R.I.P. Waymon

My family is full of family that “isn’t really family”. Sure, my mother’s mother was 1 of like 13 children and my dad was one of 1 of 4 brothers so there are a lot of branches to my family tree but it seems the branches I grew up knowing the most were the branches from other trees that simply grew until they were entangled with ours. I have a ton of cousins, most of which I don’t know and never really interacted with, while those most familiar to me are those who I share no “real” lineage.

A perfect example are my cousins Angie and Melissa. They are cousins by marriage, not by birth. Their grandmother married my grandfather before any of us were born. We were raised as family. We were taught that we were cousins. I spent many summers hanging out with them and not other members of our family. Christmas was a major event when we all got together and did things as a family. I don’t have memories of things like that with most cousins that I share DNA with.

My point being, family isn’t always about who you share a bloodline with but rather who you connect with and who promotes that idea of family. Angie and Melissa’s parents never treated me or my brother as anything less than family. The four of us grew up together, creating strong familial bonds that connect us today, whereas I hardly speak to or could recognize most of my other cousins, many of which grew up in the same area as me. We just never had that relationship, maybe because I was far younger than many of them? Who knows.

But this isn’t about those members of my family. This post is here to honor Waymon Earl Gentry, another of my not-family family members.

But to understand Waymon’s impact on my family, I need to provide some way back history first.

My dad’s oldest brother Don was drafted in the 60s to server our nation in the growing Vietnam conflict. Regardless of your thoughts on the subject, Don did his duty. Unfortunately, in doing that duty he also lost his life. Reports were that he stepped on a landmine and succumbed to his injuries.

With Don’s passing, he left behind at home a wife (Glenda) and a very young daughter (Donna). In time, Glenda met another young man, Waymon Gentry, and the two fell in love. Waymon cared and provided for Donna as if she were his own but he never forgot or denied that Donna had a completely different side to her family. And so it became tradition that every year we would gather at my dad’s mother’s house to have a small Christmas celebration with Donna and her family. Waymon and Glenda went on to have two children of their own, Michelle and Keith, and so the cycle of being raised as family despite not really being one continued. We would all spend holidays, and even the occasional visits in the summer, hanging out.

Of course, when I was young I had no clue. I just knew them as “family” and “cousins”. It wasn’t until I was around 12 that the family tree and history was laid out bare for me. But even then I didn’t really think much about it. As a kid I took a lot of it for granted. I just knew people were coming over that I knew and that I might get to play and hangout with some older kids (because I was by far the youngest still). It was only a few years later with Keith’s untimely passing that I started to realize the sacrifices and dedication that Waymon had made all those years to make sure Donna was still a part of our family growing up.

Waymon and Glenda had no obligations to our family. Donna was so young when Don died that she would have had no clue that our side of the family existed until she was older. It would have been easy for Waymon and Glenda to focus on their family while forgetting ours but that’s not what either of them did. Every time I say Waymon he was smiling with a firm hand shake at the ready. While our families didn’t leave super close to one another, we were close enough that there were times aside from the holidays when we would get together. My brother and Waymon’s son Keith were close in age and stayed in contact even as we grew up and drifted off in our own directions.

When Keith was killed, my dad and I were at the courthouse during the trial every day to show our support and love for Waymon, Glenda, and the rest of the family who had lost someone special.

Waymon made sure that Donna did not lose more family after her father died. And instead, our family gained more people because I can’t imagine anyone saying that Waymon wasn’t family to us. This was a man who went above and beyond for a daughter that was and yet wasn’t his. Like Angie and Melissa’s parents who always treated me and my brother like family, Glenda and Waymon did too. We grew up feeling connected to their entire family, not just Donna.

With Waymon’s recent passing, our family just got a little bit smaller too.