Persistence

(Don Dale photo, 2011)

My LBJ returned again, this time getting as far as building a nest for the fourth time and laying two eggs. Then she disappeared.

Back in early April, I wrote about this persistent creature that birders call an LBJ. The initialism stands for little brown jobs, small birds of indeterminate species. A birder might have recognized her for what she was, but I'm not a birder and I only saw her a few times -- and then only briefly.

Here it is late May, and last week my nephew Mike spotted the nest in my porch-light fixture when he came by to pick me up to go out to dinner. I watched the nest carefully for the next week, but the LBJ never returned to care for her eggs.

I removed the nest from the light fixture a couple of days ago. I was afraid the heat from the bulb might dry the nest to tinder and start a fire. One of the eggs had disappeared somehow. The pale blue color of the remaining egg had faded to ivory and it had begun to smell bad. I put the abandoned egg and nest in the trash can.

As I said before, I admire this LBJ's persistence -- assuming, that is, that it was the same LBJ and not four different little brown jobs.

Were it not for the light bulb, the fixture would be a perfect nesting spot for a small bird. But after four tries at raising a family there,she should have caught on to the innate problem. She -- or they -- didn't, however, and the effort was doomed. (Perhaps I should build a birdhouse next spring and put it up next to the roof of the porch. I'm sure I could find easy-to-follow plans somewhere on the Internet.)

Here's the moral of the story as I see it: Birds, like people, sometimes make bad decisions -- over and over again.

I'll paraphrase what Samuel Johnson once said about remarriage: Sometimes hope trumps experience.

What's your story?

Odetta Johnson was one of my guests on "What's Your Story?" She told me afterwards that she hadn't meant to tell some of the stories she told me. (Don Dale 2011 photo)

What you have to do is listen.

A journalism professor in college told me that.

Listen.

Don't go into an interview with a list of prepared questions. Go in with your ears tuned to what your subject is saying. Know where you'd like to go, but let the answers lead to your next question.

"Sometimes you'll wind up learning things you never even suspected you'd learn," he told us. "You can't do that if you work from a checklist."

During a lifetime in journalism and writing, I interviewed hundreds -- maybe thousands -- of people. But until now, I've never done long-form interviews. Now I am, and my old college professor's advice is paying off.

It was about 6 months ago that I began looking for a volunteer opportunity that would keep my mind sharp now that I'm retired. A Google search led me to the Virginia Voice, a broadcast service for the print impaired. I called to ask about volunteering and talked to Becky Emmett, the program director. We had never met, but she knew who I was because of my broadcasting career, and she invited me in for an orientation session and then an audition.

The audition wasn't simple, and I bobbled a few words, but apparently I did okay.

One afternoon Becky and I were chatting about interviews. "You know," I told her, "everybody has a story. All you have to do is ask the right questions." It was an offhand remark.

About three months later, she called me to ask if I was ready to start my new series.

Huh? New series?

What she proposed, based on my casual remark about everybody having a story, was a weekly 30-minute program in which I would interview people with interesting life stories. "Think about it and let me know," she said.

It took me a week to realize that this was something I could really enjoy. And so, armed with a state-of-the-art digital recorder that fits in one hand and a couple of microphones, I started calling friends and acquaintances -- and even some perfect strangers -- and asking them to sit down with me. Becky suggested the title for the series: "What's Your Story?"

So far I've talked to a former Miller & Rhoads executive about the heyday of carriage-trade department stores, a rabbi's wife who's an award-winning bodybuilder, and a successful barber who learned his trade and turned his life around in what used to be called a "reform school."

I also interviewed a woman who collects miniature books by the thousands, a city police officer who impressed me with her dedication to doing good by doing her job well, and an SPCA volunteer who started a new program to connect seniors with older pets.

I called on old friends to talk to me, including a veterinarian who was in my high school class and has been practicing in Glen Allen since the area was almost totally rural, and a locomotive engineer who for years enjoyed the Richmond-to-Washington Amtrak run.

Keeping an audience entertained with a half hour conversation isn't as easy as I thought. And not knowing where the conversation might wind up is sort of scary.

But I'm not writing any questions down. And I'm listening.

Listening -- really paying attention -- is the key. I'm getting better at it, and it's leading me down some seriously fascinating paths.

