E.M. Forster’s elegant dictum — “only connect” — has moved me for many years, and had me trying, sometimes quixotically, sometimes desperately, to make all possible connections in my often slap-dash life. One I recently made astonished me, and made me, I’m sure, ridiculously proud.
I saw a movie I’d missed, now five or six years old. It was “Lincoln,” by Steven Spielberg. I caught it by accident on television. I was deeply moved by it — and it fired a memory.
It seems like 100 years ago that I was an acolyte at St. John’s Church in Lafayette Square, Washington, D.C. To this day, it is known as The Church of The Presidents, and every president since James Madison has made at least one appearance there. The sexton of the church in my day was a very old, very beautiful African-American gentleman named Arthur Butler. Whenever a president showed up, followed by a gaggle of senators and representatives, it was Butler who greeted them and told them where to sit. His tact was such that if you were seated by him, no matter where it was, you felt you had the best seat in the house. And Butler refused to let in the Secret Service. They cooled their heels outside.
Butler’s father had been sexton before him, and Butler became sexton in 1891, when his father died. By the 1940s he was actually running the place, though probably thanks to racism, that fact was seldom acknowledged.
Among his more mundane tasks as sexton, however, was taking the altar boys (me, for instance!) in hand and teaching them a modicum of decorum. How not to look bored or fall asleep during the sermon was a hot topic, and involved subtle techniques for pinching oneself under one’s robe, while looking bright-eyed and interested. Smiling beatifically at one’s parents was encouraged. It said, “See? I LOVE what you made me do!”
The whole time I knew him, he had a thing about shaking hands “like a gentleman.” He figured he was about 6 or 7 when the Civil War was at its height (which made him easily in his 90s when I was an altar boy). His father always sent him out on Sunday with the wooden box to place under the door to the presidential carriage, so that President and Mrs. Lincoln, who were regular communicants at St. John’s, could step easily down into the churchyard. He told me Lincoln would always hand him a coin, ruffle his hair and shake hands with him. (He saved the coins all his life!)
“And he had the biggest hand I ever shook, child! Strong, warm and gentle! That’s what I want you to remember, David. Never try and bone-crush somebody to show how manly you are! No sir! You show your true strength when you imitate Lincoln; a great, great man, you know. Firm but gentle! Like this! (And here he demonstrated.) Do not forget!”
I remember how I loved Arthur Butler, one of the heroes of my youth. Although Jim Crow held sway in D.C. his whole life, he rose above all that. He always carried himself with dignity and grace. We white altar boys practically worshipped the ground he walked on. When he died in 1957, he was at least 100.
I had not thought of him in years, sadly. But that movie! Suddenly, I made a connection. I realized I have often shaken the hand of a man who regularly shook hands with Abraham Lincoln! How many old guys still kicking can say that?
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