The young seldom look at obituaries.
They’re full of energy and vigor, almost immortal as they take big bites out of what life has to offer.
As one ages, however, the obituary page becomes a stopping place, a place where your mortality settles in as you notice the ages of the ones who have left us.
Then the names become familiar. An acquaintance, perhaps. A face you’ve seen and read the words to place. Soon, those small pauses on that page become full stopping points, and one of the reasons you pick up the newspaper.
At some point, the page becomes populated with loved ones. Grandparents. Parents. Aunts, uncles, cousins, siblings. And friends, those people we choose who become the families of our hearts.
It’s inevitable. But you’re never ready to see those names or to say goodbye.
I awoke earlier this month to the news that the name of Gerald Largen, a good friend and colleague, would be appearing on an obituary page in Roane County.
It shouldn’t have surprised me. Gerald was, after all, about a month shy of his 90th birthday. But I wasn’t ready to say goodbye. I’m still not. And this world is an emptier place without him.
I don’t even know how to begin to eulogize Gerald. He packed into one lifetime more achievements than three or four of us could even dream about.
He was a historian. A genealogist. A writer. A lover of nature and books. He collected whimsical facts, which he stored away in his sharp mind and pulled out to delight the audience he held.
He detested technology. Asking him for a WiFi password would be as silly as asking me to speak Mandarin. And don’t even think about reaching him by text unless you’d cracked the way to send one via landline.
Gerald’s only concessions to the technology age were a computer and printer that he kept to compose a weekly newspaper column to ruffle more than a few feathers.
That’s not to say he didn’t respect what technology has brought us. More than a few times, he’d come over to my workspace and say, “Look up on that machine of yours …” and the results would later appear in a column.
A curmudgeon by a reputation he cultivated and eschewed, Gerald Largen was, to me, a teddy bear whose blue eyes twinkled as he imparted wisdom or shared his vast knowledge of history. I looked forward to our weekly discussions that veered into Appalachian culture (think apple stack cakes and poke sallet, which we both loved) and politics, on the national stage, in Nashville or down the road at the courthouse.
Sometimes we agreed. Sometimes we didn’t, but his gentle persuasion always made sense.
These discussions took place every Wednesday, when he’d stop by the newspaper to drop off his column. He’d wait for me to read it, with a grin playing across his face in anticipation of my reaction.
Then we would, in his words, “solve the problems of the world.”
Gerald was an attorney by trade, one of the last to be licensed with only a bachelor’s degree. He wasn’t afraid to use the law to right what he perceived to be a wrong. My first acquaintance with him was at a 1987 Harriman City Council meeting where he was defending the people of his beloved Emory Gap community from being annexed.
The years have eroded from my memory what his defense was, but it worked. The vote failed and, while I remained on the Harriman beat for four years, no follow-up annexation attempt was made.
Gerald wrangled with the city of Harriman frequently. Though retired by 2017, he took the city to court, claiming that a 1959 annexation was null and void — giving the city no say in what he did with what was a literal strip of land he owned that fronted a restaurant near I-40.
Gerald’s reasoning was that the annexation crossed the Emory River, meaning no land abutted the corporate limits. Though it was true that he didn’t want city officials telling him what to do with what was little more than a scrap of property, I think it was his clever reasoning that drove him to pursue litigation.
The 1959 annexation gave the city much of what we traveling along I-40 see as Harriman — a juggernaut of commerce that would have struck a devastating blow to lose. The lawsuit was eventually dismissed in the courts.
That was Gerald. He didn’t back down. It’s one of the things that drove people mad, and one of the things I loved most about him.
Gerald was a Democrat who voted a straight Democrat ticket — but he was quick to point out that he wasn’t a left-leaning liberal. Spend a few moments with him, and you’d learn that he and the Grand Old Party had a lot in common, and he was one of the Second Amendment’s staunchest defenders.
He was Roane County’s first county executive, the first elected after the state created that office. He was a newspaperman, founder and publisher of The Standard, a weekly that ceased publication in the early 2000s. When Gerald sold it to Landmark Community Newspapers Inc., a part of the deal was his longtime weekly newspaper column in the Roane County News.
As I said previously, he riled up more than a few of Roane County’s good citizens. But mercy, how he loved them! Roane County had no better ambassador or friend than “the old curmudgeon.” Right or wrong, every movement, every word was from the heart to protect them and their way of life.
Roane County, you have lost a true friend. As have I.
Gerald was always an astute wordsmith in beautifully eulogizing his friends. I hope I have done him half the justice he has done so many others.
Rest well, Gerald. Enjoy the company of those who have gone before you, and absorb everything about this new plane.
I’ll want to hear all about it when I see you again.
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Cheryl Duncan is editor of the Crossville Chronicle. She can be reached at cduncan@crossville-chronicle.com or 931-484-5145.