Anna Shea, 1936-2011

   When Anna Shea’s second marriage fell apart her life began to spiral slowly downward to its end. She lost her status and her home and her community of friends, but more than that she lost her sense that life had much coherence or purpose. She felt betrayed and she felt bewildered. She grew sick and she grew old and above all she grew tired–worn out with the effort of putting up a good front.

  Through it all, a couple of things kept her going. One was her grandchildren. She was always just amazed at how they were turning out. When she held them up in comparison with their playmates and peers, as she often did, it was absolutely laughable, how much smarter and better-looking and more commendable they were. She loved them unconditionally, and if it wasn’t quite true that they could do no wrong, well, it was her abiding belief that their missteps were only tiny, momentary lapses in judgment and in no way an indication of any flaw in their characters.

Anna Shea with her favorite daughter

   In short, she had an incorrigible – that is to say, grandmotherly – conviction that Scott and Emily were born to conquer the world.

   Anna also had her daughter, Joan, who was for her, as she is for all of us, her rock and her anchor. She was also her bridge, connecting her to her grandchildren and bringing back to her that time of her life when she had a young child of her own, a precious thing whose care and keeping was fraught with peril, but so impossibly rewarding. She was constantly amazed--and incredibly proud--of how her daughter was turning out, as well, up until her very end.

   Anna was forever asking us – sometimes several times in the same conversation: “Does Scott have a girlfriend?”…“Does Emily have a boyfriend?” This was simple unseemly human curiosity, you might say, but you could also see it as a blessing – a benediction on her grandchildren. Maybe she recalled a time when falling in love was a giddy adventure, when being in love was a life-affirming experience, and she fervently wished that for them. Maybe she remembered that time when life was just opening up before you, in all its splendor, and that was what she wished to bequeath.    

Kindell Stephens, 1944-2008

   My friend Kindell Stephens died January 2, 2008.

   Hundreds – maybe thousands -- of others in Middle Tennessee, and elsewhere, can say this very thing. Kindell had more friends than anyone I’ve ever met. Not acquaintances – friends.

   Establishing a friendship typically calls for one party to take the initiative. Kindell was determined to be my friend. We met while playing on-on-one basketball at the Y.  Kindell was a great player – he had a cup of coffee with the Lakers – and he was surprised – and pleased – that I wasn’t intimidated by him. Whenever he saw the glimmer of pride, the spark of competitive fire, he embraced it.

  Kindell cultivated the seeds of self-reliance in dozens of kids down through the years.  A young man who spoke at his funeral thanked Kindell for “seeing something in me when nobody else saw anything.”

   Kindell saw something in me, as well. Maybe it was a curiosity about him and his culture. I’d been to college and played basketball, but my education hadn’t included becoming real friends with any African Americans. The ones I’d known were as wary of me as I was of them.

   Kindell came to Nashville in the mid-‘60s, when segregation was yet in full flower. He went to Fisk, starred in basketball, had that stint in the pros, and came back to Nashville. He counseled young athletes, first at Fisk, later at Tennessee State, where he was sports information director and the “Voice of the Tigers” on radio broadcasts.

   After Kindell and I met, he asked me to play on a basketball team with him. I was the only white on a team of blacks – I got an inkling of what it was like to be a minority. Kindell helped me feel at ease.

   The more I got to know Kindell, the more I learned about empathy – not the refined and ethereal kind of empathy the philosophers recommend, but empathy in action. I seldom saw Kindell without several charges in tow – the kids whose causes he took up and made his own. As Howard Gentry, a longtime friend and broadcast associate of Kindell’s, said at a memorial tribute attended by hundreds: “If you knew Kindell, chances are that he helped you in some way.” Gentry also said, “Kindell brought me out of myself.”

   As pastor Darrell Drumright said in his splendid and stirring eulogy, and as the dozen or more illustrious speakers echoed at the memorial celebration: Kindell Stephens was a facilitator, an ambassador, an encourager. He brought people together…

   Why did he do it? Kindell’s brother Leonard, speaking at the tribute, recounted Kindell’s happy childhood. He wasn’t a former waif himself, on a mission to return good for evil. He was simply a good man.

   We are all strangers to one another. Our hearts are restless, St. Augustine said, because earth is not our true home.

   Kindell has gone home.