By M. Z. Thwaite
Isn’t it amazing what you discover when you clean out a closet, a drawer, or a tool shed? I’m an article clipper, and on occasion I’ll pen something for publication, so when I filed my latest shared musings, I found two folders bulging with articles that had appealed to me at some point, and I thought I’d share portions of them with you as my greeting for the new year.
Beaufort’s charming Renee Levin, 95, was featured in The Island News, Health & Wellness, in the November 28, 2024, issue.
“For Renee Levin, exercise is the ‘name of the game.’”
Being a diehard exerciser, I thought the interview might inspire those who either don’t do anything physical, or plan to get on a program but procrastinate, or jot down an exercise goal as a new year’s resolution and then wait for inspiration. Never-exercisers, read on for that inspiration part.
Renee goes to Beaufort Memorial Hospital’s LifeFit Wellness Center several times a week to get her heart and lungs pumping, but she also knows other ways to satisfy her drive. After Hurricane Helene blew through in September and left lawns strewn with tree debris, Renee gathered sticks, twigs, pine cones, and Spanish moss in a wheelbarrow and dumped the detritus into a pile.
“I think if you sit on the couch and don’t move, you become a blob,” Renee said. “If you don’t get up and exercise, you lose everything. Things become negative rather than positive.”
Take it from Renee. Get out there, move, make positive changes; don’t become a blob.
I grew up in Atlanta where the name J. B. Fuqua was well known. An Atlanta Journal-Constitution article, “Fuqua family taking stock after latest sale” by Maria Saporta was dated Jan. 14, 1998. Fuqua and his son, Rex, had sold Fuqua Enterprises for $217.4 million.
At the time of the interview, Fuqua was 79 years old. He said he was “taking stock of his life” and he planned to “devote even more of his efforts to philanthropy.”
In one reflection, he said, “I worked so hard that I never learned to play. It was a huge mistake.”
You can take that statement to the bank, folks, and let it accrue interest. Never, ever, forget to play, and I’ll toss in another. Laugh. Laugh often. When something irritating happens, turn the situation around and find where lies that one small grain of humor and use it.
Another inspiration came from Martha Ezzard, who wrote columns Saturdays and Mondays in the Wall Street Journal. In “Grapevines offer a lesson in reliability,” probably written around 1997, she wrote about Appalachian Christmas on her Rabun County Georgia farm.
“Christmas is about reliability – things remembered, constant, believed.”
Her husband had learned to prune the grapevines, and to leave only the canes that would bear fruit.
Ezzard said, “Get rid of the superfluous. Simplify. Grow a little each season, not like your neighbor, but in your own right.”
Her final thought hit home. Grow in your own right.
In the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Monday, Dec. 29. 1997 edition, the city’s beloved Celestine Sibley, a syndicated columnist, newspaper reporter, and novelist in Atlanta for about 60 years, wrote “Rescued from the doldrums by good mail.”
She began, “They come to you before Christmas, those twinges of loneliness, a sort of homesickness for times that were and people you love.”
She shared a letter “from an old correspondent, Robert T. Henderson of Savannah, that really perked up my spirits.”
He signed the letter Semper fidelis, “a fine Latin inscription like that … Always faithful.”
Henderson enclosed a copy of a story from the Old Breed News, published by the First Marine Association. He had written to Celeste in years past about the Last Man Bottle, “a flagon of spirits saved to be drunk by the last living member of the division as a toast to his departed comrades.”
The column she wrote that followed Mr. Henderson’s last bottle correspondence received many letters to the Editor.
elestine concluded with, “Meanwhile, I can’t mourn for what is gone when there are “semper fidelis” letters in the mail.”
Being a resident of Beaufort, how could I not include this clipping?
I’ll end with this jewel, again from the AJC; award-winning, nationally syndicated columnist Rheta Grimsley Johnson retired from the Atlanta paper in 2017 after three decades. Her column “Inventor’s life was bursting with sweet success” made me smile, as I’m sure it did when I clipped it years ago.
Little Prince by Antoine St. Exupery, “defined ‘matters of consequence’ as the things in life that really matter, like taking care of a single flower.”
Rheta said she thought of that fairy tale when she read the New York Times obituary of W. E. “Walter” Diemer who died at the age of 93. Who was this man, and how did his obituary rate an appearance in the New York Times?
Bubble gum.
Backstory: 70 years prior to his death, Walter was an accountant for Fleer Chewing Gum Company in Philadelphia. He had a curiosity about the gum base that makes chewing gum chewy.
In 1928, Walter created a chewier batch of gum, and pink was the only color on hand. He took a sample of his pink gum to a Philly grocer, and it sold out immediately.
The Fleer Company saw the potential, took over, and called the new pink concoction Double Bubble. After he retired, Walter “rode around town on a big tricycle and invited children to his house for bubble-blowing contests.” He was never paid royalties. Rheta said.
“In our world of instant-but fleeting celebrity status, it’s hard to say who deserves a Times death notice. Heroes are here today, gone to prison tomorrow. But if a person makes children smile, or writes a song that the postman whistles along his route, or comes up with the idea to advertise an aftershave in poetry posted roadside in an installment plan – if a person deals with true matters of consequence in his life, then his death deserves notice.”
Bravo, Rheta. She completed the column with this quote from Mr. Bubblegum, who said, “I was doing something else and ended up with something with bubbles.”
Imagine inventing bubble gum. Holy smoke.
I guess this is why I clip articles. Some speak to me, and I hope one of these spoke to you. This new year, go and do something. Don’t hold back.
Laugh, and make your wildest dreams come to life with the fearless enthusiasm of a child. Even the plant that froze over the winter has roots that know what they’re supposed to do come Spring.
Explore. Expand. Grow. Live. Play. And laugh.
M.Z. Thwaite lives in Beaufort. She wears her maiden name hat when she writes, but she also answers to Martha Weeks. Her novels are sold locally and on Amazon. She can be reached at mzthwaite@gmail.com and found at https://bit.ly/MZT.
