Homage to a Dedicated Public Servant

[This eulogy was offered at the memorial service for Edgar Warren Tomberlin, Friday, December 29, 2023, Purcell’s Chapel, Beyer’s Funeral Home, Bushnell, Florida]

Good afternoon. My name is Harry Coverston. I am the oldest child of Samuel and Marjorie Coverston. I grew up here in Bushnell, graduating from South Sumter High School in 1971. Warren Tomberlin was my beloved classmate. And Mr. Tomberlin was my teacher.

Lucy and I have always been dear friends since those days growing up here together. When she asked me if I would speak at this service today, I immediately told her that I would be honored to do so. And it truly is an honor to be here today.

Both of the Tomberlins were colleagues of my Dad during his many years teaching at South Sumter. He always valued their friendship and their counsel. My Mother was friends with Mr. Tomberlin during her days in high school in Lake City. So our families have been connected for a long time. For that I am grateful.

 

Small Town But Never Small Time

Some of you long timers may remember Lee Smail, who taught with my Dad and the Tomberlins at the high school for many years as the music teacher and band director. Mr. Smail had a saying that always prompted me to think. He said, “Just because we are small town does not mean we have to be small time.” 

 I think the whole faculty at South Sumter High School took that wisdom to heart. They knew they were teaching in a rural county with a limited tax base upon which to operate their schools. They knew that education was not the highest priority in a place whose economy was driven by cattle ranching and truck farming.

 

But our teachers were determined that their students would have access to the best quality education in their small town that they could give them. And I can tell you from my personal experience that we were, indeed, given a good beginning. From that starting place, I would begin my own long engagement of higher education that would result in three graduate degrees. It would also play out in long stints in public education that began teaching middle schoolers, like Mr. Tomberlin, and ended teaching undergraduates at two state universities.

But all along the way, I was always aware of and grateful for the basics I learned in the Sumter County public schools. For the time I lived here, we were always small town. But our dedicated teachers never let us get away with being small time.

 

The Consummate Teacher

Mr. Tomberlin was my seventh grade homeroom teacher and he taught our science classes in seventh and eight grade. He was a consummate teacher. And those of us who were fortunate enough to be taught by him know that we are in his debt.

Under his tutelage, I came to be fascinated by the solar system and developed a deep love for our budding space program. I learned how to track hurricanes, a skill that has come in much more handy than I could have ever imagined. And I learned about the dangers of air and water pollution that were just then beginning to be recognized, dangers that now seem obvious in this time of anthropocentric climate change. 

We learned a lot under our science teacher, indeed. 

But what Mr. Tomberlin taught us was much greater than the contents of general science classes. What I remember about him was the lessons he taught about living a good life that would shape the way I have approached the world these five decades later.

 

Lessons in Science, Lessons in Life

The first life lesson that he offered was the value of curiosity. There was so much in our world to learn that we seventh graders in Sumter County had no way of knowing about. Mr. Tomberlin taught us to engage our curiosity, to not fear that which we did not know, to see it as an opportunity to learn and grow. In a time when learning has come to be seen as measurable only by test scores, the notion of learning for its own value seems rather quaint. But it is the mark of a mature, healthy society. And Mr. Tomberlin modeled that value with regularity and encouraged us to do the same.

The second life lesson from which we benefitted was his devotion to public service. In many ways, public service runs against the grain of our individualist culture that assesses one’s value by income, power and status. Teachers have never made a lot of money and those of us who have engaged that noble profession know we did not go into it for money, power or status. What we valued was the ability to touch the future, to help our students become all they were capable of becoming, to serve our communities knowing that an educated public is crucial to the health of a democratic society.

I am struck by the way this dedication has played out in the Tomberlin family. Both Mr. and Mrs. Tomberlin served the children of Sumter County for many years. And both of the Tomberlin’s children have offered their lives of service to the people of Sumter County as teachers. Today, their grandchildren are carrying that torch. 

We do not always value our public servants. But we always rely upon them. For the example offered by the Tomberlins, we should all be grateful.

 

Modeling the Virtue of Patience

The third life lesson I would point to was Mr. Tomberlin’s patience. To illustrate that I would offer three short stories.

