The last time I saw Quincy Whitaker he was sitting
on the back steps
one Sunday afternoon when my father and I paid him a visit.
To begin my career as a student, my mother put me on Bus 43 on a September day in 1958. Bus 43 picked up friends like the Davis and Simmons families and the numerous Robbins and James cousins that lived almost within sight of our farm. Then, 43 turned down a dirt road I had seen before, but had no familiarity with. Bluefoot Road introduced me to the first new people in my daily life, many of whom were Jones cousins. The font from which most Joneses had sprung was on that winding dirt road.
Besides being the birthplace of my grandfather, John Pat Jones, and the home of his father and grandfather, Bluefoot hosted two institutions. One is the Bluefoot Church that John Pat’s brother, Willis, founded with the help of his brothers. The modest building is about 85 years old and has a holiness congregation led by Jones cousins. The other institution died about 20 years ago, but not before making his mark miles away from Bluefoot. Quincy Whitaker was born and reared in Como, way on the other side of the Potecasi, across the Meherrin, away from the Wiccacon watershed where he toiled in his adult years. He was the relative, perhaps the son, of the Como inventor George Whitaker. A bank lost Quincy’s savings at the time of the Depression, and his compensation was the Bluefoot farm. As my father puts it, Quincy moved there at the beginning of Franklin Roosevelt’s first term in 1933.
While the surrounding farmers were well established with families and neighbors that gave support, Quincy remained a loner. He planted, plowed and even harvested alone. Also, unlike the other farms, his was surrounded by forest, without a neighbor in sight. The equally reclusive Ollie Lewis and the cemetery of long-dead Boones were nearest to him. For a while, the children of the Green and Jones families walked past the house on the way to the two-room Walden School, but by 1950 it had closed. The sight and sounds of schoolchildren were replaced by Bus 43. His stretch of Bluefoot entered a silence that remained after his death.
His frugality, which allowed Quincy to save all throughout his life, sustained him. Quincy picked his own cotton and tobacco, shook his own peanuts, paid no wages or heating bill save that for the tobacco barn, bought no feed for his animals or gasoline for tractors and cars he never purchased. He walked to Phillipi Baptist Church by way of the railroad track - further keeping him away from his neighbors. But the nearby farmers became friends and they found that he had a lot to say about things, mainly farming and banks. Besides Quincy’s crops of tobacco, cotton, corn and peanuts that kept him busy and making bank deposits, another more slow-growing crop was starting to make a big difference in his life and those of others. The farm had a lot of timber and he made at least two large sales. Now, he was silently wealthy and only his immediate farming neighbors like the Reid brothers, Lonnie Smith and Clifton Robbins knew it. |
Among Quincy Whitaker's fellow farmers Courtesy of Benjamin Gary Robbins |
It was in 1963, I think, that his childhood church, First Baptist of Murfreesboro, burned up. Insurance companies would only cover half of the replacement value of churches. The congregation, which only saw Quincy every year or so, had to figure out how to raise the money. Quincy’s surprise gift of $15,000.00 made great news everywhere, including in the News-Herald. It equaled the annual salary of three or four teachers, of three or four Corvettes, or a four-bedroom ranch-style house with a double garage. First Baptist got its new church. I saw my cousin Paul marry his 9th grade sweetheart there. And it burned down once more within 10 years. This time, Mr. Whitaker donated $50,000.00 - an amount that would give pause to a Basnight, a Hedgepeth, a Lipsitz, or a Sharpe (our local Rockefellers). Now a local but reclusive celebrity, he was even robbed, and the sheriff’s department quickly seized the criminals. Do you remember high interest rates in the late 1970’s? Money markets went as high as 17% or more. Quincy was so keen on those 13% CDs that he got Daddy to take him to the bank to trade in his bonds. My mother was one of the fundraisers when Pleasant Plains Baptist wanted a new organ. She asked Daddy to ask the woman-shy Quincy if he’d care to contribute. Quincy seemed knowledgeable about the cost of organs because of his past experience, and wanted to know when the money was needed. Royal Archer, a Phillipi Baptist treasurer and Mama’s cousin, told Daddy that Plains could expect a nice check from Quincy. And it so was: $600.00 to a church he may have never visited. |
I was fifteen when I made this Instamatic photograph of Annie Lawrence and Paul Mountain in June of 1967. Their marriage was held in the new First Bapist Church in Murfreesboro, recipient of Quincy's first large donation. If you come to the next Jones fish fry in Cofield, you'll see that Paul and Annie don't look much different, thiry-nine years later. |
When electrical lines finally came to Bluefoot, Quincy bought a radio. He really enjoyed it, but he had a second thought: Wouldn't the radio be of better service if it belonged to a family rather than a single listener?
In the 1980’s Quincy offered yet another $50,000.00, this time to Phillipi. The church was not in any particular need, and it never sought out money from him. Quincy appreciated the religious home and community that Phillipi had given him for almost 50 years. After determining that the church could be bricked in, along with a new heating system and carpets, the money was accepted. Within a couple of years, Quincy passed away while living with his family in Como.
I always missed the white wood siding of Cofield’s church, but writing for this website always enlarges my appreciation for my subjects. Thus, the brick walls of Phillipi are looking better and better to me.
Phillipi Baptist Church shortly after its renovation,
provided by Quincy Whitaker.
Courtesy of Vivian Mountain Whitaker
[Click on photograph for a larger view. You might see yourself!]