William "Baby" Wright

b. 1914

 
Baby! Grandpa Baby--writer, printer, publisher, mayor, community leader. Voracious reader. Staunch Republican. Claims to have an addiction to singing in a barbershop quartet. Claims such singing has prolonged his life. It's one of the most comforting sounds I know: his cracked, ruined bass singing "Silent Night, Holy Night," in lieu of grace before dinner. Has outlived his parents, two wives, all of his older siblings, most of his friends. When grade school children ask him if he's the oldest man in town he now has to say yes. Of his sister Jessie he says, "She was a fine, fine woman." Of his sister Helen he says, "She really went much farther than any of us. A most admirable woman." He was ten when she left Malvern to attend college, though, so what could he really know? Baby

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