CUT SHORT 3
Cordell West (1915–1932)
Cordell West was likely named after Cordell Hull, a Tennessean best known as FDR’s secretary of state. But the boy born in 1915 to Horace and Annie West of Route 3, Galen, Tennessee, was known at home only as Brother.
He earned that appellation in 1919 when he was 3 ½ and baby Helen arrived. Childhood playmates, the two attended a one-room school and the Baptist church, weeded their mother’s garden and picked up scraps at their father’s sawmill.
In the spring of 1931, Annie West, then 36, found herself pregnant with a late child. A few weeks later, Cordell, 15, was diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis. Over the next eight months, Annie watched her first-born waste away as her body swelled with her last-born. She gave birth Dec. 19, 1931.
Cordell had the honor of naming the newborn. He chose Wilma, a name popular in Germany and the Netherlands, but not in the boy’s small social circle. He knew his neighbors and the men who worked for his father. His grandmothers were named Elizabeth and Sarah; his mother’s full name was Mary Anne. Where did he encounter the name?
Wilma was never able to ask her brother that question. Six weeks after she was born, Cordell died. He was 16 years, 3 months, and 20 days old.
A fretful baby is no match for a grieving mother, so 12-year-old Helen stepped up, forging a strong sibling bond with Wilma that endured until her death. She never had children of her own.
A melancholy echo of Cordell permeated the house. His garrulous father told stories about the boy; hand-tinted images set in oval frames stood like tombstones on every surface. His schoolbooks and favorite cap went in a cedar chest.
Annie took to her bed for days with mysterious ailments. She grew increasingly fearful, forbidding Wilma the ordinary pleasures of riding a bike or wading a creek. When her only grandson was born in 1954, Annie loved him fiercely.
Wilma had a brother for 41 days. Naming her had been his legacy, and she honored it. She buried her parents next to him; until she died at 83, Wilma had flowers placed on Cordell’s grave every Memorial Day. And, whenever she spoke of him, she called him Brother.
