Robert W. Hiatt, My Uncle

Here’s the obituary I wrote, at my cousins’ Bette and Niki’s request. I’m including some pictures that Niki (his granddaughter) took. If I can find a link to the Glendive, MT, Ranger story, I’ll add it.
–
Robert W Hiatt
November 22, 1922-April 26, 2013

Beautiful portrait of my cigarette-smoking, coffee-loving uncle, by his granddaughter Nicole Payton Vanek

From a young age, I knew that my Uncle Bob was a remarkable man, unique in many ways and much loved and respected by family, friends, and the community of Glendive. Uncle Bob died on Friday, April 26, 2013, in Billings, Montana, in the home of his daughter Bette, where she and his beloved granddaughter Niki, cared for him in his final days. Doc Hiatt, Makoshika Bob—these are the names given to him by his Glendive friends and which so aptly capture his two primary roles there: the optometrist who started his business in 1947, above the bank on the corner of Merrill and Towne, and the tireless hiker and dinosaur hunter who loved the richness of the Badlands of Eastern Montana, cataloging and sharing bones with countless children, teen-agers, and Elder-hostlers. He even found a complete triceratops, which remains hidden, its location known only by one other person.

Robert W. Hiatt was born on November 8, 1922, in Topeka, Kansas, the only son of Lyman and Isabel Hiatt and the younger brother of Elizabeth. Eight years later the family moved to Dickinson, North Dakota, just across the state line from his future home in Glendive. A talented basketball player and trombonist, Bob was raised in a family of musicians and nature lovers. He enlisted in the Army in 1942, married his wife Lois Buvik, also from Dickinson, in 1943, and earned his degree at the College of Optometry in Chicago. He was stationed in the Philippines after training at Fort Snelling in Texas, where he was living when his son Robert Allan was born, in 1944. Being separated from each other was difficult for the young couple, and their letters are a treasure trove of affection and loyalty. As Bob wrote in one letter soon after Bobbie’s birth, “Perhaps it’s because I have you and Bobbie that I’m the happiest man in the outfit.”
Bette, Bob and Lois’ daughter, was born in 1948 and grew up in Glendive. It wasn’t long before Doc Hiatt discovered then-unnamed Makoshika Park, where he spent the bulk of his free time exploring. Bette told me that he often disappeared for whole days—and it was not uncommon for him to get so preoccupied in explorations that he’d forget to eat, hiking for 16 hours, before heading home famished and exhausted.

Uncle Bob enjoyed a good laugh, no doubt about it.

The formation of the state park was not without its controversy. Not shy about expressing himself, Doc once attended a contentious meeting where “one side” wanted “the other side” to keep quiet about dissatisfactions with some Fish & Wildlife decisions. Doc showed with a strip of tape across him mouth. I like this story because it gives us a glimpse of my uncle’s sense of humor, his strong independent streak, and his integrity.

Survived by a daughter, three grandchildren, one great grandson, a niece, three grand-nephews, and three great grand-nephews, Robert Hiatt taught us to love the world at hand, to work hard at what we care about, to respect our communities and families, and to treasure words, using them sparingly when appropriate and letting them spill when a story needed telling.

When the memorial dogwood blooms

I have been putting off this post until today, when I finally made myself take a picture of the dogwood tree that we planted on campus in front of my office at the Women’s Studies Center. This is the dogwood that our friend Mary Ellen Miller bought and arranged with WKU to plant in honor of our youngest son, who was murdered on October 26, 2009, by a man who lived then on a county road outside Bowling Green (he now lives in prison). It is perhaps no by-the-way that we have just this week learned that the conviction of Manslaughter 2 has been appealed on the grounds that the judge’s “Instructions to the Jury” may have been faulty due to his decision not to include instruction for self-defense . . . and we may witness again a trial of the man who shot and killed our son, Casey. This leaves me in a state of cerebral hemorrhage, metaphorically speaking, as my mind is sound and nothing bleeds, except in the way of language.

A number of confusions seem to come bubbling up from that paragraph, to whit:
–what the hell do I mean by “instructions,” why is it quoted and why did Judge Wilson decide that it was appropriate to leave out the possible sentence of self-defense in his directions to the jury?
–why the hell did the man who killed our son get “Man-2″ rather than Wanton Murder, as he should have, at least in the judgment of Casey’s family?
–why did we bleed, why do we bleed, why did he have to bleed, where is the blood, what is blood, what is death and loss and heartbreak?
–there are certainly more, like what is his life like, the man who shot the gun, and what is prison?
–why did I have to “make myself” take the picture?