The first occurred in the context of our science class in the seventh grade. Two classmates and I were standing at the front of the classroom at the lab table where we were trying to demonstrate the distillation process by which sea water could be desalinated. Our beaker of salt water was being brought to a boil by a Bunsen burner. For some reason we decided we needed to pinch off the hose that was carrying the water from the faucet in the sink to the long tube in which the steam was condensing. And all was well until one of us managed to briefly let go of the end of the hose. At that point a jet of water shot across the lab table and put out the Bunsen burner.

Not surprisingly, bedlam broke out in the classroom. It would take Mr. Tomberlin several minutes to bring us back under control and I was sure he was going to be angry. But he wasn’t. He just said, “OK, I think you’re done now. You can sit down.” He turned off the gas to the Bunsen burner and the water from the sink. And class went on.

The second story I’d relate is hearsay but I am assured that it is true and it is funny. Mr. Tomberlin had left South Sumter to become the principal at Bushnell Elementary where my sister was now attending. She had a classmate who had brought a water pistol to school one day. Not surprisingly, after he’d used it on a couple of classmates, the teacher sent the young man to Mr. Tomberlin’s office. 

When asked if he had a water gun, the young man pulled it out and held it in front of him. Mr. Tomberlin then said, “Now, let me have it.” And at that point the kid said, “OK,” and squeezed the trigger sending a stream of water into Mr. Tomberlin’s face. Again, a situation that I’m sure I could never have handled without choking the little miscreant. But Mr. Tomberlin simply wiped his face and said, “OK, now, give me the water pistol.”

The final story came from the discussion around my family’s Christmas dinner table this past week. My brother, who was just one year behind me in school, was in Mr. Tomberlin’s seventh grade science class. Mr. Tomberlin was making the point that “A pure vacuum does not exist in nature.” When he invited the students to offer an example that would disprove that statement, my Brother immediately pointed to the head of the student sitting directly in front of him.

Again, while that might have prompted an irritated response from many a teacher, Mr. Tomberlin just laughed. When he had regained his composure, he said, “Now, David, surely you don’t mean that.” So there were two winners that day. Mr. Tomberlin had maintained and modeled his patience in a trying situation. And my Brother was pleased as holiday punch that he had made Mr. Tomberlin laugh. 

Patience is one of the seven capital virtues. Not all of us are born with the proclivities to exercise patience. That is why it is important that those who embody that virtue model it for us. Mr. Tomberlin was a very fine model of patience.

Years after I’d left Bushnell, I would periodically run into Mr. Tomberlin on my visits home. For awhile I wrote a weekly column for the Sumter County Times. Mr. Tomberlin was always ready to offer me feedback on those columns. But, more importantly, he always encouraged me to keep writing. And this pattern of encouragement was very consistent with the way he engaged his students across the board throughout his life. In a world where there are more than enough critics and cynics on a given day, we desperately need our encouragers. 

For the gifts of curiosity, public service, patience and encouragement, we are all in Mr. Tomberlin’s debt.

 

The Good and Faithful Servant

One of the hats that I have worn professionally over my lifetime is that of an Episcopal priest. As I thought about what I wanted to say about Mr. Tomberlin, one passage from the Gospel of Matthew kept coming to mind. In what is sometimes called the Parable of the Talents, a master entrusts his property to his servants, each according to their abilities. Then he departs. 

 Two aspects strike me here. One, the master had a sense of his servants, entrusting them with what he had of value to offer them to the limits of their abilities. The second was that he gave them those things of value and then departed, knowing they would have to make decisions on how to use what they had been given.

I see a similarity here to Mr. Tomberlin’s service to our county’s children. He took seriously our potentials and then gave us the things of value he had to offer us – lessons from science, lessons from life. Then he let us go to use them as we saw fit.

 

At the end of this parable, the Master returns to see how his servants had done. To three of them, he recognized that they had done the best they could with the skills they possessed and succeeded beautifully. And so the Master thanks them, telling them, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

Today it is our turn to say the same. We have come together to remember the remarkable life of a man who touched all of our lives and made our community a better place in the process. And we are here to recognize the legacy of that life, continuing today in the public service of Mr. Tomberlin’s children and grandchildren and in all of us whom he patiently and devotedly encouraged to serve the world. So for all of these gifts, this day, let us say, thank you. And let us close by saying “Well done, Edgar Warren Tomberlin, good and faithful servant.”  AMEN.

