|
|
|
| Sat, Nov. 21 - - Mobile - RSS | |
|
|
George Washington's heritage
George Chancellor Rawlings Jr. reflects on a life one observer calls 'a Greek tragedy and an enigma rolled into one. By Frank Delano.
Date published: 3/19/2005
PADLOCK ON a wrought-iron gate blocks the old man's way to his past and future. "The cemetery is behind the house. You go on past the house and through the barnyard and out in a pasture," he says. "My grandfather put a big, thick concrete wall around it. My grandparents are buried there and my parents and others. I guess I'll be buried out here, too." "Out here" is Massaponax in Spotsylvania County. On the other side of the gate is Bunker Hill, the big house with the rusted tin roof where the old man spent weekends and summers as a boy in the days before World War II. Down the hill is the Ni River, where he swam. Up the road is Massaponax Baptist Church, where he's been a member since he was 12 and baptized in a gravel pit near Summit. A lifetime later, new subdivisions fill the woods. "Man, this place has really changed," the old man says. "I remember when Route 1 was a two-lane road. My grandfather was postmaster of Fredericksburg. He lived on Charles Street. When my father was little, he fell over the fence of the Mary Washington House next door and broke his arm." When the old man was an ambitious young attorney in the 1950s, he and his beautiful wife, Rosalie, moved from the farm to a little house they rented in Fredericksburg on Kenmore Avenue. He was living there in 1960, when he managed John F. Kennedy's presidential campaign in the city and stayed up all night watching the television in the living room to make sure his candidate had won. He prospered. He and Rosalie built a mansion that was the talk of the town on a hill at Westmont. They divorced in 1975 when he realized he was homosexual. Their two sons both died of cystic fibrosis. Chance was 25 when he died in 1980. "I hope I'm as brave as Chance when my time comes," said Chance's brother, Chris, who died at age 22, eight months later. Rosalie died in 1994.
Date published: 3/19/2005
|
 |
|||
|
|||
