James Charles “J.C.” Payne
When I was a kid, I enjoyed seeing my mother’s cousin J.C. park his car at the curb and, clutching a couple of greasy bags, transport his bow-legged self to our front porch. Sometimes, the bags contained White Castle hamburgers; other times, Krispy Kreme doughnuts.
This was Louisville, Kentucky, in the 1960’s, when fast-food was a rare treat rather than a working mom’s reliable go-to. He seemed to get a kick out of treating my brother and me, not only to less-nutritious fare, but to an occasional ride downtown to sit in the dark all afternoon in one of the city’s grand movie palaces.
All I really knew about J.C. back then was that he was a jockey and a bachelor who lived with his mother, known to us as Aunt Pearlie. He also had a big crush on Nancy Sinatra, who performed These Boots Are Made for Walkin’ in mini-skirts and boots. When she was to appear on the Ed Sullivan Show, J.C. would abandon us, saying he had to go home and get cleaned up for Nancy.
Although he drifted into my memory occasionally, I don’t recall seeing him once I passed out of childhood. And then, shortly after I graduated from college in 1976, I learned from my mother that J. C. — once the occasion of spontaneous pleasures for my brother and me — had killed himself by “eating glass.”
James Charles “J.C.” Payne and my mother were first cousins. His father, Joe Payne, and her mother, Mary Ann Payne, were among seven siblings born in the latter part of the 1800’s to an illiterate, club-footed farmer named Oliver Payne, and his wife, Sarah, in Allen County, Kentucky. The seven children were left motherless when, in 1912, Sarah died from consumption. Three years later, Oliver succumbed to coronary heart disease. Joe Payne was an orphan at 17.
At age 20, Joe set out to create another family for himself; he married Pearl Elizabeth Shaw, also 20, the daughter of a Monroe County, Kentucky farmer. Like Joe, Pearlie suffered an early, significant loss; her mother died of the Spanish flu in 1918, when her daughter was 18.
The newly-wed Paynes left rural Kentucky for Louisville, where Joe found work as a sawyer (woodcutter). There, Pearlie gave birth to one son and two daughters: J.C. was the middle child.
Joe’s role as husband, father and provider ended all too soon. In 1928, at age 30, he died of acute hepatitis, leaving Pearlie with three children under the age of seven. The 1930 census suggests Pearlie managed by sharing her home on Erie Avenue with her brothers — Ray, a cabinet maker; Haskle, a machinist; and sister Bessie, who earned wages wrapping butter in a creamery.
Nine years a widow, Pearlie married again in 1937. Edgar V. Meunier had been divorced from his wife of a dozen years only 22 days when he and Pearlie exchanged vows. J.C., then 13, and his sisters had a new step-father. The 1940 census shows the family living on a farm in Jefferson County, where, at 15, J.C. was enrolled in school, having completed the sixth grade.
As a teenager, J.C. found employment as an attendant in filling stations and parking lots and, later, in the Brown-Forman Distillery in Louisville. In March 1943, he enlisted in the Army at Fort Benjamin Harrison in Indiana; he was discharged in March 1946, having served as a private first class in the North Atlantic Division’s Air Transport Command.
The enlistment record provides a physical description of the 18-year-old: He was blond with blue eyes and, at 5-feet-5-inches, he weighed 100 pounds. Clearly, he was a slight man, but a little taller than the average jockey. According to Horse-Sport magazine, a typical jockey is 5-feet-2 and weighs 113 pounds.
Despite family lore, it’s likely J.C.’s association with horse racing was more aspirational than actual. There is no evidence he was a jockey. The 1950 census does show he worked as “an exercise boy” in a racing stable. Then 25, he was sharing a house with Gordon Potter, 20, a trainer linked to multiple winning horses, including Crimson Satan, a competitor in each of the 1962 Triple Crown races. The horse placed sixth that year in the Kentucky Derby.
Racehorses likely brought J.C. and Potter together, but their turbulent love lives may explain why they shared a house in 1950. The census lists Potter as “separated” from his spouse, while J.C. is identified as “divorced.” Despite online access to marriage documents and local newspapers, I have found no record of a marriage.
Years ago, when I asked my mother if J.C. had ever married, she told me with comical exasperation that she thought he had once eloped on a Friday and filed for divorce the following Monday. True or not, it speaks to her impression of him as whimsical, as not fully adult in his life choices. Maybe that’s what appealed to me; as a kid, I liked the kid in him.
As an adult, I have occasionally re-visited what my mother told me about J.C.’s horrifying end — that he killed himself by eating glass. I was 22 years old when she called me long distance to tell me the news of his death. It was, of course, the “how?” that stuck.
I’ve lived for decades believing my cousin was a jockey who chose a ghastly way to die. I set out to write this piece to bring him back to life for myself — remembering his kindness to me as a child — but inevitably, I also needed to discover the truth about him. Was he really a jockey? Did he actually commit suicide by eating glass?
I’m content knowing that J.C. worked in Louisville’s horse industry. That and his slight stature may have encouraged folks to think he was a jockey, despite evidence to the contrary. Perhaps he chose not to correct any misconceptions.
As for J.C.’s cause of death, I could not return to my original source to ask more questions; my mother is gone now. And so, I called her last living first cousin, who lives 13 miles from where J.C. is buried. Her story differed from my mother’s: She said J.C. had bought a horse — “put a lot of money into it” — and something happened to the horse. And so, she said, “He shot himself.”
I struggled with that discrepancy, then explained it to myself: J.C. was despondent and turned a gun on himself. Instead of dying, he woke in a hospital room in Louisville and, in desperation, looked for a second opportunity. He broke a bedside water glass and swallowed the shards.
Is that possible? I wondered. Is that really how he died?
It was time to move beyond family stories and my own imagination. I applied to the Commonwealth of Kentucky’s Registrar for Vital Statistics for a copy of J.C.’s death certificate. It took about a month to arrive in my mailbox in Dallas.
James Charles “J.C.” Payne died from a cardiac arrest June 14, 1976, in Norton Children’s Hospital in Louisville. He had been under the care of Dr. Douglas David for eight years when, shortly after midnight on June 14, 1976, while hospitalized post-op, his heart stopped.
J.C. had undergone a carotid endarterectomy, a surgical procedure designed to remove plaque (fat and cholesterol build-up) from inside the carotid artery. That and an existing pacemaker are listed as contributing to his death. He was 51 years old.
Learning this was a relief. Now, when I think of J.C., it will only be in the context of surprise sliders and donuts, of an older cousin who went out of his way to delight a couple of kids. I wish I had a photograph of him. I know that, like my mother, he was fair. He favored light-colored shirts and slacks, and he liked big cars, something my mother attributed to his being short.
James Charles Payne lies in Akersville (KY) Cemetery among several generations of family on his mother’s side. Father Joe and mother Pearlie, who lived to be 91, also are buried there.
