~it was how we were brought up and how we intend to stay~

Charles Nathan Renfro was not even yet 28 years of age when he died after being injured in a freak accident one summer afternoon in August of 1908.  As a section hand for the railroad, Charles was simply doing his job alongside the tracks when a bunker door on one of the refrigerator units slipped loose as the train sped by him.  The nearly 100 pound door hit him atop his head causing massive head injuries.  He was placed upon a railroad handcart and taken to town where the doctor realized that nothing could be done to save him.  In the hours following his accident, he was laid in his bed at home to wait for what would surely be certain death.

Late in the evening of the same day, Charles Renfro died.  He left a young 26-year old wife, a 3-year old little boy named Jack, and another 1-year old son named Charles.

Mike has been working on his ancestry, having taken the spit test for a DNA sample just as I did earlier last fall.  He already knew a little bit about Charles Renfro, his great-grandfather.  When we arrived in Texas in 2015, Mike's late Aunt Margaret Renfro Hutchins told us about him and a few of the sad circumstances surrounding his death.  It was always interesting to read and learn more about him through research on ancestry.  When he came upon a story of the accident, now nearly 110 years ago, it was with sadness that both of us realized how quickly his very young life was cut short.  Forever frozen in time as a 27-year old, the only way that Mike would ever know much about his Great-Grandfather Renfro would be to read as much about him as he could and to do yet one more special thing.

Mike had the desire to visit his grave someday.
Yesterday was that day.

We made the early morning trip to the IOOF Cemetery in Denton, Texas to find his grave and that of Mike's great-grandmother, Sally Renfro Hackleman.  We weren't sure where we would locate it but we knew that it shouldn't be all that hard, or at least we hoped!  It was Mike who spotted the graves first and as he called me over, I noticed the look on his face.  It was one of happiness and joy, something akin to meeting up with someone for the first time in a joyous family reunion, albeit in the city cemetery.  

The cemetery, located literally in the middle of Denton, Texas is only 116 miles away from us here along the Red River.  When great-grandfather was buried, chances are good his body was placed into a pine box and loaded on a wagon for the trip to the cemetery.  In 1908, the cemetery was outside of town in a quiet and peaceful setting.  In this the summer of 2018, well over 100 years later, the town of Denton has grown up all around his burial place, with the noisy traffic of I-35 going by in the distance. 

Times have changed.

I watched Mike as he paid his respects to them and could tell that his heart had been touched by being able to make this unlikely connection to a man who was born and died 50 years before Mike was even born.  Before we left, both of us walked around the cemetery a bit and stopped to read some of the gravestones that we saw, many of which were as old or even older than Great-Grandfather Renfro's was.  In as much as Mike and I are very different at times from one another, we do share one common character trait.

We believe in paying our respects and giving honor to the dead.
It is how we were brought up and how we intend to stay.

As Mike and I have gotten older, both of us realize the importance of knowing where we came from, and how we got our start in this life of ours.  Making the long journey to the cemetery was one way of finding out just who Mike is and whose blood indeed runs through him.  He never knew Charles and Sallie, but one thing shall forever remain the truth.

Their lives mattered to many people back then.
Their lives still matter today.
Mike Renfro can attest to that.