Posted on by Harry Whitt

Daddy Bought a Nissan

My daddy was born in 1914 in the ridges of Northeast Alabama. He was deserted by his father when he was a school-age boy and “raised” by his single mother in the midst of the Great Depression. He was raised dirt-poor.

My Aunt Helon, tells about their childhood and what a great shot my Daddy was with a gun. She said he would leave the house with a shotgun and a couple of shells. In a little bit, they would hear a gun shot and she would tell her mother, “Mama, we’ll have meat tonight!”

Daddy finished the ninth grade and my mother finished the sixth grade. She was the daughter of a sharecropper couple whose only piece of ground would be their burial plot.

My father, T. V. Whitt during World War II.

My parents were married when my mother was sixteen and they started having babies. My first two sibling were born before World War II. Because of my Daddy’s age, he was drafted later in the war which allowed him to get a job at Goodyear in Gadsden before he was drafted. He resumed work with them after the war. This allowed my Dad and Mother to climb out of poverty, even though depression era mindsets still prevailed. My two other brothers and I were post war babies (boomers) bringing the number to five children.

The war took two years out of my Daddy’s life, away from his family. He fought the Japanese in Okinawa. I have seen him shed tears over the boys who never returned but he came back alive and physically whole. We were blessed.

Our family home built after the war and my home until I was twenty-two and married.

Years later in his last decade of life, my Daddy owned a Nissan Sentra. He loved that little car. It was his last car to drive and the one from which we had to pull his keys to keep him from killing someone. Much later, when his thinking was sparse and scattered, he would still ask me about “my little car”.

One day, I was driving him to a doctor’s appointment, and I asked him a loaded question. I said, “Daddy, have you ever thought it strange that you fought the Japanese on Okinawa and here you are owning a Japanese car?” He looked at me straight on and emphatically said, “I’ve never even thought about it!” He seemed surprised that he had not thought of it. That moved me. Dad was not one who just let things go, oh no! But he had put this behind him.

Here was this ole country boy, who had probably never crossed the Alabama line until the war. He had been plucked from his young family and carried to the other side of the world to fight with people who looked and lived quite differently than him. He came home from that battle with the future in his mind not the past. When he came home; he hugged his little plump wife, kissed the faces of his two young children, and stepped into his future and ours. He loved his family more than he hated his enemies. “Bless his heart”, he would even buy one of their cars!

If you live in the past, you will end up hating your enemies more than you love your children.

Yours on the Journey,

Harry L. Whitt

**Just so you know, I drive a Toyota Camry and cut my grass with a Kubota lawnmower. We love the Japanese and everyone!!! And we love our children too!!!

22 Replies to “Daddy Bought a Nissan”

  2. On Harry I loved sitting on that porch with your Dad. Our visits were always water board business but turned into so much more. Your sweet mother always welcomed me. One day my oldest son came with me. Your Dad knew my grandfather McClendon when they were young. He thought Kevin looked just like him at a younger age. I can see it now. He also told me many stories about my Dad. I’m so glad I had the privilege of getting to know him. He was a special man.
    Becky Brady

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  3. I didn’t know your Daddy until late in his life, but I thought the world of him. The Whitt Reunion wouldn’t have been the same or maybe not at all without him. He was a wonderful man. Happy Father’s Day to you, too. 😊❤

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  8. Great read! Such a blessing to you and your siblings for him to leave his past in his past, and focus on y’all/his future! I know many that should do the same.

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  9. I have also enjoyed this short life to gather. I have many memories of T. V. Whitt as it-often. reminds me of my upbringing and my life experiences with my dad and the times during the war years when my dad was employed at republic steel but he got a draft extension because of the need for the metal he ran for building tanks. We have both been blessed by our upbringing by God fearing dads and their strict discipline.

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  10. Honor thy Father and thy Mother that thy days may be long upon the land that the Lord thy God give thee. The 1st commandment with a promise. You truly honored both your parents and loved them. God Bless!

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  11. Gosh, you really know how to touch the heart with your writings! Thank you for telling us these stories. You really are a rock for our family! Love you always, Ging.

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