Uncle Charlie died Sept. 21. 1983 after celebrating his 87th birthday last March. After the funeral I went over to his home to help his daughter, Elizabeth Cooper, so~ and collect Uncle Charlie’s many photographs, negatives. stories, letters and keepsakes.
Everywhere I looked I saw Uncle Charlie, not just in his works and hobbies, but in every tree that he loved. I “saw” him sitting in the swing; walking among his grape arbors; in his easy chair reading his Bible; I heard him singing the old gospel songs he loved so well.
Uncle Charlie will always be around in memories. His writings and photos will live on, but most important of all will be his Christian testimony and influence that will live forever and be a part of everyone who knew him. Some who measure a man by the money he leaves would not consider my Uncle Charlie successful, but as Henry David Thoreau so beautifully wrote in his book. WALDEN. “Why should we be in such haste to succeed and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his ‘companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which ‘he hears however measured or far away.”
Truly, the measure of a man is not by the size of his bank account or his great accomplishments, but by how he lives. Uncle always said he and I were more alike than any other two people in the Brooks family, but he was a genius and I am not. And he was the greatest Christian I ever knew other than his father, my Grandpa Brooks.
My brother Winfred was also a genius and jack of all trades. He, Uncle Charlie, and I have all done many things and tried new things just for the sheer pleasure of doing and trying, but never getting much materially.
Uncle could do anything he set his mind to and he set his mind on many occupations and hobbies. He built houses, raised the best watermelons in the world down in the Bootheel, and could have won awards and worldwide fame in photography. He had a well equipped studio with the walls covered with his enlargements, many which he tinted in oils. Everyone loves his fantastic photographs. Before he had a car accident, which disabled him for a long time, he had more orders than he could fill.
He could enlarge a very small snapshot into a picture as large as 16 by 20 and some are even larger. Once he made for me is from a snapshot he took over 70 years ago with his old box, Kodak camera. It is a picture of water rushing over the boulders on Mudlick Mountain close to Brunot. I will always treasurer it.
Uncle Charlie was a miller for ‘years in Bloomfield, ‘grinding corn, wheat, and other grains all day long in’ a grist mill. One time when we visited them when I was young, we girls went to the mill and I didn’t recognize Uncle Charlie. His face and hair were white with flour. Even his eyelashes were heavy with it. I thought he had grown ‘old before his time.
Another vocation was wagon building. He could have made wagons for Hollywood studios for western movie producers and been paid enormous prices for them, but he didn’t choose to live in California. He moved back to his’ beautiful, rocky 40-acre place out of Lowndes on the road to Advance.
He and Elizabeth raised many fruits and vegetables and some years had very large gardens as well as lovely flowers everywhere.
Uncle had the equipment to turn out wagon hubs. At one time he had a shed full of hubs when he had planned to make wagons. My son, David, bought pick-up load one time and took them to St. louis where people made lamps of them. Then, the wagon builder at Silver Dollar City bought the last large bulk of them. Uncle’s fine hubs will.be used for years to come in all the wagons that are used in plays and at Silver Dollar City.
Uncle Charlie was a poet and writer. He sent poems to me over the years, put one I found among his papers, he had never sent. It is to me and evidently he thought it too· silly to send, knowing Uncle Charlie. Elizabeth had never seen it either and we both though it delightful, but since he chose not to send it to me I will not publish it. He was always writing on his memoirs, some of the most interesting stories I ever read. Many have been published in the Piedmont Journal Banner and the Advance Herald.
Uncle loved to sing. His voice was still strong and vibrant even when he was so ill back in November when Elizabeth and I sang so much. His beautiful bass would chime in on the song if be knew the words and always on the chorus. He could have been a famous singer. When he sang “How Great. Thou Are’ the angels in heaven surely applauded.
My Uncle Charlie was a learned Bible scholar. He could have, been another Billy Sunday or preacher like Grandpa, but the Lord didn’t call him to preach. He called him. for the layman that he is; his everyday living a testimony to all the world that the most important achievement in life is living a consistent Christian life. That is success!
Another poem I found among his souvenirs tells it better than I can. It is written by Charles Rogers, a Lowndes friend.
This is to a man I know
Who has done a great deal
To help his community grow
He is kind and he is true
And a pretty wise man, too.He will help you with any kind
Of work that you have to do
And that’s about all any man can do
He will also give you a kind word or two
And as they say
With a twinkle in his eye
To help you through another day.“To Mister Brooks: just a poem I thought up today. It fits this man I AM thinking of today. Charles Rogers.”
That, too, is success, to have a friend who feels that way about you. That is truly being rich and as Thoreau also said, “Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul.”
-By a loving niece, Nelle Brooks Gottschamer
Sept. 26, 1983
