My father is buried in Ebenezer Cemetery outside Fordyce, Arkansas in the same cemetery as his parents (but not his grandfather; see below). When I was young, there was an old white frame church there. In those days, there was a pot-luck reunion every year that we attended. I would like to be buried in this same plot when my time comes and my sister Kristie has said she would like to be buried there as well.. There are many relatives in this cemetery. I visited this cemetery many times as a child with Daddy (he visited the cemetery at least 3-4 times a year during my childhood). Sometimes he would tell me stories about many of the people buried there--I sure wish my memory was better. In one area, there is a husband and wife and several children who lived briefly and then died. Daddy lived most of his adult life with little to no interest in the things of God but when he was stricken with leukemia and knew he was dying, he was witnessed to by a black man who was from his childhood and he re-committed his life to God. As he lay dying, he often asked Mother to read him the 23rd Psalm; thus the inscription "The Lord is my Shepherd" on the stone.
At the funeral of my grandfather on Mother's side (Lorie Ted Hicks, buried in Smith Chapel Cemetery a few miles away from Ebenezer, near Kingsland, Arkansas), Daddy commented to Joe, Larry and me that he did not want to be buried in a "hole of water" when his time came. The water table in that part of Arkansas is often not very far beneath the surface and holes would sometimes fill with water right as they were being dug. Pap's grave was dry when he was buried---I checked.
<<Click on a picture to enlarge for more detail>>
When Mother passes, she will be buried here as well.
Thyra and S.J were my grandparents; he died way before I was born in 1935. There is a "Woodmen of the World" insignia on his headstone in the Ebenezer Cemetery outside Fordyce, Arkansas. S.J was a prominent businessman who built roads (with mule drawn equipment); he also owned a mule barn where they were bought and sold. He eventually became a severe alcoholic; Daddy on more than one occasion had to take a wagon and mule and go to town and get him and on at least one occasion found him drunk in a ditch. He died of TB. I have an old 1800's rolltop oak desk that belonged to him and then to my own father. Thyra was the eldest of about a dozen children; her mother died in childbirth and she took over raising the family as an early teenager. Her maiden name was "Gray", shown on her headstone. I visited the log cabin where all of her early days occurred before it collapsed. It was about 18 X 20 ft in size and down the road a couple of miles from the cemetery where she is buried by her husband S.J. The old farmhouse where she lived (and where all of her own children, including Daddy were born that I visited as a child did not have an indoor toilet or even running water but there was a well not far from the back door. She was a large woman, pleasant enough...I really don't remember her that well as I was 9 when she died.
Next to Thyra and S.J is my Aunt Pauline's grave. She was a very special person to me who never had children of her own so she sometimes took me on excusrsions which were always interesting and fun. She really loved to go places and do things! She had three husbands, all died so she was a widow three times. Pauline was a registered nurse and I have wonderful memories of her. She had a mobile home/trailer on a lake in Fordyce as a getaway and I stayed there in the summer with her many times, fishing and just hanging out there. She was usually very upbeat, laughing often. During those summer times at the lake, my uncle and aunt Floyd and Clara (also buried nearby) would come out to the lake in the evenings and playing cards or dominoes....I can vividly remember hearing laughter coming out of the trailer while light streamed out the windows on a summer evening when I stayed outside down on the little boat dock she had nearby.
Pauline died of colon cancer As she was dying, Daddy went to sit with her every day for months. He told me once that he wanted to be there when she died and I gathered that she had asked him to be as they were always very close. He instructed the staff at the nursing home where she was to let him know immediately if she took a turn for the worse but due to a mixup of some kind, Aunt Pauline died alone and Daddy really grieved doubly because of her loss and because he had not been there.
Daddy had three brothers (Hugh, Floyd, and Don) and one sister (Pauline). Don was a very refined man who looked amazingly like Daddy and was about the same size which was 6'4" and about 260 lbs. His daughter, June (my cousin although several years older) attended Julliard Music Conservatory and married an orchestra conductor. Don was an engineer and designed bridges and enjoyed oil painting. Don, in his last years, had a stroke and suffered paralysis and lost the ability to speak although it seemed as if his mind was still sharp. Hugh, the eldest, was County Commissioner of Dallas County and was very respected. Early one Monday morning, a worker called in sick; he was to drive to Hampton, AR to get a full load of hot asphalt for a road building project. Hugh knew that several men would have nothing to do and that the project would be delayed so he got out of bed about 4 AM, got the asphalt truck, and drove to get the asphalt himself. On the way back, a car driving behind him stated that they saw something "drop down" below the truck. The something they saw turned out to be part of the steering apparatus of the truck. The truck veered off the road and struck a bridge abutment. The bridge didn't move and the tons of hot asphalt crushed the cab and Uncle Hugh.
He survived long enough for both of his broken legs to be set but after a transfusion--he had bled profusely, as his blood pressure began to come up, it was apparent that he had massive internal injuries and he died not long afterward. Mother, Aunt Pauline, Kristie and I were in Louisiana on one of Pauline's famous excursions. We received the phone call at the hotel still early that morning-- it was March 27, 1963, my 10th birthday--and I remember how upset Pauline was as we all quickly jumped in the car to return to Fordyce. When we got there, we learned he was dead. The funeral was huge, an incredible number of people showed up and there were more flowers than they had ever seen at a funeral there, they said at the time.
An interesting side note: Hugh's wife was also named Mary, just like my mother. After many years as a widow, she eventually rekindled a romance with a boy friend from her teenage years who had become a widower by this time and they were married and lived out their years in Fordyce.
Uncle Floyd, next in the birth order, was a very kind man who also took an interest in me during my visits to Fordyce in the summer. Floyd took me fishing several times and also on road trips out in the Arkansas woods just to look around. He always called me "Lad" as if that was my name. His wife, Clara, was notorious for her hospitality. On virtually every occasion when we drove up to the sprawling old 1800's house they lived in, she would ALWAYS say, "Have you eaten, let me get you something to eat!"
No, no, we would say. "Here, I have some pecan pie I just made and some ham, let me make you a sandwich!" she would say as she opened the fridge and started pulling out the ham.
No, no, NO, we would say. "Well, how about some scrambled eggs and bacon, it won't take but a few minutes..." No, NO, we don't want anything, we would say. "Here, you have to eat some of this pecan pie and I'll make a fresh pot of coffee..." NO, please Clara, we just stopped in to say hi..."Now here, I know you want some of this pie and it won't take but a bit to make coffee.....................
Well, as I recall, we pretty much always wound up eating until SHE let us leave. She was a loving and pleasant person and hospitable to a fault. Floyd was very interested in trees and always had interesting "experiments" going on in which he grafted pecan trees onto hickory nut trees or five different kinds of apples onto one tree or apricots onto peach trees. I think sometimes he went out into the woods and grafted some of those trees and he would go back every year or so and check them to see how they were doing!
In the front room of their home, a murder happened prior to their buying the house. A World War I veteran, back from the war, apparently was really struggling with post traumatic stress and had awful dreams and flashbacks going back to the war. One night, he grabbed a rifle and shot his wife and killed her.
William Joseph was the father of the first Sebern J Smith and therefore my great grandfather. He moved from Alabama to Arkansas and served in the Civil War. The last time I visited his grave there was an iron cross indicating that he served in the Confederate States of America. Some people steal these and sell them on Ebay, believe it or not. I've thought about going out there someday and somehow setting it in concrete but that would mean digging in the cemetery and that would probably get me arrested. I hope it is still there.
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