace, my friend.
