By B.K. Keller
My father walked over to a knot of party guests with his gin and tonic, and he was welcomed with the hospitality Southerners are famous for during cocktail hour.
“Tim, how the hell are you?” an ermine-draped, pearl-wearing lady asked.
“Why Tim, where’d you get that tie? Surely not Matthew’s? He’d never sell another SAE a rag like that!”
“What’s your wife got in the table jug tonight, Tim? Another ‘86 Chambertin?”
Tim and Vicki Keller hosted popular and well-attended parties for 30 years during the 80s, 90s, and 2000s in their large brick home overlooking the Tennessee River in Knoxville. My mother’s wine cellars were carefully curated and envied.
Big Tim got their attention all at once, like a lion tamer cracking a whip. With a snap, his houndstooth jacketed arm wrapped around one old fraternity brother’s shoulder, the other pointed a drink at the salutation he answered first, “Honey if I was doing any better they’d put me in jail.” His friends laughed.
“Tim, what is the story with this fellow here?” The pearled woman pointed a silken finger at the twelve-foot-tall portrait of a WWI fighter pilot they stood beneath. His chest is full of medals, and a holstered pistol above his striped, uniform pants. His goggles and flight helmet dangle from his right hand, like he just pulled them off. He’s got the look of a man unafraid to fight on a new war horse at the dawn of a terrifying age.
“That’s my Great Uncle Russel, he was an Ace in the First World War. In France in 1917, his commanding officer told him he was going to fly against the Red Baron, who’d been spotted in the area. His orders were to shoot him down. Uncle Russel was good, but he wasn’t as good as the Baron. And he knew it. So he took off from the airfield, then circled back and landed because of mechanical failure. The Army Air Corps looked at his plane and found nothing wrong with it, so he was court-martialed for cowardice and shot against a wall.”
“Why that’s just awful”
“That unlucky son of a bitch,”
“Damn what a bad way to go,”
“Now now,” my father interrupted, “he controlled everything he could to save himself. It wasn’t his fault he was chicken shit, it just caught up with him.” More laughter. The cocktail hour rolled into a grand supper with a prime beef roast and livelier conversations over the 86’ Chambertin.
The story of Great Uncle Russel wasn’t just a cocktail party treat: my Dad told that story to us kids when we had friends sleep over, new girlfriends or fiancés, and ordinary afternoon guests. Even the one-armed court officer who served my dad periodic lawsuit summons asked him about it one evening on delivery.
Now in his 80s, my father has lost neither lucidity nor vigor. His life is that of a Dixie Larry David—white hair, glasses, and an unrestrained, energetic incredulity with the modern world. His perseverance to adapt with technology is remarkable: a standing Monday appointment (for two years running) with the Apple Genius Bar.
We breakfasted together daily in the winter of ‘21-’22. The Tennessee River ran bright and low in the early sun. The banks of the far shore an open muddy track for arrowhead hunting beneath the University of Tennessee’s old agriculture campus. Complacent geese honked. Apparently, the Canada geese in Knoxville renounced their citizenship and no longer held Maple Flag passports. They sat in their new southern region and defecated on yards year-round. Modern feathered carpet-baggers who ruined the land with their infinite cylinders of speckled shit and were not likely to reconstruct it.
One morning, over sourdough toast and country sausage, I asked my Dad if he knew any more about Great Uncle Russell’s war service.
““Hell no,” he slurped his Lavazza coffee, I have no idea who he is.””
“What?”
“Your mother and I were in New York back in the early 80s and we’d gotten drunked up something proper at a several-course lunch and wine tasting. When your mother gets to drinking she loves to go shopping. We found the portrait in a gallery and learned it had been painted by one of John Sargent’s students.”
A Sargent protégé’s work hanging in our house all this time? Who was this pilot?
The mysterious figure in the painting struck me with purpose. I had to try to figure out who this man was. I sent a picture of the portrait to a researcher, Mike, who runs a website devoted to WWI aviation and he responded:
“So, this officer *we strongly think* was: George Eypper. Eypper served with the French Escadrille SPA 98, was awarded the Croix de Guerre with Palm, was a Montclair, NJ resident and bears a passing resemblance to the subject in the painting. He was also overseas in August 1917—quite early, trained with the French. By the time he would have worn his NJ medal after returning to the US in the Spring of 1919, he had been promoted to Captain.”
Captain Eypper and I aren’t related, but I feel like he’s more part of our family now than when he was Great Uncle Russell. I do not begrudge my father’s license in creating the myth. He used what was at hand at the time: his imagination and storytelling ability. Those are gifts he’s passed down to his children, and I’m grateful for them and everything else he’s provided his family.
