Death of an icon
Gerald Williamson is dead, at 63, of pancreatic cancer.
Gerald and I went to school together, first at Central Elementary School, at South Third and Peach in Abilene, Texas, and later at Abilene High School, class of 1961.
We were never best, or even good, friends. I would have liked to be his good friend, but I couldn’t get up to his level. In the past 40 years, I had seen him maybe twice, at class reunions. I knew nothing of his life, his family, if he had any children, what he did for a living, what were his successes, and his failures.
Yet his death shocked me. I have lost other childhood friends and classmates, including Dub Galbraith, who was in fact one of my very best friends. Each was heartbreaking, as is Gerald’s, but Gerald’s death is different. It is a shock, because Gerald was an icon.
With his death comes new information, for me, about icons. I realize now that the death of an icon always comes with a unique shock, a puff of unbelievability at the news. Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Lucille Ball, Bob Hope, John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Princess Diana, Eudora Welty, Jonas Salk. We place a certain stake in icons to live forever. When they don’t, it is a blow. A shock.
Gerald Williamson was an icon. My icon. The first icon I ever knew. Most of us have a private icon in our past, someone we knew who had something we didn’t, but wished we did. We may not realize it, as I didn’t, until the icon dies, and the shock of the news surprises us, as I am surprised.
This world of mine is not the same without Gerald. I am newly vulnerable. Someone whom I tagged for immortality is dead. When death can fell an icon, what chance do the rest of us have?
It doesn’t matter that Gerald never knew what he was to me, or that my terms were so easy. Gerald was a Little League hero. He rode motor scooters, first a Vespa, and later a kind of motorbike called a Simplex. He let me ride, or try to ride, the Simplex one day. I turned the throttle. The engine screamed, and Gerald yelled: “Let out the clutch!” I sat there grinning, immobilized by the specter of doing something wrong.
Even in grade school, Gerald was very handsome and he had a beautiful wide grin. He had a perfect flattop. He was very funny, and made Three Stooges-like sounds and motions with his voice and his hands. He had a certain indifference to the conventional, that to a tentative little Methodist boy looked impossibly worldly. His mother was Dora, and she was funny. His father was Speedy, and he looked like Hank Williams. His address was 790 Ross. I don’t remember his phone number. I would not have taken it on myself to call him. What would I have had to call Gerald Williamson about?
Karen said she had a childhood icon, too. She also said that childhood icons tend to peak early, which I think is right. But for us, they are forever icons. Gerald and I went to different junior high schools and we played each other in football. In a ninth grade game, I ran over him. I was already in the end zone, but I ran over him anyway. Later I learned that he had told someone it was the hardest he had ever been hit. Sixty-three years old now, and I savor that still. I had made a mark, probably my first.
Gerald and I went to school together, first at Central Elementary School, at South Third and Peach in Abilene, Texas, and later at Abilene High School, class of 1961.
We were never best, or even good, friends. I would have liked to be his good friend, but I couldn’t get up to his level. In the past 40 years, I had seen him maybe twice, at class reunions. I knew nothing of his life, his family, if he had any children, what he did for a living, what were his successes, and his failures.
Yet his death shocked me. I have lost other childhood friends and classmates, including Dub Galbraith, who was in fact one of my very best friends. Each was heartbreaking, as is Gerald’s, but Gerald’s death is different. It is a shock, because Gerald was an icon.
With his death comes new information, for me, about icons. I realize now that the death of an icon always comes with a unique shock, a puff of unbelievability at the news. Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Lucille Ball, Bob Hope, John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Princess Diana, Eudora Welty, Jonas Salk. We place a certain stake in icons to live forever. When they don’t, it is a blow. A shock.
Gerald Williamson was an icon. My icon. The first icon I ever knew. Most of us have a private icon in our past, someone we knew who had something we didn’t, but wished we did. We may not realize it, as I didn’t, until the icon dies, and the shock of the news surprises us, as I am surprised.
This world of mine is not the same without Gerald. I am newly vulnerable. Someone whom I tagged for immortality is dead. When death can fell an icon, what chance do the rest of us have?
It doesn’t matter that Gerald never knew what he was to me, or that my terms were so easy. Gerald was a Little League hero. He rode motor scooters, first a Vespa, and later a kind of motorbike called a Simplex. He let me ride, or try to ride, the Simplex one day. I turned the throttle. The engine screamed, and Gerald yelled: “Let out the clutch!” I sat there grinning, immobilized by the specter of doing something wrong.
Even in grade school, Gerald was very handsome and he had a beautiful wide grin. He had a perfect flattop. He was very funny, and made Three Stooges-like sounds and motions with his voice and his hands. He had a certain indifference to the conventional, that to a tentative little Methodist boy looked impossibly worldly. His mother was Dora, and she was funny. His father was Speedy, and he looked like Hank Williams. His address was 790 Ross. I don’t remember his phone number. I would not have taken it on myself to call him. What would I have had to call Gerald Williamson about?
Karen said she had a childhood icon, too. She also said that childhood icons tend to peak early, which I think is right. But for us, they are forever icons. Gerald and I went to different junior high schools and we played each other in football. In a ninth grade game, I ran over him. I was already in the end zone, but I ran over him anyway. Later I learned that he had told someone it was the hardest he had ever been hit. Sixty-three years old now, and I savor that still. I had made a mark, probably my first.
![michaelgrant2 [at] cox.net](http://www.michaelgrant.com/blog/uploaded_images/email.gif)
Excellent column on Gerald. I met him when I was at Lincoln Jr. High and always thought he operated at a different level from the rest of us. I was somewhat in awe of him and expecially was when he went to high school spring training while still at Lincoln. My first football hero. I doubt he said ten words to me in the whole time we were in high school, but I was a fan from the first day. And also enjoyed the column on Australians playing American football.
Posted by
Ray Finfer |
4/9/06 6:30 PM
Ditto Ray's.."Excellent column on Gerald". Thanks, Michael, for taking the time to write it, nad yes, he was an icon. I felt the exact same way about David Winkles. He lived three houses down the street from me the whole time from grade school through high school. He was always friendly and my football hero. I was shocked and saddened by his death also. I think the older we get the more shocking it is when we lose a classmate because it makes us realize just how vunerable we all are.
Posted by
Suzanne Albright Barton |
4/10/06 8:20 AM
"Granted": Excellent writing as always. Keep it up. I couldn't even make the first string on the B Team as a soph. while Williamson was running with the big boys on the varsity. You take your "Moser" book and think about the ability the coach had to see that talent in jr. high school and cultivate it. Gerald was "the natural". I and others had to work at it and Still couldn't put it together and I am sure Gerald had no clue because it came so easy for him. Keep it up. JO
Posted by
Anonymous |
4/10/06 9:16 AM