"But before we start the show, we have one more little cat that needs a home and I'll tell you he's the sweetest thing, just wants to sit in your lap all day and love on you. Dr. Stump says he's in good health and he will do his male operation for free… We really need to make sure that all our animals have their male and female operations… there are just too many precious dogs and cats out there with no home.
I look at Princess Mary Margaret and it almost breaks my heart to think she could be out in the world all alone without a family and I'm sure you feel the same way.
"Also we do want to thank Mrs. Lettie Nevior of Willow Creek who sent Princess Mary Margaret the loveliest little coat with her name embroidered right on it. And Mrs. Nevior, how I admire your tiny little stitches. You are just an artist, that's all I can say, just an artist."
Bess Goodnight, who worked at the Western Union office, walked up on the porch and handed Dorothy something that had just come in over the wire. "I thought you might want to see this," she said.
"Thank you, Bess," Dorothy said as she quickly scanned the news item.
"A fanfare, if you please, Mother Smith. An announcement has just come in and I am happy to report that our own wonderful sponsor, Mr. Cecil Figgs of Cecil Figgs Mortuaries and Floral Designs, has just been named Missouri Businessman of the Year for the second time in a row. So another great big congratulations to you! We always love it when our advertisers do well."
If there was ever a business that proved advertising paid off, it was Cecil Figgs Mortuaries and Floral Designs. What had started out as one small, pink concrete-block building was now thirty-six large, white columned affairs designed to resemble Tara in Gone with the Wind scattered across the state, two in Kansas City alone. By now Cecil Figgs was the biggest name in the funeral and floral business. He was advertised statewide, on the radio, on billboards, on bus stop benches, in newspapers and the Yellow Pages. Everywhere you looked or listened you would see or hear about Cecil Figgs.
"Open twenty-four hours a day to better serve you and will arrange pickup at any location. We treat your loved ones as one of our own."
Of course, he advertised layaway plans. After Cecil had been named Businessman of the Year for the second time, Helen Reid, a woman with the local newspaper, who was assigned to do a story on him, arranged an interview with his two aunts, who still lived in the small town of Eudora, Missouri, where he'd been born. Mrs. Mozelle Hemmit was sitting in her parlor recalling his childhood for the reporter.
"Cecil always loved a funeral. From the time he was six years old, you bring him a dead cat and you had yourself a funeral. Flowers, music, and headstone to boot."
His other elderly aunt, Mrs. Ethel Moss, agreed. "It's true. Whenever most boys were off playing ball he'd be down at Shims' Mortuary in his little blue suit attending somebody's funeral. It didn't matter whether he knew the family or not. Did it, Mozelle?"
"No," she agreed. "He just liked mingling with the crowd and sympathizing with the grieving relatives. By the time he was twelve Mr. Shims had already put him to work overseeing the visitors book and handing out fans. Remember, Ethel?"
Ethel nodded. "That's right and he made good money too and I'll tell you this, if there is such a thing as a born mortician, he's it. Cecil just loves the public, dead or alive, and he always did."
"And," said Mozelle, "he was just a natural florist right from the get go. Cecil was always a whiz with flowers, wasn't he, Ethel?"
"Oh yes, that boy could whip up an arrangement out of what most people threw away… and creative! Remember that spray of wheat and corn shucks he arranged for old Nannie Dotts's casket? He's just a miracle worker when it comes to arranging. You hand him five dandelions and a handful of weeds and by the time he gets done, you've got yourself a dining room table centerpiece."
"I remember when he first started out," Mozelle said. "He bought Mr. Shims's place. He was a one-man band as far as the funeral business. He did the flowers, embalmed the departed, greeted the mourners, sang the hymns, and preached the sermon… and if that wasn't enough, he drove the hearse. Now, if that's not service, I don't know what is. But he's come a long way from those days. I know Ursa is proud of him.
He's been a good son. How many boys that age would bring their mother to live with them and be so sweet? He takes her everywhere, buys her anything she wants. Hired a maid for her and treats her like a queen. She doesn't have to lift a finger."
Mozelle shook her head, puzzled. "A sweet boy like that but he never married and I don't know why. He was always real popular. Wasn't he, Ethel?"
"He was. Cecil was the band major in high school and in all the school plays."
The reporter asked, "Did he have a high school sweetheart?"
Mozelle said, "Well… there was that one girl, remember? That he went around with for a while. We thought maybe something would happen but when I asked Ursa about it she said that girl was a Christian Scientist and it never would have worked out. But he has lots of friends. He's very active in the Young Men's Christian Association and he directs the Miss Missouri contest every year and runs the Little Theater group up there in Kansas City."
"And directs sacred-music festivals," Ethel added. "And don't forget his church work. He's choir director over at the big Methodist church. So with all his theater and music friends, I'm sure he never has time to be lonesome. He's made a lot of friends in the gospel world. There's not a gospel-singing family in a six-state area that's not a customer. When one of them dies he's the first one they call to come and officiate."
Ethel nodded. "They're always falling out with massive strokes and heart attacks and things. Cecil said he has to special-order the caskets and keep a few in stock just for them."
Mozelle said, "That gospel crowd alone keeps him busy night and day."
The reporter addressed the next question to both of them. "What would you say is the secret of his success?"
