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Transcript |
LYTTON: My army buddy, I’m retired from the military, my army buddy he retired about thirty, no six days after I got out. Course he’s the officer that was over me, right now we’re buddies, in the army we weren’t buddies you know what I mean? (All laughing) He had been watching the news, he lives in Texas, and he could see everything that was going on but he didn’t see anything about Bordeaux. He ended up catching me on my cellular phone and I talked to him. He says, you know, “How are you doing?” He says, “Well, did you get hit in Bordeaux?”
“Yeah, we got destroyed.” Then we talked, you know, for a bit.
One day I went to the mailbox on West Hamilton, while I wasn’t working and there was a card from him. I gave all the mail to my wife. Anyway, she handed me this particular envelope and I pulled it open and read the card. And I said, “What is this extra in it?” It was a check for a thousand dollars.
Now I’m an ex-sergeant from the military and I’m supposed to be bad and rough. I boo-hooed. I totally boo-hooed. I went down and found a tree in my backyard, hold the tree, I asked God to help me because I’m weak. I was—that was the first of the money that was coming in.
The church that we was at when the flood happened, we went back down there for something, I can’t remember what, but we went back there. We went to church that Sunday and the pastor got up in front of the congregation and says, “Our brother and sister from Nashville, Tennessee,” you know, he explained we’d lost our home and everything in it. He said, “Let’s show them some love.” And I walked out of there that Sunday with tears in my eyes.
They, the congregation, went up to the pulpit and just started throwing money, checks. The biggest Ziploc bag, I ain’t seen one, it wasn’t a gallon, I don’t know it must have been a two gallon bag. They put all that money and checks and what have you and handed it to me and I handed it to my wife. And I got up with tears in my eyes and tried to thank the congregation. They gave us quite a bit of money.
The Dirty Dozen Club here in Nashville, they came up to my brother-in-law’s house this one day, this lady from the North Nashville Flood Relief says, “Come out here in the yard, you and your wife.” And it looked like a convoy came up the hill. And then I said, “What in the world is going on?”
All these guys and their kids and everything got out, come over, and circled me and my wife and they talked to me. And they hand me this big old envelope stuffed full of money. I handed it to my wife again and they looked at me and I’m saying, I guess I got to say something, and I say, “I’m about to cry guys, so bear with me.” And I started crying but I got the speech out and thanked them all. As I was looking through the crowd, this one big old tall guy and my mind says, you know him. I worked with the Junior Pro Football League in Bordeaux out of Hartman Park for about five years. My team played his team and he was part of the Dirty Dozen. And he came over and grabbed my hand and hugged me. Again, I’m boohooing. |
Nashville Public Library Digital Collection
