Some Have Left A Name

My grandfather, Wesley Crosby Ellis, was a man of insatiable curiosity. He grew up in Selma during the Great Depression, losing his father when he was just five. This left his mother, Mattie, to raise alone her six children.

My grandfather loved languages. As a teenager, he took it upon himself to study Spanish and Russian, among other tongues. He loved music. Even into his 90s, he played the organ for a small church in Opelika, Alabama. He didn’t need much. He left more than he took. He traveled the world. He made his way to Germany in 1985 to celebrate the 300^th birthdays of Bach and Handel. The first Christmas after the fall of the Soviet Union, he spent with a family in Slovakia, eventually writing a book on that special experience. For a period of two years, he lived in a city in Mexico called San Miguel de Allende. He had friends the world over. He was easy-going. He told me that the best travel happens when you don’t make much of a plan. One of his unique curiosities, though, was an interest in his family tree, and its history. He did extensive research on his ancestry, and kept strong relations with cousins all over the country. His magnum opus in this realm was a 300-page memoir he put together, with detailed information on our family dating back to the 9th century, up to the present day. He dedicated it to his daughter, my aunt, Peggy Ellis Campbell, who died unexpectedly on August 18, 2006. He titled this book Some Have Left A Name.

I mention this appreciation of his because it reminds me of a common trait I find in older people: they seem to have a heightened inclination for saying someone’s name. Let me clarify, because I know you know what I’m talking about. Ask a 30-year-old what they did for Labor Day last year, and they’ll tell you they went to the lake with some friends. Ask a 70-year-old what they did for Labor Day in 1982, and they’ll tell you the first and last names of all ten friends with whom they spent the weekend. It’s endearing to me. On the surface, there’s no reason why I need to know the names of these people I’ll never meet. It’s not necessarily relevant to the story I’m impatiently waiting to hear, once all the characters have been announced. But there’s something more to this than funny peculiarity. The reason (I think) that old people are more likely than young people to take the time to list out everyone by first and last name (and maybe a side story regarding some decades-old gossip) is because as they’ve lived, loved, cried, and laughed over the course of 70 years, they’ve begun to appreciate the fleeting nature of life. They have moved past the youthful naïveté that sees life as never-ending. They’ve grasped the heart-tugging reality that the time we have together is not so vast. They know there’s an end, and they want to leave something behind. They want you to remember the name. Next time someone begins a story with a long list of people you’ll never meet, understand the place from which they come. See it as the love they have for the people who shaped them. Recognize that one day, four decades from now, a friend you saw this weekend may utter your name to their nephew, their granddaughter, their coworker… and that stranger will know your name. They’ll know you mattered, that you lived, that long ago, you left a stamp on the soul of the person standing in front of them. Next time you have this listening opportunity, hear what their wisened heart is proclaiming:

“Hey. I was here. My friends were here. We made wonderful lives together, and they are heroes to me. I want to tell you their names.”

Cheers to a couple heroes of mine: Graham and Becca Spain, who tied the knot in stellar fashion on Labor Day weekend, 2025. Theirs are names I’ll utter for decades to come.