Milagros and me

My niece Terry provided this photo to me a few days ago. I was so involved with reading to Milagros that I'm not sure whether she or husband James took the picture. We're sitting on the lawn in front of my nephew Mike's house following a superb Easter lunch provided by his wife, Becky.

(The homemade dessert -- strawberry shortcake with lemon pudding sauce and whipped cream -- was a real diet-buster. We all cleaned our plates and then waddled outside to enjoy the sunshine.)

I think it's such a good thing that Terry and James have both read to Milagros and Carlos from the beginning. Perhaps it will encourage a life-long love of books, which is one of the greatest gifts -- with the exception of pure love -- that parents can give.

It sure worked for me. My mom read to me from the time I was born until I could read for myself. Today, I am never without at least a book and a backup book at hand. I don't have an e-reader (yet). I still savor the feel of a dead-tree book in my hands. I even like the smell of a good book.

For Milagros

James Edward Hanger

This one's for you, Milagros.

You're just 3 years old as I write this in the spring of 2011, but in a few years you'll come to appreciate the story, so here goes:

Once upon a time -- a long, long time ago -- a boy who would grow up to be a hero was born on his family's plantation near Churchville in Augusta County, Virginia. James Edward Hanger was a bright child, curious by nature, and he did well in school. When he was 16, he left his home for the first time to study engineering at Washington College (now Washington and Lee College) in Lexington, where he worked hard.

But when a great war between the North and the South broke out in 1861, he left college and came back to Churchville to tell his parents he wanted to enlist. His parents supported the South, but they hoped their 18-year-old son would stay behind rather than fight.

When James persisted, his mother suggested that he consider joining the Churchville Cavalry, in which two of his brothers were already serving. The Cavalry was then stationed to the west, in Philippi. His mother sent him off to war carrying food and clothing that she had packed for him and her two other sons. This all happened in May of 1861, which was 150 years ago this very month.

An ambulance corps carrying supplies for the Confederacy happened to pass through his hometown on its way to Philippi, and James tagged along. He arrived on June 2, 1861, and formally enlisted in the Churchville Cavalry.

Young James spent the night in a barn with a small group of untrained and badly equipped Confederates. Little did they know that a force of Union soldiers numbering 4,500 had learned about the 750 Confederates in James's unit and were marching on Philippi.

James was on guard duty the next morning when the Union soldiers surprised the small Rebel unit and a fierce battle began. James headed for the stable to get his horse and join the fray. It was at that very moment, as James was mounting his horse, that a six-pound Union cannonball ricocheted inside the stable, striking James and shattering his left leg.

James was one of the first casualties in the first land battle of the Civil War.

In a puddle of his own blood and lying on a bed of hay, James was in agonizing pain, lapsing in and out of consciousness, as Union troops routed the small band of Confederates. It was hours before Federal troops found him and summoned a doctor. Using a barn door as a table and with no anesthetic, the doctor amputated young James's leg with crude knives and a saw, smoothing the bone's end, seven inches below his hip, with a file.

The amputation -- which is believed to have been the first during the Civil War -- was almost like medieval torture.

Against enormous odds, the operation was a success. After weeks of convalescence, James was fitted with a crude wooden leg, literally a straight wooden affair that ended in a peg. It was rigid, awkward and painful.

Two months after he left his home in Churchville, James returned to his family following a prisoner exchange. He disappeared into his second-floor bedroom and insisted that he not be disturbed. His mother took his meals up to him on a tray; an hour later the clean plates would be found sitting outside James's bedroom door.

Weeks passed, and the only indication that James was upstairs was the noise his family heard as his wooden peg thumped across the floor.

Now and then, James would make odd requests. He asked for barrel staves and willow wood from the trees that surrounded the plantation house. He'd leave wood shavings in a bucket outside his door. For three months he remained isolated.

Then James emerged from his bedroom and ambled downstairs with a smooth stride that seemed incomprehensible to the family. Using his engineering skills, James had created for himself a wooden leg with joints at the knee and the foot -- out of willow, metal and barrel staves. He had broken a technological barrier that had stood for thousands of years. A newspaper editor called James's prosthesis "one of the most complete legs we have ever seen."

Word spread of what James had done, heartening the many thousands of soldiers who underwent amputations. Soon James relocated to Richmond and began creating prosthetic limbs. At first, he offered his services at no charge, but as demand grew James formed a business. The Commonwealth of Virginia chose the J.E. Hanger Company to manufacture artificial limbs for its wounded Confederate veterans.

James's business prospered. Within 20 years, he had opened numerous branches, and soon his company began international operations with offices in London and Paris. James died in 1919, but his children carried on his work.

By the mid 1950s there were 50 Hanger offices in North America and 25 in Europe. Today, Hanger Prosthetics and Orthotics sees about 650,000 patients annually.

And you, Milagros, are one of them.

The Hanger company makes the lifts for your shoes that make it possible for you to run and play and keep up with your older brother, Carlos. The company also made a prosthesis for your amputated right arm -- the result of injuries sustained in a fire before your mother, my niece Terry, and her husband, James, adopted you. Right now, you think you can do more without that artificial arm than you can with it. But you're only 3 years old, and your attitude will no doubt change.

And so, as the country remembers the awful Civil War that killed and wounded more than 600,000 Americans 150 years ago, you, my sweet Milagros, can remember a Virginian, himself a victim of that war, who changed for the better the lives of so many, including you.

James Edward Hanger of Churchville, Virginia, was a hero whose life we can all celebrate.

No escape

Reminders of the past are abundant in Richmond. This cannon in the median strip on Monument Avenue is just east of the Jefferson Davis monument and marks the spot where a large earthwork for the inner line of defense of Richmond was constructed in 1861.

I can't think of many American cities other than Richmond -- with the exception, perhaps, of Washington -- where the past is still so much with us.

I think that's a good thing.

The constant reminders of Richmond's history keep us in touch with both the greatness of our past and our terrible mistakes. There are lessons to be learned from both, and knowing the differences today, perhaps even especially today, are important.

A visit to St. John's Church on Church Hill brings to mind in tangible form the important role Richmond played in the battle to separate ourselves from British rule. It's impossible to see the interior of this unimposing, yet charming, house of worship without imagining Patrick Henry and his "Give me liberty, or give me death" clarion call to the Virginia Convention in 1775, as he sought to persuade the Virginia House of Burgesses to deliver Virginia troops to the Revolutionary War. Among those who sat in the pews, listening, were Thomas Jefferson and George Washington.

A drive down Richmond's (and perhaps the nation's) grandest residential boulevard, Monument Avenue, calls to mind vividly the South's tragic effort to dissolve the union that had been so dearly won almost a century before. When the avenue's monuments were erected, they resonated far differently than they do now. Today, a century or more later, we no longer celebrate the Lost Cause memories that comforted a defeated people. Instead, those magnificent statues of men such as Stuart, Davis, Jackson and Lee -- the latter being one of the finest works of public art on view anywhere -- remind us that times change and wrongs can be righted, that lost causes are not always considered by history to be noble causes, despite the mantle of nobility their proponents might then have worn.

The past is inescapable in odd ways here in Richmond. When I go to the grocery store on Brook Road, just north of the city's limits, I'm confronted by a carefully tended remnant of the breastworks that protected Richmond from Union General George B. McClellan's forces, bent on seizing the Confederate Capital.

This leftover bit of temporary fortification, now a mound covered by lush, green grass and evergreens, is surrounded by a wrought-iron fence and stands in a parking lot in front of a Martin's Food Market. Yes, just imagine that for a moment, and you'll know what I mean when I talk about Richmond's unfailing history lessons.

Now, with the 150th anniversary of the Civil War upon us, the reminders are even more present. Just after Richmond fell, Abraham Lincoln and his son Tad visited Richmond's still smoldering ruins, on April 4 and 5, 1865. Among the stops he made were the White House of the Confederacy, the State Capitol and Libby Prison.

And, yes, there is a historical marker that offers details of Lincoln's tour.

And as if those monuments, buildings, and markers were not enough, word came yesterday that Steven Spielberg will film his biographical drama "Lincoln" in Richmond this fall. Based on a book by Doris Kearns Goodwin, the movie is expected to be released in 2012. Keep your eyes peeled and you might spot Academy Award-winning actors Daniel Day-Lewis (Abraham Lincoln) and Sally Field (Mary Todd Lincoln).

William Faulkner, the revered Southern writer, put it succinctly in his 1951 book "Requiem for a Nun." His character Temple Drake, who first appeared as a college student in his novel "Sanctuary," is now a grown woman with a child and is coming to grips with her own turbulent history. Faulkner wrote:

"The past is never dead. It's not even past."