They both thought about it and Mozelle spoke first. "I would say that it's his love of pageantry and knowing people. He told me one time, he said, Aunt Mo'Mo, that's what he calls me he said, Aunt Mo, people need a little help to cry over their departed." He said most people try to hold it in when they should let go and get it over with. And believe me, with his theater background he knows exactly how to tug at your heartstrings… with music and lighting and all. He really knows how to pull it out of you."
"That's true. I'll guarantee you will not go to one of Cecil's funerals and not wind up crying along with the rest of them. I know. He did Old Lady Brock's funeral and by the time we were halfway into the service he had me carrying on like she was my own mother. By the time he's done you come out feeling like a dishrag but you feel good too, don't you?"
"You do," said the other aunt. "And with him it's not just a business. I've never been to one of his services that he didn't get all emotional himself. Every time, no matter who the departed is, he sits in the back and has himself a good cry. I think he enjoys his work as much as the customers do. And he is not afraid to spend money. He hires only the best cosmeticians and hair people."
"That's right. I've yet to go to one of his funerals where the family didn't say that the deceased looked better dead than when they were alive."
The reporter thanked them and went home and wrote her story. She was tempted to headline the piece "Better Dead Than Alive" but thought better of it and used "Funeral King Kind to His Mother" instead.
True enough, when Ferris Oatman died suddenly in 1952 of a massive stroke, Cecil Figgs was the first one called. Although it was seventy-five miles from Ferris's hometown, Cecil decided the service was to be held at the old Boutwell Auditorium in Birmingham, where the Oatmans had sung at so many sacred-music festivals. On the day of the funeral every gospel group in America showed up to pay their respects.
Everyone said it was one of the biggest the gospel world had seen, by far. Besides all the Oatmans and the Varners and the devoted fans, and the gospel groups by the hundreds, so many buses rolled in that they did not have room to park them all. Even the mayor and the governor himself showed up.
Ferris's large white casket was covered in a spray of white carnations with black musical notes shaped out of little black pipe stems that Cecil had personally designed. As a tribute, Beatrice Woods, backed up by a stage full of twenty-six gospel groups, sang "There Will Be Peace in the Valley." By the time it was over, Minnie was so torn apart she had to be put in a wheelchair and rolled out of the auditorium. It was a fine funeral, just the kind that Cecil Figgs loved. Big and showy.
Everything had gone well except for Ferris's brother Le Roy. He had been so riddled with guilt over leaving the group and joining up with the hillbilly band that he showed up drunk and kept yelling all through the service for Ferris to forgive him. Betty Raye was the only member of the family that would speak to him that day.
Hamm had driven Betty Raye over to Birmingham for her father's funeral and he used this opportunity to shake hands and introduce himself to as many people as he could. Before the service started, while working the crowd, Hamm had watched the governor out of the corner of his eye. He had never been this close to a real governor, a man of such power and importance. He noticed with fascination how everyone clambered around him, how all the men on his staff jumped when he said jump, and how the entire auditorium hung on his every word as he delivered his short eulogy.
Before the day was over and they went back home, two momentous things had happened.
1. Hamm had discovered exactly what office he wanted to run for.
2. Hamm had met Cecil Figgs.
Beatrice Woods had been the first to call Dorothy and tell her what had happened to Minnie. Dorothy immediately got on the phone and called Betty Raye, who had taken the baby and gone over to be by her mother's side.
Dorothy said, "Honey, I just heard. Is there anything you need or anything Doc and I can do to help?"
"Oh, thank you," Betty Raye said, "but I just don't know what anybody can do now. I'm so worried about her she won't see the doctor, and it's been almost three weeks since she's eaten a thing."
"Oh, dear. Well, keep me posted and just know we are all sending you our love."
After Ferris's funeral Minnie had said to the boys and Uncle Floyd, "Take me home." They'd put her on the bus and drove her, Minnie crying all the way. When she got to the little house in Sand Mountain, she announced, after the boys helped her get in bed, "I can't go on without Ferris. I've come home to die."
The entire family was so upset that they called in her personal preacher, the Reverend W. W. Nails, and prayed over her. But it did no good. "It's no use, Reverend Nails," she said weakly. "Yeah… though I have oft walked through the valley of the shadow of death, due to high blood pressure, diabetes, inflammatory arthritis, and gout, I always prayed myself out the other side. But now I don't want to come out the other side. I'm just gonna lay here reading Scriptures until I go."
The Reverend W. W. Nails came out of the bedroom and reported, "That woman has gone sick to the soul with grief and nothing can help her now except a miracle."
Everyone pleaded with her. Betty Raye cried and begged her to at least eat a cracker. But she would not. The house was flooded with flowers and letters from fans, although nothing helped. Chester the dummy came in and pleaded his little wooden heart out. "Oh, Momma Oatman," he said, "get up, we need you. What will happen to the Oatman family without you?"
"Little Chester," she said, "honey, I lost the will to sing when we lost your Uncle Ferris… You take care of Floyd and be a good boy."
Floyd could not take it and ran out of the room and locked himself in the bathroom again. Bervin and Vernon came in, not knowing what to say. She took their hands and said, "Boys, music is left my heart. You and the rest is going to have to be brave and go on without me."
There was great speculation in the entire gospel world. Articles appeared in the Singing News wondering if the death of Ferris meant the end of the Oatmans. Someone even called and asked if their bus was for sale. But help was on the way in a six-foot five-inch package called Crimpler.