Roanoke

Copyright 2010
Judith J. Bentley

In the early afternoon of the 21st day of March, 1945 I was born in Jefferson Memorial Hospital in Roanoke, Virginia to Reverend Gilliam Claude Bentley and Alma Kathryn Creighton Bentley. I still have my baby book somewhere and in it a lock of curly hair, a memento of the curly locks which mother said I kept until I had German Measles when I lost all the curl. 

Roanoke is located just west of the Blue Ridge Mountains in the middle of the Roanoke Valley in the southwestern part of the state.  It covers only about 42 square miles.  Many of the Bentley relatives lived in Roanoke, and sometimes we'd visit them during the summer month of August.  The streets were steep like those in San Francisco because the City was so close to the mountains and many of the streets were hilly.  I remember riding in our car on Melrose Avenue and Orange Avenue on the way to visit aunts and uncles who must have lived on those streets or somewhere close to them.  They told us that Roanoke had a big star on top of Mill Mountain that lit up the night sky.  Roanoke was called the Star City because it was the only city in Virginia that had a big star on one of its mountains. It also had a zoo. I guess folks didn't have much to brag about in Roanoke.  A lot of the men worked on the railroad or in the coal mines.  Other industries included textiles and furniture manufacturing.

I liked visiting Uncle Roy and Aunt Elizabeth.  Their home felt safe.  Aunt Elizabeth was a real sweet lady who seemed to be glad to see us whenever we visited.  I can still see her smiling and conversing with mother while standing over her kitchen stove stirring a pot of goodies right from her garden.  Her butter beans, juicy ripe tomatoes, crunchy cucumbers, corn on the cob, and canteloupe were my favorites.  KB and I loved running between the rows of corn behind their house.  Uncle Roy and Aunt Elizabeth had a son and daughter, Clayton and Carolyn, who were older than we were.  I remember an old upright piano that Aunt Elizabeth said her daughter Carolyn could play.  Carolyn still lives in Roanoke. Their son Clayton moved to Richmond where he retired from Dominion Power Company.  Even though he lives in Richmond, I have never visited him.  I called him once to learn what had happened in his family.  He never did call me back. It seems strange that you can have relatives living in the same city you live in but you never see them.

We also visited Aunt Elma, who was my favorite aunt.  She had red hair and was plump, frisky, fun and jolly.  She lived in a brick house on a Roanoke hillside with her husband Uncle Fred.  They didn't have any children which may be the reason she always seemed so glad to see us. When I think of Aunt Elma, I remember her laughter.  She had a high pitched laugh and a low alto voice. In the summertime when it was so hot, she would mix up tall glasses of pink lemonade. Even now in the summertime, I buy pink lemonade because I used to enjoy drinking it so much at Aunt Elma's house.  Once while we were visiting Aunt Elma, I got real sick, but her glasses of ice cold pink lemonade seemed to make me feel better.  It was explained to us children that Uncle Fred drank a lot.  He was a veteran of World War II, and I guess it messed him up pretty bad because he couldn't stop drinking.  I think he drank himself to death.  His drinking didn't seem to dampen Aunt Elma's spirits.  She dressed nice and worked as a clerk in a department store.  Once she gave me some really old books that were bound with leather--classics from authors like Victor Hugo.  I don't know why she gave them to me, but I kept them for a long time and then I gave them to Goodwill like practically everything else that has been given to me.

The last house we'd visit before we returned home was where our cousin Dexter lived.  Dexter and I were  the same age, but he had a crush on KB.  His mother Aunt Halene was Southern Baptist and distant.  I remember how she used to smack her lips and roll her tongue around her lower lip.  I sensed that her religious inclinations somehow weighed the family down.  Dexter had two brothers already grown and gone by the time of our summer visits.  My father told us that one year his brother William, Dexter's father, who worked on the railroad, had spent all his money on women and drink and had nothing left for Christmas presents.  Pop sent him some money so he could buy Christmas presents for his family.  He was a heavy drinker and one day after puking his guts out behind the house, he came to his senses and stopped drinking cold turkey.  He never took another drink after that.  Dexter married a girl named Mary and they had two boys, but after Dexter came back from Vietnam, they got divorced.  Dexter's behavior became strange.  He had been in combat in the Army.  He was never right after that.  He was hypervigilant and made everyone uncomfortable around him.  You could sense that he was always on edge, always alert as if any minute something terrible was about to happen.  He loved to listen to classical music and he talked a lot about Jesus and religion.  After his parents died and he divorced, his wife got custody of their sons, so that he was living by himself in Roanoke.  I drove over to visit him once and invited him to come to Richmond to visit us.  I felt anxious being in the car with him, but I knew he was lonely and felt sorry for the way things had turned out in his life.  Eventually I learned he left Roanoke and moved to North Carolina.  His older brother Warren had moved to California.  I think he wanted to be close to his other brother Fred who was president of Mars Hill College. 

I was told that he had always been closer to Fred than to Warren.  Fred was a bright and shining star in the Bentley family.  When he became president of Mars Hill College in western North Carolina in 1966, he was the youngest college president in the nation. According to historical notes about the college, Dr. Fred Bentley "guided Mars Hill to accreditation as a senior college, led faculty development and curriculum innovation, and fostered numerous other educational and physical advances. After almost 30 years in the presidency, he retired in February 1996."  Once he came to visit me and I took him to the Omni Hotel in downtown Richmond.  We sat together over a late night meal.  In addition to being president of a college, he was also a fine self-taught artist and made wood carvings as a hobby.  It just came natural to him.  I thought it would be nice to own a piece of his art sometime.  When he told me that he didn't see anything wrong with a father having a "loving sexual relationship with his daughter," I froze on the inside and just wanted to go home.  I walked with him to his car, he kissed me on the lips, and I left him with a sad feeling  wondering if he did that to his daughter.  I decided right then I would never to see him again. 

This summer when I stayed in South Carolina to take care of Mother while Brother had surgery to repair an aneurysm on his aorta, she told me that Fred had carved the front doors of Mars Hill College.  He is dead now and Warren is the only living member of that part of the Bentley clan.

Late one Saturday night 4 years ago, the phone rang.  It was the Sheriff from North Carolina.
"Are you Judith Bentley?"
"Yes I am.  Why are you calling?"
"Your cousin Dexter was found dead in his house and I need to know what to do with the body."
What a shock.  I tried to think what to say.  "Where are you now?"
"I'm in his house."
"How did you get my number?"
"I found it in his address book."
"Well, read through the book, and I'll see if I can remember someone you can call."
When he got to the name Mary, I told him to call her.  She was Dexter's ex-wife.  I thought his sons would want to know their father had died alone in his house.  He was a sweet guy when he was young.  War does terrible things to a man's mind and some men never recover to make it back to civil society. 

I found a portion of his obituary in the archives of the Roanoke newspaper.

Bentley, Dexter Lee - Mr. Dexter Lee Bentley, 61, of Germanton, N.C., died Thursday, September 21, 2006 at his home. He was born February 13, 1945 in Roanoke, ....


Published in the Roanoke Times on 9/27/2006

The law firm where I work has an office in Roanoke.  Sometimes the firm sends me to some of its other offices.  They haven't sent me to Roanoke yet.  That's probably the only reason I'd ever go back.  It is a mystery to me now our summer visits to Roanoke never included my brother.  I cannot remember a single time that he ever went with us.