In My Father's House

Copyright © 2008 Judith J. Bentley
November 13, 2008

It wasn't until I was an adult and in my 30's that I began to understand my father. Unlike my mother whose past was a mystery she never spoke about, my father not only enjoyed making up scarry bedtime stories when we were children but also generally liked to talk about himself and would from time to time share some experience from his life. I came to realize that I wanted to capture as many of those stories as I could while he was still alive so I asked him if he'd dictate to me his life story starting from early childhood. We'd sit at the dining room table and I'd write as fast as I could in a kind of speed writing I made up. Later I transcribed what he had shared. The following are stories of his boyhood and youth in his own words gathered from those sessions at the dinner table many years ago.

"I grew up on a farm in Naruna, Virginia, which is in Campbell County. There were 10 children in the family--4 brothers, one of whom died shortly after birth, and 5 sisters. I was the youngest. We all had our farm chores to do before going off to school every morning. My job was to milk the cows and carry water from the well to the house. Then I'd set off for school which was two miles away. Mother would give me a sweet potato and sometimes a biscuit for lunch. When I got to school, I'd put the sweet potato in the fireplace so it'd be cooked by lunchtime.

"The farmhouse we lived in had formerly been occupied by a Black family. The house had holes in the walls and I would stick newspaper in the holes to keep the cold out. In the middle of winter when it had been snowing, I woke up one morning with snow on my bed from the cracks and holes in the ceiling. The only heat we had in the house was at the fireplace downstairs. On those cold winter mornings, my father used to whip me with a razor strap for not getting up on the first call at 5:00 a.m. One morning as I was trying to put my pants on before the fireplace, I couldn't seem to get both pants legs turned right side out. I became so frustrated that I threw them in the fire. I got a royal whipping for that because they were the only pants I had.

"When my father [William Jackson Bentley] became ill in 1923, I had to quit school and go to work to help support the family. I had made it to the 7th grade by then. On May 24, 1926 my father died of a heart attack. The summer after my father's death, my three brothers --Floyd, Roy and William--contracted to cut lumber at a lumber mill in Phoenix, Virginia. They sawed oak into cross ties or siding and loaded it onto box cars to be hauled to a sawmill where it was then shipped to Covington. They got $90 for each box car they could load, and it took a whole day to cut a car load to fill up one box car. I worked in the woods with my brothers for a while but in June or July of that year, the wheat got ripe on the farm so I had to go home and harvest the whole wheat crop by myself while my bothers worked at the lumber mill.

"That following winter my brother William and I got up each morning at 5:00 a.m. and walked 3 miles to the sawmill where we pulled a crosscut saw for 10 hours Monday through Saturday noon. We made 20 cents an hour and between the two of us, we brought home $22 a week. Mother packed a gallon and a half bucket with salmon cakes, biscuits, dewberries or blackberries for our lunch. We'd hang the bucket by a tree limb and the berries would be frozen by noon when we'd stop work for our 30 minute lunch.

"While we boys were working at the sawmill, two of my sisters [Elma and Kathleen] were still at home with mother. My sister Emma had married and was working at Craddock and Terry Shoe Company in Lynchburg. Not long after she gave birth to her son "J.T.," her husband, Bennie Dews, ran off and left her. My sister Flora had married Nowlin Collins who was principal of the elementary school at Union Level. It was midwinter when William left the sawmill and boarded with Emma in Lynchburg, working at the shoe store with her. Floyd had gone to Ferrum High School [now known as Ferrum Junior College]. Roy had gone to the coal fields in West Virginia and was blowing all his money on women and drinking. I was the only boy left on the farm in the winter of 1927. It was my job to keep the livestock--two cows, horses and pigs--and manage the household. I was 15 then.

"The following Spring there was no money to buy food but the family made a barrel of sorghum molasses. We also had a two-horse wagon. I drove the wagon over a rough road to Phoenix. All along the way, I stopped and knocked on doors with my molasses for sale. Only the Negroes bought my molasses. By the time I got to Phoenix, I had enough money to buy food--flour enough to last through the winter, coffee, eggs, suger. I had meat in the smokehouse too so we managed that winter through.

