Woodrow Null

Funeral services for Woodrow Null will be 10:00 a.m., Friday, October 29, 2010 at Hardin Chapel Methodist Church with interment to follow at Hardin Chapel Cemetery. The family will receive friends from 5:00 to 9:00 p.m., Thursday evening at Pace-Stancil Funeral Home in Dayton. Pallbearers are Wendell Null, Calvin Null, Shane Neal, Steve Null, Cecil Cunningham, Kenneth Fulkerson and Larry Hanson. Honorary pallbearer will be C.L. Null, Jr.

On Feb 4, 1919 Woodrow Null became a son to John Adams Null Jr. and Bell Arlt Null in Muldoon, Texas. He was their last child of many.

His home was a farm nearby. He had brothers named John, Perry, Roy, Elzie, Ralph, and Richard. His sisters were Carrie Bell (Ledbetter), Thelma, Maude (Cunningham) and Mae (Fulkerson). All are all gone now - but hundreds of nephews, nieces, children, grandchildren and great grand children of theirs live throughout the world.

His family was large and prosperous then. He went on cattle drives to San Antonio with his father and brothers and told of the day in the 1920s that his father brought home a car. He remembered the thrill of riding in a new Ford with his parents and sisters across their pasture. There was land and cattle and grass.

In 1932, when he was 13, his father died and his home burned. The remaining family became part of the nation’s poverty. His brothers built his mother, sisters and him another home. They toiled, in fields every day as the land and cattle they owned dwindled and their grass became dust. He reached the seventh grade in a one room school while his mother sold produce, eggs, butter and chickens to sustain them. Thelma died but the remaining three survived.

He joined the Civilian Conservation Corps at 18 and again worked all over central Texas to send home money. His mother saved it all for him. Then in 1941 he became a warrior.

Eighteen months he spent in Dutch Harbor building air bases and battling caribou for passage to the mess. When he was sent home he thought he was free and told his sweetheart Gloria he would survive.

Then one day in 1944 he became a combat infantryman in France. And, it was very different from Alaska. He was in the Third Army, which he noted in those days was not a volunteer position. He walked, fought and watched many, many men die until he reached Belgium. He nearly froze to death but he survived the ice and bullets in the Battle of the Bulge. He told his son there was more carnage than he thought could exist on Earth there. He said he pitied his enemy and regretted their deaths every day.

One morning, on a cellar stair, maybe in France or Germany—he could not remember -- a desperate boy with a machine gun killed all the men in front of him and shot him through the hand. He unloaded his weapon down the stairs, flung the remaining portion of the hand after the casings and fell into the street. He spent the last weeks of the war in a hospital in Luxemburg, squeezing a tennis ball.

After the hospital he began preparing for another invasion – this time in the Pacific. Then one day it stopped and the men were told they could go home. He often told his son that the Statue of Liberty is the most beautiful sight on Earth, especially from the East.

In 1945 he became a husband to the girl who waited all that time, Gloria. He had loved her since she was fourteen but her father did not love him - then. Claude was upset and called him out - and a thief of his daughter. But Woodrow and Gloria slept for 64 years in the same bed. And eventually Claude did love him.

In 1954 Woodrow became a father to his son Wendell and again in 1956 to a daughter named Lawanna. He loved his wife and children as much as a mortal can love another can and it showed in his eyes and when his hand touched them.

He opened his own business in Liberty with his brother in law Raymond Cunningham and from that place he provided a good and safe home for his family. He gave them more than he had ever dreamed of in things but more importantly, in his view, an education.

As the years passed he carefully cultivated countless friendships with people in Liberty and Hardin. He valued them all dearly and looked forward to each day of work so he could see them. He was part of the community and a Master Mason in the Hull Lodge. He was an Elk, a Lion, a Better Businessman, a VFW member, and a member of the Military Order of the Purple Heart. He engaged in as much local activity as he could afford. A Texaco service station owner was not an affluent or abundant position in life, if monetary wealth is viewed as a measure.

By 1976 their children were gone. Woodrow and Gloria moved to Silver Creek Texas to be with their remaining family. There he was active in his church in Burnet and soon cultivated another large and loving group of friends. In time, his grandchildren Shane Neal and later Sarah Null were born, both on January 26th – his and Gloria’s anniversary. And he became a grandfather.

Twenty five years passed and the relatives of his generation slowly left him behind. He grew older and at 85 could no longer see well enough to drive or work. By then he had been shot, stabbed, blown up, burned, had an ear cut severed, breast cancer, prostate cancer and a triple bypass. He never complained about any of it and he survived.

The last few years he and Gloria spent in an assisted living home in Waco and the last few weeks they shared a room in a nursing home there. He hated captivity but understood it and, again, never complained.

Last Saturday afternoon he drifted off to sleep. Monday afternoon with his daughter and wife by his side he became a spirit.

And – perhaps-- in an instant his spirit was hurled beyond the work and war and people and even the stars -- and all else beyond this world we do not know or understand. At the far edge of the universe, hopefully, with all those like him, who came before him at his side, his spirit was allowed to touch the face of God and receive the peace and enlightenment that he believed to be Heaven. And that was Woodrow Null’s life.