Oak Ridge, Tennessee May 1990.

I live temporarily in a “studio” of the old World War 2 apartments across from the Soup Kitchen.

The apartment complex is a study of the “Secret City’s” characters.

I am one in the ranks now.

Mr. McBee is a 90-year-old retired farmer and fellow pipe smoker in the apartment beside me.

Down the hall, our church pianist, Miss Alice, a former Ziegfield Girl, with a limited selection of wigs. She has one.

Nick, a Greek mathematician, is a distinguished, trim 70ish fellow who walks the 14-mile round trip to the lab daily. He cogitates as he walks.

And there I am. I have accepted a job as the director of information at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Over the several months it took my wife to sell the Hopkinsville, Kentucky house, I came to know and cherish these extraordinary personalities.

Mr. McBee walks to his wife’s memory care home daily.

Three miles up and around the hills and three miles back, he smokes a corn cob pipe stuffed with Sir Walter Raleigh and has the softest voice and kindest eyes.

We share a toddy weekly. Says it’s good for digestion.

He would tell me about his life and his wife, who billeted in the nursing home.

They had moved from their 200-acre farm in Mayfield, Kentucky, a few years before. Their granddaughter and her husband work at the “bum plant,” as the locals say.

An aerial photograph shows the manicured and tended Kentucky stead. He proudly displays the framed picture above his single bed with covers tucked and tight enough to bounce the proverbial quarter.

He is a slight man with erect shoulders, clean-shaven, and has neatly trimmed silver hair.

Slightly shorter than me, his personally hand-carved hickory cane militarily pressed overalls and work shirt contribute to an air of distinction. He prides himself on ironing all his clothes.

Like all us Southerners, he waves at everybody on his walkabouts, and most folks wave back.

Mr. McBee is a proud American and thankful to his Lord for sparing his life.

At 16 years old, he fell from his daddy’s tobacco barn rafters. Broke his neck.

The doctors at the big city hospital in Paducah said he would never walk again.

But there was this nurse who tended to him. Rebecca Ruth.

The old farmer smiles. She has auburn hair, sparkling green eyes, and pale skin as newly bucketed milk.

She is cute as a button.

The woman is like a little banty rooster, taking charge or best get out of the way type. She is angelic.

The nurse points her finger at me and says I need to see her daddy, the only chiropractor in Mayfield where cows almost outnumber the 4000 citizens in 1916.

That evening, her daddy picks her up and lays him in the back of his Ford truck. It has a covered bed and also serves as his milk delivery wagon.

It is the early days of Mayfield milk.

Mr. McBee lays in bed for the next 60 days at his family home, and the chiropractor comes to “adjust” him. Daily after work, Rebecca Ruth comes, too.

And, son, I am telling you I felt better every day.

He tells the same story with the same earnestness monthly.

He says he prayed a great deal as well.

On day 14, her daddy asked me to try moving my toes; by day 30, I was moving my legs and fingers. On the 14th of May, with the help of Rebecca Ruth and her daddy, I stood and started to walk slowly and without pain again.

Smiling broadly and with deep appreciation, I have been walking ever since.

He and Rebecca Ruth married on the 14^th of May the following year. That was 73 years ago.

He understands she has the “old timer’s” disease, which is not good, but says there is some good there, too.

Every day, she greets me with a big smile, and every day is like the first time we met.

They celebrated their 75th anniversary. We got an invitation.

Rebecca Ruth died on the 15^th of May of that year.

Mr. McBee joined her peacefully in his sleep the following May.