Be Curious, George

Dear Boo and Bubble,

If there is one trait I would hope you develop as you grow older, it would be curiosity – especially the intellectual kind with a special bias towards the written word. You would come by it naturally. Captain has spent the last three years researching, studying, investigating and capturing the vast literary footprint left by your great, great, great, great grandfather, Joseph Benson Cottrell. In doing so, he has learned that Cottrell himself sought out those who dared immortalize their thoughts on paper for all posterity, even when he disagreed with them. His immense curiosity led him to Concord, MA, to the home of Ralph Waldo Emerson, where the two of them talked for several hours of theology and politics. (Captain still has to get to Cambridge to the campus of Harvard where there is purported to be a letter from Cottrell to Emerson.)

Great Granddaddy Schaefer likewise enjoyed the pursuits of curiosity. His particular intrigue was female Southern authors. He struck up a long-distance correspondence relationship with Eudora Welty, whose short stories and novels about the South brought her great recognition including a Pulitzer Prize for The Optimist's Daughter. However, the author for whom Granddaddy had the most fascination we Zora Neale Hurston, an African-American woman from the all-Negro town of Eatonville, FL, who was born at the turn of the 20^th century.

He wrote about her in one of his editorials for The Greenville News.....how her father was a Baptist preacher and mayor of Eatonville....how both of her parents instilled in her an impressive object lesson in being whatever her own preference told her she wished to be.....how after her mother died, she moved to Jacksonville and lived with her brother and became a wardrobe “girl” with a Gilbert and Sullivan traveling company.....how at 26, she went to Morgan Academy in Baltimore and later pursued her higher education at Howard University and then Barnard College in New York (your mom's Alma Mater)...how she became a part of literary circles in what was known as the Harlem Renaissance which she laughingly referred to as the “Niggerati”....how she was employed by syndicated columnist Fannie Hurst as a secretary-companion and when Fannie called to make reservations at hotels, she would advise the hotel that she had traveling with her a princess from Calcutta, dark of skin, and that her guest was not to be embarrassed.....how just before reaching the hotel, Zora would wind a turban around her head, and when they entered the hotel she was greeted with bowing, scraping and genuflecting.

Apparently, Zora Neale was politically a conservative. She was active in Florida politics and supported George Smathers against the beloved Claude Pepper in the 1950 Senate race. She was on Spessard Holland's committee when he successfully ran for governor of Florida. She did not approve of the Brown vs. Board of Education decision of the U.S. Supreme Court.

In 1960, then an inmate in a welfare home in St. Lucie County, FL, she died and was buried in an unmarked grave. According to Granddaddy, “In a sense, this was fitting for no epitaph chiseled in cold marble could capture her spirit, and it is better left free to roam down the corridor of time to delight the discriminating reader.”

Of all of the books she wrote, his favorite was Their Eyes Were Watching God. He loved the opening paragraph - “Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by time. That is the life of men.”

The other day, I picked up a flier here in Mt. Dora, FL, advertising a free program at the community center scheduled for today. The title is “Dreamers and Schemers – An Evening with Great Floridians.” The flier features the faces of three actors who will portray Mary McLeod Bethune, Harry T. Moore and........Zora Neale Hurston. I will definitely go. Nothing could keep me away. It will be out of love and remembrance for Granddaddy............and.........out of curiosity.