 

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 Harry Scott Coverston

 Orlando, Florida

 frharry@cfl.rr.com

 hcoverston.orlando@gmail.com

 If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding. Most things worth considering do not come in sound bites.

Those who believe religion and politics aren't connected don't understand either. – Mahatma Gandhi

For what does G-d require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your G-d?  - Micah 6:8, Hebrew Scriptures

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. - Rabbi Rami Shapiro, Wisdom of the Jewish Sages (1993)

   © Harry Coverston, 2023

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Dedication

[N.B. With these words, the Equal Justice Initiative marker commemorating the life and death of Arthur Henry was dedicated. The words were spoken by Harry Coverston, lead investigator of for the Alliance for Truth and Justice, as the covering of the marker was removed by two members of the Henry family.]

Arthur Henry, your long wait is over. Today you are recognized as a valued member of our community and a vital part of our living memory. In the name of the people of Orlando and Orange County, Florida, we hereby dedicate this marker to you, Arthur Henry. May you finally rest at peace.

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 Harry Scott Coverston

 Orlando, Florida

 frharry@cfl.rr.com

 hcoverston.orlando@gmail.com

 If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding. Most things worth considering do not come in sound bites.

Those who believe religion and politics aren't connected don't understand either. – Mahatma Gandhi

For what does G-d require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your G-d?  - Micah 6:8, Hebrew Scriptures

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. - Rabbi Rami Shapiro, Wisdom of the Jewish Sages (1993)

   © Harry Coverston, 2023

  ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Arthur’s Liturgy

[N.B. The following words were originally offered at the graveyard near Lake City where I believe Arthur Henry was laid to rest. This liturgy was then offered at the Dedication Ceremony of the EJI marker at the Wells'Built Museum December 6, 2023] 

We do not know where Arthur Henry was buried. My search for his resting place took me to the Huntsville Church and Cemetery, just north of Lake City, where his Father and sister had been buried. It was as close to a final resting place as I could find. But once I arrived, I felt that I needed to say something to Arthur.

 

We Had Never Repented

I am an Episcopal priest. And so on Wednesday, October 26, 2022 using a tree stump as an altar amidst the hallowed ground of the church yard and cemetery where white and Black bodies, perhaps including Arthur Henry’s, repose together. I lit a candle and offered the following words:

 Bless [+] the Lord who forgives all our sins. His mercy endures forever.

 

I come this day to speak words of remorse and repentance on behalf of the people of Orlando. What happened to you, Arthur, on Thanksgiving Day, 1925, in our City Beautiful was evil. You were wounded, abducted, tortured and killed. Your body was left to deteriorate for two weeks before it was recovered. 

It was an atrocity.

A number of people in our community actively participated in these deeds. But virtually all of the community participated in the confabulation that allowed this hate crime to go uninvestigated, to explain away the wrongdoing, to shelter its participants from justice and to consign this case to collective darkness. We sought to simply erase you from our memory. And the repression of these deadly deeds from our consciousness has continued  - until today.

 

It has been 98 years since these terrible things occurred. In all those years we have never repented for our wrongful actions. While I have no way of knowing exactly where your mortal remains were laid, Arthur, I believe they are here somewhere among those of your family. And so I come this day to speak these words of repentance on behalf of my townspeople, our ancestors and those who succeed us.

We would be more than bold to ask forgiveness and we do not merit the same. But I am here this day to say we are sorry and that we are working fervently to bring this darkness into the light. And I pray that long overdue healing may ensue as a result.

Arthur, in the past six years, you have become a living presence in my life. While I cannot see your face and have no photos to tell me what you looked like, in moments of silence when I am alone, I hear your voice. You have asked me to tell your story and I am intent on doing so. Indeed, I am the only one who can.

 

Inspired by a Poet

 

And so I offer you the words that have informed my search for you from the beginning of my quest. They come from the poet Dylan Thomas:

 

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

 

Arthur, you did not go gently into the night and it was anything but good. You were taken by force. I do not know if your fear even allowed you to rage against the atrocities inflicted upon you. But you would have been right to do so.

