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20 November 1899 - 13 January 1994
Gravity finally got him, I thought as the weight of the coffin ran up my arm and into my shoulder. Instead of the usual six, there were eight of us serving as pallbearers, on account of Mac's large frame and the massive casket. As we shuffled from the hearse to the gravesite in the bitter cold, an unwelcome warmth spread through my body with the exertion. After 94 years on the sunny side of the Earth's crust, Mac was finally going under the ground he loved to roam. The preacher at the funeral said that he was now living in the mansions of the Lord. All I knew was that he would never be found sitting in his living room easy chair or the front porch rocker at his home on Blue Level Road. Mac was such a big man that he needed two preachers at his funeral. Both were decades younger than him. The first spoke eloquently about the "statesman of Blue Level," a natural leader in the community. He was a man who had gained the respect and affection of generations of residents. The second minister also talked about "Mr. Mac," as the locals called him. But the focus of his remarks was family -- Mac's and God's and all of those in between. The preacher testified to Mac's ability to reach across the years and make new friends. I knew what he was talking about. Like my father before me, Mac had taken me under his wide wing when I was a boy and showed me what an uncle could be. He was the living link to my Kentucky ancestors, the brother of my grandmother, who had died a decade before I was born. Mac had stayed close to the homestead while my grandparents moved north to Indiana in search of work in the limestone mills during the Depression. Underneath the ground Bowling Green, Kentucky and Bloomington, Indiana were joined by mammoth caverns hundreds of miles long. At the wake following the funeral, there was a supper at the White Stone Quarry Baptist Church. Relatives and friends and neighbors all joined in to mourn Mac's passing and to remember what a difference he made in our lives. Composed by James H. Capshew in January 1994 and October 1996 in loving memory.
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