Uncle Junior

The first time I met Cheryl’s father, I was intimidated. He was not a giant, but he was 6’2” and about 220 pounds. Shaking hands with him was like putting your hand in a vise and spinning the handle to tighten it.

Her dad’s name was Maurice Franklin Keathley, Jr., and I was trying to figure out what I was going to call him. He was also a retired Lt. Colonel, but I definitely was not going to salute him.  I was thinking Mr. Keathley was just fine, and that’s how I started.

On the many subsequent trips with Cheryl back to Memphis, I met more of her extended family on her dad’s side. Mr. Keathley had three brothers, but only one of them had children when I met them. Those children were all girls and they called Maurice “Uncle Junior.” I did not think it would be good to call him Junior, so I stuck with Mr. Keathley for the first year of dating, and then I started calling him Maurice.

After a few trips home from college with Cheryl, I think Maurice figured that I was going to be around a while, so he invited me to play handball with him. I had never even heard of handball, much less played it. I tried to get out of it by saying that I did not have any equipment to play handball. He quickly responded that he would buy me some handball gloves at the Memphis Athletic Club. OK, now I did not have an excuse.

That first outing was brutal, trying to hit that tiny hard rubber ball hard enough to bounce off the wall of the court and then trying to get out of the way of the bullets that Maurice was hurling at me with his returns. I ran till my tongue was hanging out of my mouth while Maurice seemed to stand in one place as he expertly placed the ball in a position that made me gasp for air as I raced back and forth and all around the court.

I recall scoring less than 6 points in two games that day, but I survived. Well, later that day, my hands were so swollen I could not get my fingers to touch. I later found out that handball gloves came in different thicknesses of padding in the palm of the hand. Maurice had bought me the thinnest padding available. I am sure that he did not do this with the intention of me suffering with abnormally swollen hands, but he bought me gloves with the same padding that he used—with those massive hands.

On our next trip to Memphis, I was prepared as I had a pair of gloves with the most padding available. This time Maurice told me that Cheryl’s brother, Randy, would be playing with us. Oh great! Randy’s physique was a carbon copy of his dad’s, and he had equally massive hands. So we played cut-throat handball, and one could guess whose throat was going to be cut. They gave me a whipping on the court, but at least I did not suffer from the swelling and pain as much with the extra padded gloves.

After 15 months of dating, Cheryl and I were engaged, and I was spending more and more time in Memphis with her on the weekends and holidays. We played less handball as Maurice had trouble with his knees. He invited me to play golf with him. I had never played golf and did not own any clubs, but Maurice put together some clubs from his collection of clubs and I used one of his old bags. That was a good bonding time for us, and I have always been grateful to him for helping me appreciate golf. He even bought me a set of clubs after we were married.

By the time we were engaged, I was calling my future father-in-law Uncle Junior, and he seemed to like that, so I interchanged addressing him as Maurice and Uncle Junior.

When Jason was born, he called Maurice “Papaw.” So, Cheryl and I both would sometimes call him Papaw also.

Parkinson’s Disease ravaged his body in his early 70s, and until he was promoted to heaven, I intermittently called him Maurice, Uncle Junior, and Papaw.