Now it is our turn to rage on your behalf, to tell your story, to commemorate your lynching and to expose the confabulation created to hold ourselves faultless when we as a people had your blood all over our hands. The time has long since passed to bring all these cruel events out of our collective Shadow and into the light. The world needs to know what happened that dark Thanksgiving night so long ago.

 

May We Redeem Our Souls

And so I stand here this day to confess our sins, to express our sorrow for the harm we inflicted upon you and your loved ones, to pledge our efforts to right this wrong, to prevent such events in the future, to bring your memory out of the Shadow where we have consigned you and to restore your name to those of the living. In doing so may we redeem our own souls.

 All these words I offer in the name of the Creator who is the [+] source of all that exists, the ground of being for all that live and the destiny of the souls of all the departed. AMEN. 

 

 

[Images taken at or around Huntsville Methodist Church Cemetery, 212 Huntsville Drive, Lake City, Florida]

 

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 Harry Scott Coverston

 Orlando, Florida

 frharry@cfl.rr.com

 hcoverston.orlando@gmail.com

 If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding. Most things worth considering do not come in sound bites.

Those who believe religion and politics aren't connected don't understand either. – Mahatma Gandhi

For what does G-d require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your G-d?  - Micah 6:8, Hebrew Scriptures

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. - Rabbi Rami Shapiro, Wisdom of the Jewish Sages (1993)

   © Harry Coverston, 2023

  ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 

Arthur’s Story

[N.B. This is the historical account of Arthur Henry’s life and death I offered as lead investigator of his lynching at the dedication of the Equal Justice Initiative marker commemorating him on December 6, 2023 at the Wells’Built Museum in downtown Orlando]

 

Arthur Henry was a WWI veteran. He was released from the U.S. Army in 1918 and returned to his ancestral home in Lake City. He moved to Orlando sometime between 1920 and 1923.

 

His reasons for leaving his Lake City ancestral home seem fairly clear in retrospect. Lake City was the site of a civil war battle in which Confederate forces had achieved a rare victory and followed that victory by slaughtering the wounded Black union soldiers they had captured. That event was celebrated by the erection of towering stone monuments at the Olustee battle site and in the city square in Lake City by the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

 Additionally, two major lynchings occurred in Henry’s hometown during his lifetime, one involving six Black men just before Arthur Henry’s entry into the service prior to WWI and an additional lynching just after he had arrived home in Lake City after being released from service. My guess is that Arthur left Lake City with his new wife, his mother and two sisters, hoping to escape the racial terror of his hometown while seeking new opportunity in an Orlando undergoing a land boom and an agricultural labor shortage amidst the Great Migration of African-Americans moving north.

A Grim Ending to a Sacred Holiday

 

On Thanksgiving day 1925, Arthur and his family attended services at a church in his Parramore neighborhood. After church, as they were eating their Thanksgiving dinner, some white men came into the neighborhood and began shooting randomly in the air and at houses. The Orlando police were summoned.  

The details of what happened next are not totally clear. Conflicting newspaper reporting provides very different accounts of the ensuing events. What is known is that when Orlando police detectives entered the Henry residence, an exchange of gunfire would leave both Arthur Henry and two OPD detectives wounded. They would all be taken to the Orlando General Hospital for treatment, Arthur in the boiler room in the basement, the Negro Ward, and the two white officers in the floors above. A parade of visitors to the officers would alarm the director of the hospital after hearing their threatening comments as they departed. He asked the Orlando police chief for a guard for Arthur Henry, who had been shackled to his bed, and one was posted.

Sometime in the middle of the night, three white men bearing guns would come into the hospital, remove Arthur from his bed and take him away in a waiting car. His body would not be discovered for two weeks. It would be his Mother’s sad duty to identify the remains of her son. Orlando’s second Black physician, Dr. William Wells, would sign the death certificate and a local Black undertaker working from his home would prepare Arthur’s bullet riddled body for transport back to Lake City for burial.