But here is the tree, from today:

Casey’s Dogwood Tree

And here is was when we planted it in the cold winter of 2010, 2 1/2 years ago:

The root ball

I can’t get a handle on this post–it’s pulling me this way and that way. There must be 2-3 or 4 or 5 posts here, or one long post that goes into the darkness of tonight . . . so how to pull it together for the post-at-hand….?

What is a tree–even a dogwood–to the loss of a son?

When I pass the tree and the plaque, which I do every day I go to my office, I either notice or don’t notice the dogwood and the plaque. When I do, I say, “Hello, darling, I love you lots,” and sometimes I make the sound of a kiss, such as when we blow a kiss to someone we’re driving away from. . . . When I don’t notice, I suppose my head is down or my gaze akimbo, at any rate, not on him, my thoughts a ways away. For this I am sorry, and I say this too, when I realize that I haven’t been acknowledging him or sending him a conscious thought though I pass this reminder almost daily. That’s when I say, “I love you even when I don’t notice that you’re gone.”

Friends, 27 years and counting

When you are 60 years old or so, it’s not surprising that you might have friendships going back 27 years or more. Not surprising but no less remarkable, especially given how we come and go these days, following this job, that opportunity (for love, for adventure), wandering far from our childhood stomping ground, many of us . . . and probably most of us.

Last night I went up to Berea, where we lived from 1986-1991, to see my good friends Keila, Barbara, and Peggy. Dorothy joined us for dinner, but the over-night was just the four of us. It was in Berea that I found my first real job–real in the sense that it and I fit each other, grew and evolved into each other–it’s the job that taught me that teaching in a college or university was the best place for me to do whatever worthwhile thing I might be able to do, and that the doctorate was my ticket. It’s the place where our two oldest boys grew from 2 and 3 to the ripe old age of 7 and 8 (don’t worry about the math) and our youngest boy Casey was born, in 1987.

I found my best friends there, a new consciousness, community, love. I wrote a couple of poems that I’m still rather fond of, and one of which is about these boys and this growing, shedding old skin and learning to move in the new body. So I’ll share a part of “Cicada” here:

—
This transformation takes seven years, they say.
Right now my oldest heads down the homestretch
to his seventh birthday
and I wonder what’s in store for him,
what growing pains first grade will bring.
Seven years ago I began a marriage,
took it upon myself to offer the world two lives,
ended the marriage began another,
ended a job and began anew,
offered the world another life,
said, “Here, I trust you to care for these
they are mine I would not have them destroyed.”

Already I feel an itching at my shoulder blades
where I can’t quite reach the scaly skin
though I can just make out the v-shape through the steam
where my rubbing in the bathroom mirror
has left a filmy reflection.
Any day now I shall lay myself down
pull my body into its tightening shell,
trusting the stillness to remain free
from inquisitive hands
so I can let these wings unfold and dry
before I leap into that startling void.

I hope I will soar. I hope I will sing.
I hope I will meet up with other cicadas,
our wings a crackling testament to our joy.

But that’s not what I started this post about, though there may be a connection. I wanted to say something about friendship, the deep knowing we four friends share—about our frailties, our strengths, our histories. How the four of us want to grasp this thing we’ve got and honor it until we can no more. All of us professors, world travelers, authors, activists, one a Fullbright Scholar, 3 of us mothers and grandmothers, one an Episcopal priest now, two of us survivors of dead sons and a hundred other heartbreaks. Two still live in that town where we met and found each other (one lives in the country outside of town), the third lives now about 30 minutes away, and me, the furthest off, but still here in Kentucky, just a couple of hours down the Cumberland Parkway–I’ve contemplated chewing my fingers off in committee meetings as long as it took me to drive from here to there, a ride that gives you a series of hills touched by green and flowering trees and enough time to listen to a CD or two. On the way there, your mind rehashes the business of work till you shake it off finally. But on the way back you think how you are going to make your home a little better, having shared 15 hours with your friends and seeing, remembering them, yourself, listening, laughing. All the angst and frustration of work are just tempests in cracked teapots compared to what that kind of friendship means.

So here they are, my beautiful friends…..Keila, Barbara, Peggy . . .

Keila Thomas listening to Peggy

Barbara, listening to Peggy (she’s interesting)

Peggy, listening to Barbara (she’s interesting too)[/caption]

And the four of us . . . Sweet!

Peggy, me, Barbara, Keila

On the birth day of our youngest, who would have been 23

We made a movie and used the song that Casey’s father wrote. Aunt Susan’s singing harmony.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3-fT0Qilp0