A Father’s Son: George Garrett and the Art of Dying

And here it may be randomly suggested, by way of bagatelle, whether some things that men think they do not know, are not for all that thoroughly comprehended by them; and yet, so to speak, though contained in themselves, are kept a secret from themselves? The idea of Death seems such a thing.

—Herman Melville, The Ambiguities

Across the centuries a number of writers have attempted to live their lives as if they were works of art in the making, an ideal to which some aspire even now if their interviews are deemed credible. Most of these writers have failed miserably in their endeavors. A handful have succeeded for a time, though even these precious few who have managed to render great expanses of their lives with beauty and grace have tended to abdicate their portraiture —brushes having grown clumsy or slipped from trembling fingers—as the end drew nigh. Yet the fact remains: there is a certain art of dying and before each of us, ready or not, there shall appear a blank canvas at a certain time, appropriate or not, during the course of our lives, to do with as we will.

One may safely state that when he passed away on May 25, 2008, the longtime Sewanee Review contributor George Garrett had lived and died well—even artfully—and much of the reason for this can be attributed to the fact that he remained throughout his life (for the most part—slips here and there we all make) his father’s son. As his son’s writings attest, the senior George Garrett was, by any measure, an enviable man of substance. His time spent out West in the early twentieth century as a copper miner, after having dropped out of mit, was crucial in the shaping of his character. He had planned to become a mining engineer; but, when his money ran out, he instead found himself living the hardscrabble life of an everyday miner subject to the perilous working conditions of those times. The stint left the senior Garrett with two missing fingers, unusually bulky and powerful shoulders, and a sense of pride in the work he had performed despite the disfigurement it had visited upon his hand. Over the course of his professional life, a charter membership in the United Mine Workers remained framed on his office wall in the proud company of his law degrees. As if not content with the danger and injury he already had experienced in his mining work, he later would sustain a damaged left leg and atrophied right arm owing to another injury, and then a severe case of polio that nearly killed him. Possessing distinct familiarity with pain, physical debilitation, and the prospect of near death, the elder Garrett proceeded to establish some firm priorities for what remained of his existence.

Despite his physical setbacks and probably because of them, the senior Garrett was both feared and fearless in the law practice he established in Orlando, Florida. Among his major accomplishments were kicking the Ku Klux Klan out of Kissimmee, enjoying hard-fought and unlikely victories against big railroad companies (the unethical mighty corporations of that time), and aiding hard-pressed local African-American citizens in several capacities, legal and otherwise. In fact as much as half of his working time was spent on pro bono cases. Yet the ultimate lasting influence of the elder Garrett on the younger cannot be expressed more accurately or powerfully by any writer other than his son: “One of the many things I hope I learned from him is the courage of generosity. He was a proud man, a tough and unsentimental man; but, true to the code of his family and ours, he believed that our first and primary duty in whatever vocation we found ourselves was always service. The opposite of service was not self-serving (much too mild a word), but pure selfishness. I have too often forgotten his good example, but it is always there to be remembered. And I am grateful for that inestimable gift.”

Not long...