Family Tradition

The first image is of Dad showing a steer on the town square in Headland.  I will have to ask him to help scrounge up an approximate date the photo was taken.  The second one is of me and my prized steer. This steer won Grand Champion in Henry County, placed fairly highly in the Tri-State Show and then was auctioned off to Hardees and some other business.  As these photos attest, often activities are passed down through the families.  My brother Miles, stepbrother Luke and I got started showing steers as early as 1980 or 1981.  Dad provided the steer and we paid for the feed.  There's no telling how many hours we - well, perhaps mostly Dad - spent "breaking" and grooming these fine beasts.  In the end, when the last show was complete, we'd always have quite a bit of spending money.  Usually by then, my income was parlayed into another hobby: baseball card collecting. Incidentally, baseball card collecting was another hobby Dad introduced to my brother and me.  Dad had a collection when he a boy and he saw to it that we got our first set of cards.  In fact, the first set he gave us was a 1979 Topps set, ordered from Reneta Glasgow.  We were sitting around the dinner table at my grandparents' house when Dad gave the new set to us.  I remember that box of cards, and where Dad was sitting at the breakfast table when he gave it to us.  That hobby - baseball card collecting -became an obsession Miles and I pursued for many years!

Thanks, Allen !

My steer won Reserve Grand Champion in Henry County. I was either in the 7th or 8th grade. After winning with this steer, Daddy and I decided to go into the cattle business so we went to Mr. Jack Bridges and purchased 10 Registered Black Angus heifers and grew them to breeding age. The next year we purchased a bull from Rocky Creek farm in Ashford, owned by W.A.Womack and his son, Billy. Their farm was considered one of the top Angus farms in the U.S., not just Alabama. This was the beginning of M & M Farms (Major & Mark).

The year above would have been 1957 or 58.

Love,

Dad

My dad grew up around horses, which explains his rekindled love affair with them later in  life. Dad also showed steers in livestock shows, and passed this tradition on to his sons Miles and me, and stepson Luke. Cousins Jeff and Will also showed steers once or twice, and Dad helped them too.  In the video above, towards the end, there's a short video of Dad with his Black Angus show steer (very likely the one in the top photo).

April 19, 1961

cousin Sid Brannon on left, Major W. Espy, Sr. in background

Wiregrass Farmer, April 27, 1961

Dad, likely in high school.

 

  

These steers were halter-broken, walked, clipped, washed, dried, combed, gelled, shown, auctioned off, slaughtered, eaten.

After the year of bonding with our steers, which we named by the way, we had the shows and then auction. The auction started later at night, but all the kids stayed around to walk their steers through the auction ring while people/business were bidding on them. Once your steer was sold, you then handed the halter lead to another person who would then lead the steer through a doorway to an area where they would be grouped together with other steers destined to go to the same "packaging plant." My dad would always like to stay for a little more of the auction, often buying one or two steers himself. While he was doing that, I would wander the livestock barn and find my steer in its holding pen. I would RUB its head, talk to it and say goodbye.

One year, the morning after the show and auction, I jumped in the car with my mom, who was taking me to school. I was probably in the 5th gade. A Kenny Rogers song, Through the Years, came on the radio. It made me think of my steer. I felt very sad. I cried a bit. I had his ear tag in my jeans pocket and pulled it out and looked at it.

Girls and boys alike were proud participants in the shows. Some parents were fanatics about traning their steers and having the best equipment to make sure their child's steer had the best chance to win.  Others, like my dad were more laid-back. It was about the experience more than anything. So, you had several years of this.  And for many of the parents, they were doing what they had done when they were young. What's interesting, out of my nieces and nephews (five total), none showed steers. My oldest niece didn't want to do it b/c she didn't want to auction off her steer at the end.

Picking Blueberries

All-You-Can-Eat Mussels!

A few travelers who like to get together for some conversation and wine decided to descend upon one of Asheville's best restaurants, Bouchon. I ate three giant bowls of mussels and an order of frites. I also had a couple of glasses of wine.

Uncle Watty, March 2, 1933 - Today

Uncle Watty died this morning just before noon. He was 76 years old. His full name was Major Watt Espy Jr., but friends simply called him Watt or Watty. For many years, Watty had a stellar career in a very unique field: capital punishment (death penalty) research. He founded the Capital Punishment Research Project (now The Espy File), and his work contributed to documentaries, books and numerous newspaper and magazine articles. Watty was a federal witness in death penalty cases as far away as Seattle, WA, and also participated in debates, including one at the University of Michigan Law School in Ann Arbor. Watty was an ardent opponent of the death penalty, which often put him at odds with the conservative political establishment in Alabama and his community.