[My father told me this story about nearly losing his brother William that year.]

"During the Spring of 1928, Floyd and Roy returned home and contracted for more timber. That summer, William was attacked by a boy put up to it by Flood Andrews, an enemy of my father's. A while back, Flood had come to buy some lumber from the sawmill man. He'd unhitched his horse and had him tied with a chain to a tree. When my father saw Flood Andrews beating his horse because it wouldn't pull the wagon of lumber, he threatened to swear out a warrant against Flood unless he stopped so Flood Andrews had it in for all the Bentley boys after that. The boy who attacked William was 17. He blew his horn to pass William's truck but cut in on him causing William's truck to overturn. Then the boy got out, came over to William, and stabbed him in the back with a pocket knife and punctured his lung. We got William to a doctor who packed the cut place with gauze. Luckily for the boy's sake, he was arrested and already in jail when my brother Roy took a notion to go looking for him with a .32 caliber Ivy Johnson five-shooter revolver. When we brought William home, his face was as white as a sheet and he'd lost a lot of blood but he was conscious. In two or three days, he developed pneumonia and nearly died. There was no anesthesia back then. The doctor came every day for approximately 10 days and repacked the hole and kept the lung draining. By the end of the summer, William had recovered but he was unable to work.

"My father had bargained with the sawmill man because he'd had a dream to build a 10-room frame house of heart pine and poplar and he promised the sawmill man all the timber on his place if he'd saw enough lumber for my father to build that frame house. There were 2 X 10 rafters stacked in the field when my father died of that heart attack and he had managed to pay only $500 of the $3,000 he owed for the farm.

[Here my father recounts the story of the sale of the farm and the incident that caused him to decide to go into the ministry.]

"Late in September before school started, Floyd found a place to rent on Staunton Avenue in Roanoke, The house was scummy and black but it did have a toilet. We decided to sell out to Floyd E. Pillow at Old Well, Virginia. We sold our two cows and a calf and our lumber (enough to build that 10-room house) and had money for the sale of the farm enough to move to Roanoke. We carried the Ford truck and everything we had was loaded on it. Among the things loaded up on the truck were bushels and bushels of ripe tomatoes and apples. Mother, Elma, Kathleen and Roy were in the car. William and Floyd were in the '25 Ford truck and I was put on top of the bedsprings in the back of the truck where I took me a nap. We had to spend the night in Bedford because one of our tires blew out. But the next morning the Bedford Tire and Rubber Company exchanged our tire for a new one and we were on to Roanoke from Charlotte County.

"That winter of 1928 I got a construction job at the YWCA under Mr. Barton, a foreman for the general contractor Eubank and Cardwell. I worked that year and the next building the YWCA. Then I decided I'd go out on my own. I rolled concrete and carried building stones of granite under a hand stick with the help of a strapping Black man. It took three people to carry a stone--one on either side of the hand stick and one at the back. I contracted with Smith Realty Company to put in foundations for 7 houses. I hired 1 carpenter and 2 laborers under me. We put in septic tanks and drain fields and mixed concrete on boards. By the end of the summer, I learned that if I could sell the houses, I'd get $300 a piece for them. That summer when men with families were making only $3 for a 10-hour day, I averaged $12 a day after paying help.

"William bought a Packard and Roy, a Chevrolet, so the old Ford became mine. I had closed out a deal to sell a house to the manager of Rock Quarry and was coming back to Roanoke fast late one summer night to get supper when I hit two boys who were riding on the same bike. I knocked them straight into the air and out into the street. They had no lights on their bike. The bike knocked my windshield out. At first I thought the boys were dead but they weren't. I got then in the truck and they begged me not to take them home but to let them off at the drug store because their parents had not given them permission to go to Lakeside and they didn't want their parents to know.

"I didn't sleep a wink that night. Up till then I had wanted to be a general contractor, but that night, I felt I wasn't doing what I was supposed to do. It was that night that I decided to go into the ministry."