Confabulation: Minimizing the Offense, Rationalizing the Outcome

The local press played a major role in rationalizing this lynching with its reporting. Arthur Henry’s name was never mentioned in any of the headlines and only rarely in the bodies of the stories themselves. Rather, he was described simply as “the Negro,” a dehumanizing reference based in race. And accounts of his kidnapping often used terms such as “spirited away” thus minimizing the gravity of the offense. 

The Anglo-American presumption of innocent until proven guilty was not honored at any stage of the reporting which concluded that Arthur Henry was guilty of shooting the two officers though he was never charged with anything and never placed on trial for any crimes. Ironically, his Mother, Wife, and two sisters, who witnessed part or all of the exchange with the Orlando police officers, were arrested and taken to jail. Of course, being a witness is never a criminal offense.

Another disturbing aspect of this incident is the role of witnesses. The Black nurse at the hospital tending Arthur Henry initially reported seeing the three gunmen coming down the hall. In a subsequent story, she reported being “too excited to remember” what the gunmen looked like. This strongly suggests witness tampering.

Moreover, the white guard at Arthur’s bedside reported being overpowered by the men who snuck up on him from behind. But there is no evidence that the guard was ever asked to identify these men who clearly were perpetrating a capital felony, kidnapping. Nor would there ever be any charges against those who perpetrated it. This suggests possible collusion.

In the days before medical examiners, a coroner’s jury was used to investigate unexplained deaths. The all-white coroner’s jury in the Arthur Henry kidnapping and murder case met for two days before returning a verdict that he had met his death at the hands of “unknown persons.” This was a trope used throughout the South when lynchings were actually prosecuted. My guess is that the persons involved were well known but in a Jim Crow society would never be identified, much less brought to justice.

[N.B. This headline is the only one of the 14 stories on this case that actually used the term "lynching."]  

 So, this is a sad story I have related. And there are a number of lessons I think it offers us. As the proverb called Sankofa from the Aka tradition of Ghana teaches us, we must learn from the past in order to build our future. And there is a silver lining.

Diaspora of a Vibrant Family

In the process of researching the family of Arthur Henry, I came across a name and an email for a relative who had placed information on the FamilySearch genealogy site. I contacted her and about a year later got a call from another relative, Dr. Michael Henry, who was the head of personnel for the Little Rock, AR school district. After a few minutes of discussion two things became clear. First, while Arthur Henry had no descendants, there was a large family of his cousins alive today. And second, neither Dr. Henry nor any of the extended Henry family had ever heard the account of what had happened to their kinsman in Orlando in 1925.

Dr. Henry asked me if I would be willing to meet the family on Zoom to relate my findings. I agreed and in two different Zoom sessions met with 40 members of the Henry family. Like Dr. Henry, none of them knew anything about the lynching of Arthur Henry. And I have to tell you, I was always conscious as I related those events that I was speaking to a Black family about an atrocity committed against their kinsman by men who looked a lot like me. It as a very intense moment to say the least.

 

But the Henry family proved to be incredibly accepting, inviting me into their midst and treating me as a family member. In the process of getting to know them, I discovered eight of them hold doctorates of varying disciplines and one has been a city councilman in Daytona Beach while another is the current mayor there. This is a remarkable family, indeed, thriving in the face of adversity, the quintessential American Dream. A number of the family of Arthur Henry are with us today and their representatives will respond to this history shortly.

 Gratitude

 Over the past five years Arthur Henry has become very close to me. I feel his presence around me. And I have come to feel honored to be the bearer of his story. So, on behalf of Arthur Henry, the Henry family, the Alliance for Truth and Justice and the Equal Justice Initiative, I thank you for your presence here today as we own a very dark chapter of our city’s history and re-member Arthur Henry into the active memory of this community. Thank you.

 

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 Harry Scott Coverston

 Orlando, Florida

 frharry@cfl.rr.com

 hcoverston.orlando@gmail.com

 If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding. Most things worth considering do not come in sound bites.

Those who believe religion and politics aren't connected don't understand either. – Mahatma Gandhi

For what does G-d require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your G-d?  - Micah 6:8, Hebrew Scriptures

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. - Rabbi Rami Shapiro, Wisdom of the Jewish Sages (1993)

   © Harry Coverston, 2023

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