SAN ANTONIO — Theodore H. Martin had a thick mustache and hair combed back with Old 97 hair grease. Smoking Hav-A-Tampa cigars, he spun stories that transported listeners to war-torn lands, dark country roads and fire-lit cabins.
Listeners left doubled over from laughter and dabbing tears away.
I can still see my great-grandfather sitting in his den in Columbus, Ga., regaling fellow World War II Army veterans and relatives with outrageous tales that suspended belief.
Adult family members called him Sarge. Fellow Army veterans called him Mr. Martin. My great-grandmother called him Pietro. To my sisters and me, he was simply granddaddy.
But he had another name: storyteller. It was from granddaddy that I learned the magical sway of stories.
My youngest sister, Jeanine Fields, recalled hearing his scary tales drifting from the living room when older folks visited. It was the first time she heard the word “haint,” often used down South for ghost.
“Every detail was enlightening and enriching. It seemed so real, like you were there,” she said.
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As a youngster, I would sit on an old three-legged stool, listening to Atlanta Braves broadcasts on his transistor radio late at night as he barbecued slabs of ribs for picnics at Bethel Baptist Church in Phenix City, Ala. Other kids and I would sit on the church steps, teetering paper plates piled with food on our knees.
Theodore H. Martin peels an orange as he tells a story in the den of his home in Columbus, Ga.
Photo courtesy of Vincent T. DavisEveryone chewed on grilled meat slathered with his secret sauce that made us drip with sweat. We sipped from cold soda cans that had been submerged under crushed ice in the bed of a pickup parked on red dirt.
Granddaddy gave his stories a rest only on Sunday, reserved for hours of worship in the red brick church off a black two-lane gravel road.
Relatives said he became a churchgoing man after returning from the death and carnage of WWII and the Korean War.
He’d rise early, wearing a handkerchief tied at the four corners that pressed down his salt and pepper waves. Then he would slip a tailored jacket over a pressed shirt and stylish tie. The cuff of his creased pants brushed the top of black shoes buffed to a shine. The finishing touch was a sharp, dust-free fedora.
My mother, great-grandmother, sisters and I would climb into his Pepto Bismol-pink Bel Air with rear twin fins, pointed like tips of arrows. I’d stare at the endless dark green water of the Chattahoochee River flowing beneath the Oglethorpe Bridge as he drove us from Columbus to a daylong service in Alabama.
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In 1962, I was 6 when we left with my father, John Davis, an Air Force sergeant, for assignments that took us to South Dakota, Germany, San Antonio and Omaha, Neb. During our travels, my mother, Valeria Cardona-Trinidad, kept granddaddy’s stories alive with friends at gatherings.
Martin, who served in the Korean War and in Belgium in World War II, was the great- grandfather of Express-News reporter Vincent T. Davis.
Billy Calzada, San Antonio Express-News / Staff photographerClose family friends Ruth Mitchell, 84, and retired Air Force Chief Master Sgt. Thomas J. Echols, 88, recalled egging her on to tell granddaddy’s stories decades ago in Darmstadt, Germany.
Willie Lou Martin, wife of Theodore H. Martin, poses at a studio for a photograph during World War II.
Photo Courtesy of Vincent T. DavisIt was a time when airmen and their families met at Echols’ base housing, where our mothers cooked collard greens, ground beef and big pans of cornbread. The kids played board games away from the adults who played pinochle and told stories of growing up in the South.
“It’s the way we survived two or three days before payday,” Echols said. “We learned to entertain ourselves.”
Mom’s standout story was about the town drunk harassed by the police.
The stories still have meaning today. Mitchell said the Black community’s relationship with law enforcement hasn’t changed.
“Every time Val started telling a story, I remember it,” Mitchell said. “We’ve come a long way, Vince, but we’re not there yet. But, we have someone to take care of us. And when He gets tired, He’ll fix it for us.”
After I enlisted in the Air Force in 1975, I’d visit granddaddy, my great-grandmother Willie Lou Martin and grandmother Lela Mae Preer Hicks once a year.
San Antonio Express-News reporter Vincent T. Davis sits with his great-grandfather Theodore H. Martin as he tells one of his stories in his backyard in Columbus, Georgia.
Photo courtesy of Vincent T. DavisIn letters, we wrote “mother dear” to my great-grandmother. In person, we called her Madea (long before Tyler Perry’s character of the same name arrived in the mainstream).
A 22-year veteran of the Air Force, Vincent T. Davis embarked on a second career as a journalist and found his calling. Observing and listening across San Antonio, he finds intriguing tales to tell about everyday people. He shares his stories with Express-News subscribers every Monday morning.
Married for more than 50 years, she’d heard all of his tales. Shaking her head, she’d say, “Martin, stop lying.” Her reproach spurred him on even more.
In 1984, he placed his stories on hold when Madea passed. Years later, we’d sit in his backyard, sipping from bottles of Heineken as he rehashed family lore. He’d tell stories of serving in the segregated Army, where he was a drill sergeant at Camp Croft, S.C., training soldiers to survive in hand-to-hand combat.
His company, staged in England, was confined to the camp. The higher-ups didn’t want Black soldiers fraternizing with the English. Granddaddy and other sergeants convinced the officers to allow the soldiers off base, on a limited basis, before they departed to fight in Belgium.
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When he retired from civil service, he focused on turning the yard into a massive vegetable garden. Wearing a sweat-stained straw cowboy hat, he tilled the soil and grew rows of tomatoes, cucumbers and greens, just as he had growing up in Georgia.
Theodore H. Martin takes a break from working in his vegetable garden spread across his backyard in Columbus, Georgia.
Photo courtesy of Vincent T. DavisSpinning tales was the most he ever talked. In public, a man of few words, he rarely talked about politics and never about other people’s business. He’d watch the evening news and grimace as scenes of civil rights protests, war and poverty played on the television screen.
The one thing he did, a must for him, was exercise his right to vote.
Granddaddy told stories until 1995, when incurable diseases brought our family to his side for his last days. Sitting in the front room, we could hear visitors howling as he told a rib-tickling tale with a raspy delivery. Then there was silence. That was his last story. Four days later, he took his last breath.
Still, we’ve carried on his tradition, telling his stories to our children and grandchildren, like adding new patches to an old quilt.
His tales live on with each retelling. And so does he.
vtdavis@express-news.net