Watty also was an avid follower of politics. During last year's presidential campaign, we would have almost weekly talks on the status of the race and the projected outcome. Watty's political mind was savvy and his insight and knowledge of political events (local, state and federal) was always fascinating and keen. Interestingly enough, as a young man, Watty actually ran against one George C. Wallace for a Democratic Party Delegate Seat, only to lose to the future four-time governor by a little over 100 votes. I would always joke with Uncle Watty that history for my state would have been very different had he defeated Wallace in that early election. Watty would laugh.  (Update:  My info here needs to researched a bit more for accuracy)

Perhaps the most fascinating story about Uncle Watty was how he met and had dinner (on a few occasions even) with the notorious mob boss, Charles "Lucky" Luciano, who owned a hotel and other establishments in Italy. Watty served in the US Navy and was stationed in Southern Italy in 1952, when he met Lucky. Here's part one and here's part two of that captivating tale.

Watty was born and raised in Headland, Alabama. He also lived in Birmingham, AL, Tuscaloosa, AL, Lexington, KY, New York City, NY and Panama City, FL. In 1985 he moved back to his hometown and lived there until his death. During my time in the bank, from 1995-2000, he and I grew very close. From him, I gained a strong interest in my family's history. I will never forget our coffees and meals in Dothan and our late night chats at his house in Headland. Uncle Watty will surely be missed by me.

----Watty on the right, with his siblings and father, late 70's----

When two friends of mine from the Pacific Northwest visited the Deep South for the first time (1998), I made sure they could meet Uncle Watty. We met over lunch at Morrison's in Dothan. I knew Watty could give them a better understanding of the South than anybody. I remember Watty saying, "It (the South) will grow on you."  He also them that I would make a great catch.  That was a nice compliment!

For more of Watty's life and work, click here.

Thanks Watty!

Espy deserves thanks for capital punishment research

By Alvin Benn
Montgomery Advertiser
August 26, 2006

HEADLAND -- Watt Espy's fascination with capital punishment has earned him an exalted place in America's criminal justice community. When I first met him two decades ago at the University of Alabama, he was hunched over a stack of papers, examining reports dealing with somebody who had been executed or was on death row waiting to take that last walk.

His "office" was a dimly lit cubbyhole where aspirin bottles and seltzer tablets vied for space on shelves over his head. Between 1977 and 1985, he strained to read small print on reports about convictions, executions and statistical data provided to him by boards of corrections from Maine to Hawaii. Despite frequent headaches, upset stomach problems and fading eyesight, he plowed on. His mission had become his life.

I began to call him "Dr. Death" because he was dealing with those who had gone on to their not-so-great rewards via electric chairs, gas chambers, trap doors, bullets and, sometimes, a needle. By the time he had finished his project, he had documented more than 16,000 executions.

Espy's project was funded by a $200,000 federal grant during those eight years, but he didn't make much. He viewed his work as a calling that could not be denied. "I didn't get home very often in those days," he said last week during an interview at his little Henry County house near Dothan. "I seemed to be working 24 hours a day, seven days a week."

Espy's goal was to document every execution he could find in the United States and in the colonies before 1776. His research took him back to 1608 in Virginia where George Kendall was hanged for "espionage." Kendall was shot in what apparently was the first recorded execution in the New World. "From what I could find out, he apparently did something to upset somebody on the governing council at the time," Espy said.

Alabama's first execution occurred in 1812. Eli Norman was hanged for murder seven years before statehood was bestowed. Counterfeiters didn't fare well, either, in those days, as Thomas Davis found out in 1822, when he was hanged for passing funny money. In 1833, Littleton Prince was hanged for aiding a runaway slave in Alabama. Three years later, Rabbit Dancing met the same fate for murder.

By the time Espy had finished his research in 1985, he was ready for a rest, but the years since then haven't been kind. At the age of 73, he has diabetes, his legs seem to hurt all the time, he is nearly blind in his right eye and his bed has become his home within a home. "Sometimes it feels like somebody is holding my legs and feet over a fire," he said in a barely audible whisper. "I just can't get around anymore."

Home health care workers help him during the day and they prod him to do more to keep his juices flowing. They say their demands often fall on deaf ears. What he does do is watch a lot of movies. Shelves filled with hundreds of movie cassettes surround his bed. He watches them on a big-screen television set a few feet from the foot of his bed.

His twilight years have become a lonely existence, but he knows he did something pretty special for his state and country. Those who funded his project paid him the ultimate compliment by naming it for him. It's called The Espy File and anybody interested in researching capital punishment has him to thank for what they find.

What he did is even more amazing because his research was carried out before the popularity of the Internet. He got his information by writing letters and waiting anxiously for information he had requested. "There really wasn't a better way for me to get what I needed," he said during my bedside interview with him. "It's a lot easier today because all you've got to do is punch a button on a computer."

Alabama needs to honor Watt Espy for a unique study used by researchers around the country. A gubernatorial commendation or a legislative resolution would be nice. It would be a crime if we don't find a special way to say thanks to a special man.

Alvin Benn writes about people and places in central and south Alabama. If you have suggestions for a story, contact him at (334) 875-3249 or e-mail him at benn8071@bellsouth.net.

Uncle Watty in Esquire, August 1995