HOVEY DIED. HE REALLY TRIED. BUT HE WAS NEVER...SATISFIED. 6-5-22

I know I’m not supposed to be posting anything here, but when Hovey died, I felt I needed to write about him.]

 

Hovey Hedges died yesterday. Bob Wilson emailed to tell me. He spelled it Heavy. That may not have been accidental. At Oakland City High School, Hovey was just a little overweight, but his classmates called him Heavy Hudges, instead of Hovey Hedges. That’s how you know you’re accepted. Except that Hovey wasn’t… at least not by the school administration.

 

He was our most faithful classmate, in great part because he did not get to graduate with us. Early in our senior year, he and Miss Grace Robb, our class sponsor and Latin teacher, and some other kids, were coming back from a conference. When they let Hovey out at his house, he kissed Miss Robb, to her surprise, just because Hovey did things like that. It was seen by somebody, who reported it to the stiff-necked School Supt, Waldo Wood, for whom the new consolidated high school [Francisco and Mackey, along with Oakland City] is named. He reprimanded the flummoxed and innocent Miss Robb and threw Hovey out of school. Hovey had to transfer to Winslow, and graduated there.

 

But he always considered himself to be an Acorn, and an OC guy. He was one of the poorest kids in school, but with hard work and technical education, he became one of the premier business men in Gibson County, at one time owning both the funeral home and nursing home and main restaurant in OC, then branching out to become a landlord and business owner in Princeton, the county seat, to which he moved, to ever larger and more impressive houses.

 

He never, however, felt that he had made it, and this was expressed most in his relationships. He was always trying to do better, and it almost always went the other way. He was married at least four times, maybe five. Helen, as an honorary member of the Class of ’55, and the one who was always examining nursing homes for my father, knew several of his wives. “They were all great,” she said. “Why couldn’t he…”

 

We’ll never know. 

 

The wife we knew best was Sally. We were close as couples They came to visit us at least once. We stayed at their house for class reunion times. Sally took care of Brigid during Mother’s funeral, as well as her grandson, Austin, who was about the same age as Biddey, not quite three. He was the one of whom Brigid famously said, “That little boy is not paying enough attention to me.”

 

At one of those times at their house, Sally, who was an outsider, not having gone to school with us, said: “The reason all your classmates are always so eager to see you, and pass the word around so excitedly when we’ve learned that Donna has persuaded you to come to the reunion, is that we all live in the fear of divorce. We know it’s possible at any time, because we’ve all done it. But you two… you’re different… we want to see you because… to know that it’s possible…”

 

Hovey and I grew up pretty much the same way, in the same place. But I had an advantage he never had. Helen. As I mourn my friend, Hovey, I realize that it was Helen, the class adoptee, who made that witness of presence and fidelity possible… for 63 years…and counting… And I give thanks. For Hovey. For the Class of ’55. Most of all, for Helen.

 

John Robert McFarland