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Just look at his hands.
A welder’s hands. A grandfather’s hands.
Look at his hands, at the dirt-stained nails, calloused palms and sensitive fingers, at hands that could mold metal and hold an infant close.
Look at his hands as they lie gently in the steel casket, and, now, maybe now, you begin to know Ray Lee Tarkington, of Silsbee, Texas.
Ray Tarkington died Thursday morning, April 20, at the age of 65, when a tanker truck he was welding exploded with a force that blew through the corrugated roof of his shop.
In an instant, the walls of Design Fabrication and Welding on the corner of County Road 864 and FM 105 in Evadale fell. In the same instant rose the memory of a man whose impact in these parts will outlast that of those reading his story.
Ray Tarkington was born to Olli Ray and Edith Tarkington in Corsicana in 1940. He was raised on a farm in Chenango Forks, New York, and returned to Texas in time to be the valedictorian of the first graduating class of Evadale High School in 1958.
A few years later, the chemical engineering student at Lamar College swung by the Dixie Queen in Silsbee one evening to a meet a girl he was dating. For some reason, that girl didn’t want to see Ray Lee that night and hid behind a root beer barrel. Unfazed, Ray noticed another Dixie Queen server, a striking young woman with jet-black bouffant hair. He ordered a cherry vanilla Coke and asked Betty Jean Stuart if she wanted to go out. The Silsbee High School dance team Tigerette saw Ray’s smile, and when her shift was over, they went riding in Ray’s candy apple-red Corvair and listened to Elvis Presley. The ride lasted more than four decades.
Ray Lee and Betty Jean were married in 1963. Forty-three years later, that candy apple-red Corvair has grass peeking out through the hubcaps. During that time, four children have grown, along with Ray’s impeccable reputation for kindness, generosity and courage.
Betty Jean can’t count the number of times customers who needed work done came by the shop even though they couldn’t afford to make the payment, and Ray would tell her not to worry, because, “They’ll bring the money when they get it.”
That kind of thoughtfulness, by all accounts, is Ray Tarkington’s hallmark in the Silsbee-Evadale corridor.
You might have seen the way folks remembered him fondly in the television reports on Thursday night. They talked about his giving and forgiving nature, his friendship and patience, about his kindness and the sacrifices that he made for others as he worked 16 hour days seven days a week.
Now come inside the kitchen of the log home that Ray and his friends built from the ground up. Listen for a moment to the love that pours from the hearts he touched as freely as the winds that blew across Toledo Bend Lake, where Ray and Betty Jean loved to cast for catfish and white perch – the same kitchen where Betty -- arguably the better fisherperson -- would then fry up those catfish light as air. In this kitchen on the morning after Ray’s passing sit his wife, Betty, son, Danny, daughters, Melissa, Lisa and Carla, and good friend Jack Evans. They sob, laugh, and, of course, remember the decades that defined a life well-lived.
They remember …
The times he would shoot rifles with his friends, trying to meticulously get the powder and the bullet weight just right to be as accurate as possible;
His keen intelligence, insatiable curiosity and passion for long, opinionated talks about politics and religion;
How, when he came home from work, his children would wait at the end of Bussy Road, jump up and down when they saw him and climb onto the hood of the Corvair as he slowly cruised into the driveway. And how he would emerge from the car with candy bars for the kids. “Sometimes it’d be a Kit Kat or Reese’s Pieces,” Carla remembers. “Or Choco-lite or a Marathon bar,” says Melissa.
How he earned a black belt in the martial arts; how he loved to watch Clint Eastwood movies; and how, just recently, he was working on an A-frame he owned across a bridge from Jack’s camp at the lake.
They talk about his humor. “When he was teaching me to drive, he told me I better listen to him because he’d driven more miles backward than I’d ever drive forward,” one daughter remembers.
And they recall his humility. Ask Ray Lee Tarkington how things were going, someone remembers, and he’d have a ready answer: “Oh, it’s the same old rat race -- and the rats are winning!”
Someone in the kitchen takes out a letter dated October, 1994. It is from one of Ray’s daughters, then 27 years old, who wrote about Ray’s talent as a father:
“He never told me I couldn’t do anything … In many ways, he has been the driving force behind my endeavors, both professionally and academically. We have never been comfortable financially and my father has always felt he failed us somehow in this regard. But I don’t see it that way. He was able to support me in a way that was much more important – he encouraged me to read, to study, to practice and perform everything as close to perfect as I could.”
It’s no wonder his children have gone on to professional success in medicine, manufacturing and journalism, and, more importantly, as parents who have given Ray and Betty Jean seven grandchildren. One of those grandchildren, in fact, the eldest, Victoria, singled out “paw-paw” out as her champion in a grade-school writing assignment, noting that her hero was not Superman, but a “gray-headed man” who “welds for a living to pay the bills and because he simply loves to weld.”
In that grade-school essay, Victoria wrote about the “brown shirt and blue jean pants” that the long-time member of Pipefitters Local 195 wore at work, and the “welding hood, gloves and boots” that “protect him from sparks and hot objects.”
No boots or hoods or gloves could have protected him from the blast Thursday morning, a blast that would have leveled even Superman. But no explosion can deny Ray Lee Tarkington the magnificent legacy he leaves behind.
Just look at those hands, the hands of a man who served his community, honored his nation, revered his God, exemplified the highest standards of his craft, supported his friends and loved his family.
In addition to Betty and the four children mentioned in this obituary, Ray Tarkington is survived by seven grandchildren: Victoria Tarkington, Clint Tarkington, Tanner Tarkington, Carley Shutter, Cris Gelman, Shelby Tarkington and Taylor Shutter; he is survived as well by Melissa’s husband, Mitch Gelman, Carla’s husband, William Shutter, and Danny’s wife, Jill Tarkington.
The pallbearers at his funeral at 2 p.m. today at the First Baptist Church of Silsbee, are James Fuque, Emilio Gutierrez, Calvin Hough, Isaac Primrose, Earl Holmes, James Wright, Carl Evans, William Deville and Chris Enderle. Honorary pallbearers are Tim Foxworth, Billy Knoblock, Glen Conner, Billy Mike Bruce, Jamie Bennette, Bill Burrell, James Raglin and Rex Tousha.
In lieu of flowers, please send donations to help establish the Ray Tarkington Scholarship for Applied Sciences at Evadale High School. Send donations to: Ray Tarkington Scholarship Fund, P.O. Box 1227, Silsbee, Texas 77656