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My father died of a massive heart attack at age 79 on December 1, 1991 after having had multiple by-pass surgery the previous October. He would have celebrated his 80th birthday had he lived till December 5th. I attended his funeral memorial service held at West Point United Methodist Church as well as the graveside service in Roanoke where his ashes were interred. Years later as I was surfing the web one evening, I was shocked when I came across a biography of him posted by Reverend Walter Lockett, the minister who had officiated at the graveside service. That biography is set forth below.

Gilliam Claude Bentley, 1912-1991

On January 10, 1912, Gilliam Claude Bentley was born at the family farm in Campbell County, Virginia, the eighth of 10 children, five boys and five girls, the son of William Jackson and Susan Rosa Trent Bentley. His elementary education was interrupted when he dropped out of school in 1923, because of the illness of his father, to work on the farm in Charlotte County, where the family had moved. After the death of his father in 1926, the family moved to Roanoke where Gilliam continued to work. In 1928, he entered Ferrum Training School, as it was called then, to catch up on his formal education. While there, his sense of call to the ministry was recognized by the Danville District conference which granted a local preacher's license in April 1929. In 1931, he transferred to Jefferson High School in Roanoke, graduating in 1932.

The call to preach means preparation. The next five years were devoted to concentrated study. He received the B.A. degree from Randolph-Macon College, 1932-35, and the B.D. degree from Candler School of Theology, Emory University, Georgia, 1935-37. At Emory he met Alma Kathryne Creighton of Greenwood, South Carolina, a graduate student in the School of Languages, whom he married on December 29, 1937. This union was blessed by three children: Gilliam Dickson, Judith Jackson and Kathryne Creighton. There are 11 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

Gilliam was admitted on probation by the old Baltimore conference in 1937. In 1939, he was received into full connection by the conference, meeting in Roanoke, and was ordained deacon by Bishop William Walter Peele. At the first session of the Virginia conference after unification, also meeting in Roanoke in 1940, be was ordained elder by Bishop Peele. While a student at Randolph-Macon, he was supply pastor at Kenwood, Richmond, District, 1934-35. Other appointments included: Fincastle, 1937-41; Epworth, Covington, 1941-45; Hamilton-Purcellville, 1945-49; Highland Springs, Richmond, 1949- 55; Memorial, Petersburg, 1955-59; High Street, Franklin, 1959-63; Front Royal, 1963-67; Memorial, Virginia Beach, 1967-69; Sabbatical, 1969-70; West Point, 1970-74; Disability Leave, 1974-77; Retired, 1977.

His service beyond the local church included: member Alexandria District Committee on the Development of Camp High Road, 1946-49, and business manager of the first youth summer camp; District Missionary Secretary on the Petersburg, Portsmouth and Winchester districts, and member of the conference Board of Missions, for 10 years; conference delegate to the National Mission Tour of the West Indies, 1957; member Petersburg District Committee on Building & Location, and Ministerial Qualifications,1955-59; and member of the conference Commission on Higher Education, 1963-66.

Skilled in tennis, Gilliam played in numerous tournaments as a young man and until he was 60 could beat his son. Also, he was an avid fisherman. He loved gardening and was generous in sharing the vegetables he raised. A major interest was a cottage on the Rappahannock River near the Chesapeake Bay at Foxwells, built in large part by members of the family.
A heart attack necessitated his taking disability leave in 1974. At that time he and his wife Kitty bought a home in West Point where they continued to live during retirement He sang in the choir and was helpful wherever possible, always supportive of the pastor. In October 1991, he had multiple bypass surgery at Riverside Hospital in Newport News and returned home, apparently in stable condition. On Sunday morning, December 1, 1991, his wife discovered that he had died in his sleep.

A memorial service was held at West Point Church, where he had invested so much of himself, on Tuesday evening, December 3, at 7 o'clock, led by the pastor, the Rev. David B. Lewis. The next day, which was cold, windy, sunny, his ashes were interred at Blue Ridge Memorial Gardens in Roanoke. A graveside service at 2 o'clock was conducted by the Rev. Walter M. Lockett, Jr. and the pastor.

Gilliam enjoyed life. He was a faithful and effective witness to the abundant life we have in Christ Jesus. "Well done, good and faithful servant; enter into the joy of your master" (Matthew 25:21).
-Walter M. Lockett, Jr.