My Uncle George

George Bertram Shirley Payton died 15 years ago at age 91. My mom’s younger brother, he was the last of his generation in the Payton family. He was only down for a few days before he died, with Joanna, his wife of 30 years by his side.

He was my favorite uncle even though he lived 5,000 miles away across an ocean in a place I left for good at age 10. Yet, I always felt  in touch with this guy.

George was a mechanical kid. For a time, he had such a love affair going with his hammer that he called it his “boodle doo” and took it to bed with him every night. His skills came in handy as his dad died when he was only four. My mom loved to tell about George’s leg poking through a hole in the kitchen ceiling, the result of a little repair work he was doing in the bathroom above.

When I was three, he was part of the British Army retreating from Dunkirk during World War II. “When do you think George will be home?” my mother asked my grandmother. Before she could answer, I blurted out, “I think never,” sending my mother into a flood of tears.

“Don’t be ridiculous, she’s only a child,” granny said.

George arrived home a few days later with only a towel, a pair of pants and a pair of socks to his name. In those pants was a water-soaked 10-pound note which I kept for years. He spent the rest of the war in India and Burma. He came home with malaria and a hat that my brother and I thought was the coolest. We called it his “Burma Hat.”

In India, George’s commanding officer wasn’t much of a letter writer. He assigned George to write to his wife. George must have done a masterful job because when the war was over, he went to see Peggy and before very long she was “in a family way.” My cousin, Georgina, was nine months old before Peggy was officially divorced and she and George could marry.

An engineer by training, George was not well enough to work for several months when the war was over. He spent his time researching our family tree back to 1712, recorded it in precise printing on a huge piece of blueprint paper. I own it still, though it is in serious need of updating.

George golfed until he was 86. His pleasure in the game was only exceeded by his delight in the friends he played with. He stood by Peggy as she struggled with cancer but after her death he had a tough time pulling himself out of a depression. “I’m sending you off on a cruise to the West Indies,” Gina said. He went.

Joanna Rodriguez, a widow and travel agent from Mexico City, was aboard. By the time the cruise had ended, Joanna had agreed to visit George in England. When the visit was over, they headed back to Mexico to marry. The ceremony almost didn’t take place because George could not provide the necessary documentation—Peggy’s death certificate. “Ah, time is short, we must marry,” Joanna insisted and somehow the ceremony was performed.

Settling into a place so far from home and so culturally different cannot have been easy for Joanna but she came to love England. Making George happy was a joy for her.

When George married, he announced his retirement from an engineering firm. He was 61.  “Being married to Joanna is going to be a full-time job,” he promised. And it was.

Once when we visited, George said he could not go out to dinner because he’d had a tooth pulled that day and would not be able to eat.

“Ah, Georgito, come along.” Jo said. “Maybe you eat a little.” When the food appeared, George tucked in like there was no tomorrow, the extraction totally forgotten.

English cars are small, so we went to the restaurant in two of them. I was in the one that George drove. On the way home he got lost and his comments about himself and the situation had us in gales of laughter. George joined in. “If you don’t stop, I’ll wet my knickers,” he said. We laughed some more.

George was famous for getting lost—in London’s Heathrow Airport and in Birmingham where he was a major stockholder in the family jewelry business. George just did not do directions.

He liked to wear a tie around his wait instead of a belt. He liked to sleep at the end of the garden in a little summer house when the temperature rose above 80 degrees.

The first time he saw me as a adult, after many years apart he said, “Oh, I expected you to look, well, matronly.”

He was an unforgettable uncle.