Respected by peers as Officer Whites; loved and admired as Uncle Charles
On April 27, my uncle died. He was a police officer on duty, directing traffic after an early morning hit-and-run wreck. He was hit by a car going highway speeds; two months later he was gone. I was there holding his hand.
He received full ceremonial honors at his funeral. His colleagues talked a lot about Officer Whites — his effectiveness, his badassery, his boldness and skill in the field.
I never met Officer Whites. In his 18 years as a police officer, I rarely saw him in uniform. At times, I recognized glimpses of my uncle. For most of it, I listened to strangers talking about a stranger — a flattened caricature of the man I knew.
My Uncle Charles wore a different uniform: Wrangler jeans, a khaki shirt with two breast pockets and sleeves rolled to his forearms, and sturdy boots. He wore a black ball cap, or a wide-brimmed hat reminiscent of Indiana Jones. He never went anywhere without a pair of RayBan aviator sunglasses.
He was the kind of man you read about in history books and think doesn’t exist anymore. Before he was a cop, he was a career outdoorsman. In his late teens, he received a commendation from the city of Austin after rescuing two kids from a small cave-in; he heard what had happened and decided to help, because he could. He didn’t know how not to help people.
He always had a book with him. Once, when I was little, I got rowdy at a family dinner. He picked me up, walked us away from the table, plonked me down on his lap, and pulled a copy of T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” from his pocket, which he then had me read aloud.
He was the smartest and least intellectually pretentious person I’ve ever met. If you said something silly, stupid, or just plain wrong, he’d tilt his head just a little, smile slightly, and say, “Well, that’s one way to look at it. What about this?” He was patient and kind — and he listened.
My Uncle Charles never raised his voice in anger. He could be loud; he always said your name with an exclamation point, excitement at seeing you palpable in his voice. Whenever I crossed a line as a teenager, he’d privately tell me where I went off the rails. I’d apologize, and he’d give me a hug and tell me he knew I could do better. To Charles, everyone could do better.
He came over most Sundays for as long as I can remember. I can’t recall specific conversations. I remember lots of laughter, full-body belly laughs that left you gasping and wiping away tears. If I had a cocktail, he’d remind me that I shouldn’t drink to excess because alcohol could negatively impact my cognitive function. I’d stick my tongue out at him, and he’d smile so big he could barely keep his eyes open; you could see them crinkling from behind his sunglasses. He told my brother and I to take care of each other, the way he and my mom did, because someday it’d just be us.
I don’t have any pictures of the two of us together. There’s no video of him teaching me how to climb trees, no recordings of us discussing my classes. I accidentally deleted the last voicemail he left me, three days after I received my law license. He told me he loved me and that he was proud of me.
I have “The Waste Land.” I have a penchant for aviator sunglasses. I have my career as an attorney, mapped out over a lifetime of Charles never letting me get away with being less than my best and truest self.
I have his sister, his nephew, his parents — my mom, my brother, my grandparents. We have each other, just like Charles always had us. We’ll miss him.
I strongly encourage Attorney General Ken Paxton and his team to read author Sam Quinones’ book “Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic” as they pursue this important lawsuit against Purdue Pharma.
In the book is a comprehensive look at the decades-long history of the link between the medical community’s noble quest to help Americans deal with chronic pain and the ever-increasing temptation to profit from the sale of the very medicine designed to help.
The history is complicated by the growing sophistication of pharmaceutical marketing; intentional use of a misleading letter published in a medical digest that said less than 1 percent of patients become addicted; and pressure on doctors to serve an ever-increasing number of demanding patients daily. Good luck to Attorney General Paxton.
There is nothing conservative about the Republican Party.
Conservatives do not mock the disabled.
They don’t create massive out-of-control deficits.
They don’t make jokes about those dying of cancer.
They don’t violate or ignore the laws of our country.
They don’t tolerate sexual abuse.
They don’t call people names. They don’t say racist things. They don’t refer to Native Americans as “Pocahontas.”
They don’t call people of color “rapists.”
They don’t call Muslims “terrorists.”
They don’t endorse hate groups or white supremacy.
They don’t lie. Every. Single. Day.
They don’t walk around with loaded assault weapons in public.
And they don’t tolerate those who do. Those who say they are “conservative” either do not know what it means or they are just like the Republican Party or Donald Trump.