More Than Meets the Eye

I remember the first time I met Roy Meharry. He was in his late 70s, early 80s maybe. He wore a brown patterned blazer and light blue denim shirt, a sand-colored hat that looked like a Stetson, a bolo tie, a big western belt buckle, and 1950s black horn-rimmed glasses. His broad smile made his eyes scrunch up a bit making it look like he was laughing and the cheeriest person.

I was in my early 20s. My parents had invited me to come along with them to a fall festival in rural Indiana. It was a clear blue sky autumn day, the lilting sunshine rhythmically moving with the slight chill in the crisp air. The leaves were still green, but I could smell the turning of the leaves coming, an earthiness prelude to a deeper season. A bright red bus decorated with red and yellow streamers was one of the highlights of the festival, the Hickory Huskers bus from the movie Hoosiers.

“Did you know I was in the movie Hoosiers?” Roy asked. “I was an extra sitting at the scoreboard. There’s a shot of me right behind Gene Hackman.”

My parents knew Roy because he was a member of the New Richmond United Methodist Church in Indiana where my father had served as the minister before I was born. I was fascinated and drawn to Roy.

I don’t remember everything we talked about that day, but I do remember Roy had this calm about him, grounded in the values of community, compassion, kindness, family, and appreciation for friends. In a conversation with him, his attention was solely on you. He had a weathered wisdom that seemed to give voice to knowing who he was and what mattered. Just being next to him made me feel everything was right in my world at that moment. I wasn’t worried about finding a boyfriend, wondering if I was doing a good job at work, a number on a scale, or asking myself would I ever move out of my parents’ home. This feeling of peacefulness was unrefuted, and I was enough.

I recently thought of Roy. I think about him quite often even though I only met him once. You never know how much of an impact you will make on a person’s life. In times when I’m down on myself ruminating about past mistakes, comparing myself too much to others, not accepting it’s okay to feel directionless at times or days when I just can’t seem to get my footing, I sometimes think of and see Roy’s smiling face and twinkling eyes and it makes me feel better. I can feel the ground beneath my feet again ready for the next step.

Leo Buscaglia, who was an author and motivational speaker said, “Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.”

On this day, I was feeling directionless and thinking about Roy. I was brought out of my reverie by curiosity and started searching Roy’s name on the internet. I found an article and learned he died in a nursing home at age 91 in 2005. I discovered he assisted radio repairman Lee Haxton in 1934 to build the first electric basketball scoreboard in the country, a scoreboard that was used in the Wingate Gym in Indiana. Roy’s role was arranging the electrical circuits. There’s a welcome sign to the town proudly stating Wingate: State Basketball Champs 1913 & 1914.” It also reads in smaller letters "First Electric Scoreboard in the Nation made by 2 local men. Mechanical Part by Lee Haxton. Electrical Part by Roy MeHarry” - a major contribution coming from a town with less than 300 residents.

Roy was a retired electrical contractor for Tipmont REMC (Rural Electric Membership Cooperative) in Linden, Indiana. I read a story on the Tipmont website about Mary Ellen Meharry, Roy’s wife, remembering the times she and another woman joined their husbands to hold flashlights so linemen could make repairs during nighttime outages. Roy was also a retired farmer, a member of the Masonic Lodge 604, a member of the Scottish Rite and Shriners, and a member of the Knights of Pythias - loyalty, honor and friendship the center of the order.

I regret not asking my parents if we could arrange to see Roy again after the festival that day, instead getting busy with life and the day to day. I thought about visitors coming to the nursing home, perhaps catching a glimpse of Roy not knowing he was an extra in the movie Hoosiers, sitting at the scoreboard, one scene in the movie right behind Gene Hackman, not knowing the richness of his life. I thought about elderly people we pass everyday perhaps not giving much thought to their stories just seeing them as old instead of human books of tales and history.

In my mind, I’ve invented these special glasses - glasses that when you put them on you could see elderly people as they once were, and instead of just passing them by, you’d stop and say, “Tell me your story.” You’d be able to see people’s conditions and emotions that otherwise might be invisible to have a better understanding of them and what they might be going through. Glasses that would allow you to see beyond the surface and narrow definition of the homeless and you’d be able to see their lives before they were homeless and how they got there perhaps generating more compassion. These glasses would foster curiosity over judgement. Glasses that showed not only loss and struggle but also celebration and joy, the light and the dark like an eclipse, a reminder of the transient nature of things prompting savoring the moment more.

Maybe we just need a pair of 1950s black horn-rimmed glasses to have this superpower of compassion, empathy, presence, awareness, curiosity, and weathered wisdom or maybe we don’t need glasses at all.