EAST BATON ROUGE — The Chapman family was always in communication with each other, every single day. Gary Sr., 87, and Marianne Chapman, 83, had three sons, and even after they were grown, out of the house, and starting families of their own, Gary Jr., Steve, and Jeff, they always stayed in touch.
“They lived in Centerville, and they can get service at their house for about a mile. Then cell phone service disappears until they get too close to Clinton,” Gary Jr. explained. “So he would call us as he’s pulling out of the driveway, and we would talk until he lost signal, and then when he got signal, and he’d call us back, just pick up where he left off.”
But on Dec. 18, the Chapman men got a call they never expected to receive. “I get a phone call. It’s my mother, and I assumed it was them. That they got signal again. But her voice was faint, and she said, ‘Gary, we just had an accident,'” Gary Jr. recalled.
The crash
Gary Sr. and Marianne’s SUV crashed into the back of an 18-wheeler on Joor Rd. near Lovett Rd. in Central.
“I was there in probably less than 10 minutes. I got there as they were taking my mother out of the car and putting her on a gurney. I spoke to her just briefly, and never did get to see my father. They had already they were working on him, giving him CPR,” Gary Jr. said.
Gary Sr. was rushed to a hospital, where doctors called his time of death, but the Chapmans believe he was probably killed instantly at the scene.
“Daddy was old, but he was still a capable driver. So I never really expected him to go that way. But, you know, I can’t say we didn’t have concerns. But it was, it was just a shock,” Steve said.
Marianne died on Dec. 26 from her injuries. “In the hospital, we were led to believe she was somewhat improving but when they brought her in, her whole body was broken,” Gary Jr. said. “Trauma teams go into their trauma mode and start fixing things, and we never really got a chance to sit down and assess an overall situation with the team.”
“The doctors said that they were very optimistic that she would be able to walk again, so we were going on that,” he said. “But then, after being in the hospital for five or six days, she had six or seven surgeries during that time, and multiple organ system failures.”
“The prognosis for the quality of life for our mother, and we know our mother, we know what she would want and what she wouldn’t want,” Gary Sr. said. “Not being able to be mobile, not even being able to read a book or look at pictures of her grandchildren and great grandchildren, that’s no kind of life. So that’s when we made the decision to stop the intervention of all the surgeries.”
A long history
Gary Sr. and Marianne’s love story started decades ago. “My father was a lifelong retailer. He and my mom met in 1960,” Gary Jr. said. He said his father was the assistant manager at a store called Woolworth, where his mother started to work.
“The story we’ve been told our whole life, we don’t know the accuracy of it, but we believe it’s pretty close,” Gary Jr. said. “They knew each other for a very short time, two weeks or three weeks, something like that. Then he got transferred to Memphis to run another Woolworth store up there. After a short amount of time, he called her up on the phone, said, ‘Hey, would you come up to Memphis and marry me?’ So she got on the train, went up there and married him on his lunch hour. She went to his apartment. He went back to work.”
That was February 13, 1961, and the couple had been together ever since. “In February, it would have been 65 years.”
“My parents did literally everything together. They had very little outside interest,” the sons recalled. “They had a few friends. My father has a few friends that he’s had for a long time, but they didn’t have separate friends from each other. If they had friends, it was a couple who was a friend of theirs. And they never spent time apart. The two were a team. They were always together.”
Gary Sr. and Marianne even started their own business together in the 1970s, which is still open today. They owned Plant World Hardware and Nursery on Greenwell Springs Rd. “They were part of the community. They were there a long time,” Gary Jr. said. “It’s rare to find people that just stay somewhere and just stick it out through the good times and the bad times.”
“I know for me, there’s a measure of comfort in knowing that they spent their whole life together, and my mother probably would have been miserable without my father, had he gone before her and she was left,” Gary Jr. said. “I just don’t see her with a lot of purpose in her life, and I think that the same for him. If she had gone first, he would have been a ship without a rudder.”
“We’re a very faith filled family. We love the Lord and and we believe that there is a future and that there’s going to be something better for them,” he said. “That’s what brings me joy and comfort, knowing that they’re in the arms of Jesus right now.”
Staying connected
Steve Chapman has lived in the Washington, D.C. area for 35 years, and would visit a few times a year. “We had a remarkable run on the telephone from the early 90s when I got my first cell phone, up until they died,” Steve said. “I’d get in my truck, and I left for work very early. And I was an hour ahead of them on East Coast time, and I was their alarm clock for probably 25 years. That was amazing. I’d call and I’d literally wake up either mom or dad, whoever picked up the phone first, and we had some wonderful conversations.”
“For me, the hardest thing is, every time I get in my truck, I want to call them, and I can’t,” Steve said.
“That’s something for me, too,” Gary Jr. said. “I knew every time my phone rings, it would be them. I changed my ring tone. I learned so much from my parents.”
“I knew this day would come. I never expected to get the call of an accident,” Jeff said. “After Gary called me, I called Mama’s phone back a minute or two later, and a real nice lady that said she was a nurse talked to me and told me about how severe the situation was.”
“I feel honored to have been their boy for 61 years,” Jeff said.
Living on
Gary Sr. and Marianne’s three sons are all close in age. “No sisters. Steve and I are born one year apart on the same day, and Jeff came 18 months after that,” Gary Jr. said. “So mama had all three of us in diapers at once.”
“Mama did a great job of teaching us so many things. I know my wife couldn’t believe when we got married that I knew how to make up a bed, I knew how to iron my clothes, I could cook food,” Gary Jr. said.
As the three sons grew up and started their own families, Gary Sr. and Marianne became grandparents and great-grandparents. “So there’s 18 grandchildren, and then there’s, so far, there’s 19 great-grandchildren,” Steve said. “Jeff, still has kids having babies. One is pregnant, about to have a baby anytime now. And two of mine just got married this year.”
When the three Chapman sons think back on their parents lives and their own, they realize how lucky they were. “We were all three, just so blessed to have them for parents. Because it’s rare today to see parents who are together for 65 years,” Gary Jr. said. “We were taught that family stays together and you work through the tough times.”
“The three of us as brothers, we’re still close. We talk, I talke to my brothers almost every day,” Gary Jr. said. “And that’s rare today. And so family was so important to us growing up, and it’s still important to us.”
Final goodbye
Gary Sr. and Marianne’s services are being held tomorrow, Dec. 30 at Luke 10:27 Church in Denham Springs at 11 a.m. It is open to the public and everyone is welcome.
The family will hold a private burial service later this week.
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