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OPINION | REX NELSON: The final float

It has been 10 years since my father died. Robert L. "Red" Nelson, who had been in declining health for quite some time, was 86 when he passed away at 6:10 p.m. on the first Thursday of March 2011.

My son was 14. We were eating supper after one of his parochial league basketball games--he played for the mighty Wabbits of Holy Souls--when we received the call. While my sister took my mother back to the apartment at Parkway Village in west Little Rock, I spent an hour in Dad's room at the nursing home, waiting for the funeral home personnel to arrive from Arkadelphia.

During that hour, I longed for one last quail hunt in the south Arkansas pine woods, one final duck hunt, one last late-night drive back from watching our beloved Ouachita Baptist University Tigers play football in a town such as Magnolia, Monticello or Russellville.

They really were the Greatest Generation, weren't they?

They were men who were raised poor, served their country during World War II, then worked hard to care for their families, build businesses and improve their communities. My dad was a larger-than-life character who talked loudly, laughed loudly and loved to gig the college students who held part-time jobs in his sporting goods business at Arkadelphia through the years.

One thing he never did was brag. In that sense, he was like others of his generation.

I knew he loved sports, but it wasn't until much later in life that I discovered what a talented athlete he had been. He was born into a poor family in 1924, the youngest of three children. They lived in a shotgun house across the street from Benton High School. My grandfather was the city street superintendent who would get his children out of bed at 5 a.m. each Sunday to go downtown and clean the streets.

Those were the days when stores would stay open until 10 p.m. or later on Saturday. People flocked to town from the country, leaving plenty of trash on the streets. My grandfather Ernest Ezra Nelson wanted to be sure those streets were clean before folks began arriving for church. Talk about learning a work ethic early in life.

Dad starred in football and basketball at Benton High School. During the summers, he played independent league baseball and fast-pitch softball. He never told me about scoring 44 points in a basketball game against Hope. At the time, it was a Benton High School record. He also never told me he was considered the state's best softball pitcher. Others had to let me know. Like I said, he never bragged.

Coach Bill Walton convinced Dad to play football at Ouachita. During that freshman season of 1942, the Tigers lost only one game.

Dad joined the U.S. Army Air Forces following his freshman year of college and served two years. He was trained as a bombardier on a B-17 and was named "most athletic" for his group of cadets while stationed at St. John's University in Minnesota. Among the people he beat out for that title was a man named Bobby Thomson.

Yes, that Bobby Thomson, the guy who hit the "Shot Heard 'Round the World" on Oct. 3, 1951, to cap the New York Giants' historic comeback against the Brooklyn Dodgers to win the National League pennant. In typical Red Nelson fashion, he told me he had never realized it was the same Bobby Thomson. I knew better.

After the war, Dad returned to Ouachita, where he met my mother. They celebrated their 64th anniversary the August before he died. He loved telling people that he had married the prettiest girl on campus.

Just as he had done in high school, he set what was then a school record for most points in a basketball game. His 38-point performance came at a time when high-scoring games were rare. Dad was inducted into the Ouachita Sports Hall of Fame in 2007 and received the distinguished service award from the Benton Athletic Memorial Museum in 2008.

He was hired as a coach at Newport High School after graduating from Ouachita in 1948. Dad spent three years there, coaching all sports and becoming known as the state's up-and-coming coach. But my sister had arrived, and Dad decided he could better provide for his family as a businessman. He joined his older brother in Arkadelphia. During the next several decades, the Nelson brothers built one of the largest retailers of team athletic supplies in the South.

Dad spent long days on the road, calling on high school and college coaches. There was nothing I loved more than being on the road with him. He knew virtually every coach in the state on a first-name basis. He could drive to any school in Arkansas without having to ask for directions. He knew every mascot and probably knew the records at each school for whatever sport was in season.

When he wasn't selling team supplies, he was officiating football and basketball games. He was also a baseball umpire and for many years was the state's premier track starter. I suspect that shooting that starting pistol next to his right ear at so many meets was the reason he was hard of hearing.

And when he wasn't doing those things, he was hunting and fishing. While other men went to sports events, fishing and hunting with their buddies, I was my dad's partner. He would roust me from bed before daylight on Saturday mornings to go quail or duck hunting. He taught me how to put a worm on a hook and later taught me how to tie on artificial lures.

He also taught me how to clean bream, catfish, crappie and bass. I became proficient under his tutelage at breasting out a limit of doves and cleaning a mess of quail, though I remain a terrible shot.

Dad loved floating the Caddo River for smallmouth bass. When it became evident that his dementia was getting worse, I was determined to take him on one last float trip. My mother enjoyed visiting Eureka Springs, so I decided the nearby Kings River would be the location of the float.

My father was too old to spend the day in a canoe, but northwest Arkansas guide Ken Richards had a drift boat like those common on the rivers of the American West. I told Ken that I would pay him for the entire day but that we would only fish as long as my dad wanted to do so. We would take our time, stop whenever he needed to stretch, and not be overly serious about catching fish.

I describe the Kings as the Buffalo River without the traffic. The beautiful stream flows north through Madison and Carroll counties for almost 90 miles until its confluence with the White River at Table Rock Lake on the Arkansas- Missouri border.

Dad, a man who in his younger days would fish until it was too dark to see, seemed nervous when we left the hotel that Saturday morning. He told me more than once that he wasn't feeling well and that I should go fishing without him. I ignored him. I knew instinctively that this would be our final float.

Once we were on the water and he saw that he had room to spread out a bit in the drift boat, he was better. We caught fish. We saw wildlife along the banks and eagles in the sky above. He opened up and began telling stories to Ken, a sign that he was having fun.

When it was time for lunch, Ken pulled onto a gravel bar, set up tables and chairs, built a fire and prepared a hot meal. Dad enjoyed that, but it was clear that he was already tired by noon.

As small clouds drifted by, he said: "It looks like it's going to rain. We better get back to the car."

I whispered to Ken that we wouldn't be fishing after lunch. Our guide could simply row, and we would enjoy the scenery along the way. We were back at the hotel by early afternoon, and Dad was napping within minutes.

In September 2008, we moved him from the home where he had lived for almost 50 years in Arkadelphia to a nursing home in Little Rock.

On this 10th anniversary of his death, I don't think about those final 30 months in the nursing home. I think instead about that float trip on the Kings River of north Arkansas.


Rex Nelson is a senior editor at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

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