Uncle David Ogletree: 1936-2014

Uncle David was the bachelor uncle who was the favorite of all his nieces and nephews.  I was his oldest, born when he was 13.

Carlene tells me that David used to sit and watch me sleep--entranced as he was by my baby-ness.

When David was a teenager, he used to entertain us by playing the piano, and we watched in amazement as his skinny fingers danced all over the keyboard.  He played hide and seek with us.  He picked us up and swung us around.  And he let us empty his Abe Lincoln bank of pennies on the chenille bedspread in his Lincoln-library bedroom.

If you've read Nathaniel Hawthorne's story, "The Great Stone Face," you remember how a young man stared at a face carved in stone so long that he became "like a twin" to that face.  David did a similar thing regarding Abe Lincoln.

A lifelong avid collector of Lincoln books and lore, he was tall and thin--probably never weighing more than 120 pounds. He had trembling hands and migraines--and as the preacher said in his eulogy yesterday--he tended to be nervous.  He was vivacious and funny and had an incredible memory, always able to quote a line that fit into any conversation.

A pastor at First Methodist Church in Atlanta until his retirement several years ago, he was always surrounded by children and babies and old people. He had charisma. He didn't care a hoot about money and had no mind for practical things, but he used what money he had to buy presents for people he loved.  Many of the teenagers who were in his youth groups (now-grandparents) were at the service yesterday.

I remember him bringing me a  stack of books about Tuscany when he heard I was going there. He published five books of poetry--not with a big publishing house, but on his own,  just because he wanted to. He read and loved Eudora Welty's books, and I claimed a book of photographs by Welty from the table of give-away David books yesterday.

There was a table of scrapbooks at the church he'd kept throughout his life--possibly as many as fifty. He never threw away anything.  Any card he ever got, any picture, was in those books and we were able to take whatever pictures or cards we wanted.  I took a few but it would have taken days to go through the whole collection.

The eulogy was given by a man named Sam who had worked with him throughout his career in Atlanta.  "He was the last man to gossip or say anything negative about anyone.  He loved everyone he met and could make a washerwoman sound like a queen."

When someone you love dies, you wish you'd spent much more time together, called more often, and asked more questions.  The retired David usually ate alone in his car--his favorite food being chicken nuggets.  Because of his shaky hands, he preferred not to eat in the dining room at the retirement center.

"Beautiful" and "wonderful" were probably the two most-used words in his vocabulary.  On the last day they visited, he said to Dot and Carlene, "My beautiful sisters!"  Everyone he met was--as described by David--"wonderful."


A perfect summation of David's life is described in these words by Abraham Lincoln: