I always considered my father, Sam Corder, an American success story. He died a week ago at age 78.
My father wouldn’t have described himself as a self-made man, though. He always said that he was fortunate to get help along the way, especially from his family.
Before and during my father’s funeral on Monday, I heard several things about my father. I hadn’t heard all of them before. Sam Corder facts included:
• He was the first member of his family to graduate from college and just the second to graduate from high school. He later earned a master’s degree
• He was an investigator for the Internal Revenue Service. After retiring from the IRS, he joined the State Tax Commission, now known as the Department of Revenue.
• He was the first investigator hired by State Tax Commission.
• He was the first expert witness to testify in a state tax fraud case.
• His runs, while shirtless, on the beach on the Mississippi Gulf Coast were the inspiration for the TV series “Baywatch.”
I wasn’t surprised to hear that my dad would make a joke like that — a bone-dry sense of humor which runs in the family — but I never knew that he was a fan of “Baywatch.”
My father grew up in the Calvary community of Carroll County. His birth certificate says he was born there on July 23, 1935, but that document is incorrect. My dad’s family was living in Grenada County then and he was born in the Grenada hospital. His birth certificate wasn’t submitted until 1940, so maybe they forgot.
The Calvary community is named after the Calvary Baptist Church, which my father’s family attended. Many of our relatives, including his parents and many of his siblings, are buried in the church cemetery.
My dad was the youngest in a family of 11 children. Only one of his siblings is still alive, sister Eunice Little of Grenada.
My dad was fortunate to survive childhood. He was born prematurely and, according to one of his brothers, was so small that he initially had to be fed with a medicine dropper. Later, he and a nephew contracted diphtheria. The nephew died.
My dad’s father eked out a living as a tenant farmer. My father once told me that he didn’t know he grew up in poverty until he was an adult. The Corders lived the same way as all of the families around them.
My dad’s father died in 1943, when my dad was 7. My father told me recently, “I don’t remember much about him except that he was tall and bald.”
When my father reached the ninth grade in 1950, he went to J.Z. George High School in North Carrollton. This was a turning point in Corder family history as George is where he met my mother, Margie DeLoach Corder.
My sister Pam told me last week that our mother said one reason she decided my father was the one for her was because she knew he wouldn’t become a farmer. My father liked to reminisce about his childhood on the farm, but he was not nostalgic about his days working on a farm.
In 1951, my father and his mother moved to Grenada. He said going to high school in Grenada was a life-altering event. For the first time, most of his fellow students were planning to go to college. An older brother, Raymond, had often talked to my father about going to college, even though nobody in the family had finished high school. Raymond, who was killed in World War II, left a portion of his military insurance to his baby brother, specifically to pay for his college tuition.
My dad went to Mississippi State. Shortly before graduating in 1957, he and my mother were married. They would be together until she died on Dec. 29, 2010.
After living for three years in St. Louis, which is where Pam and I were born, my parents moved to Jackson in 1960. They joined Broadmoor Baptist Church, which became the center of their spiritual and social lives.
As Dr. Jim Futral said at my dad’s funeral, “They were here whenever the doors were open. Sometimes they were here when the doors weren’t open.”
My parents moved to Madison in 1988. A few years later, Broadmoor moved to Madison, too.
“The church followed us up here,” my father joked.
Soon after my parents moved to Jackson, my father went to work for the IRS. One of his former co-workers told me that my dad changed when he talked to someone they were investigating for tax fraud.
“When Sam went into that room, he didn’t smile any more,” his former colleague said.
I know how unsettling that can be. I have been on the wrong side of Sam Corder a few times.
My father loved to joke, but he was deadly serious about some things, including his work. Which is an appropriate attitude when your job requires you to carry a gun.
I like to think that I inherited some of the values, work ethic and humor my dad brought to every part of his life. I hope so, anyway.
I definitely inherited his love of reading, particularly newspapers (he subscribed to four, including the Commonwealth), movies that are more action than talk, a loathing for English peas and a love of Mississippi State.
My father’s health had been in decline for the past few months. His doctors told him he had to have liver surgery. The procedure was considered risky, especially for a 78-year-old.
“One of the side effects is that you could die,” he told me the last time we talked. “But I don’t have any other options.”
He had the surgery last Thursday. I told him I would talk to him after the operation.
That conversation will have to wait for another lifetime.
• Contact Charles Corder at 581-7241 or ccorder@gwcommonwealth.com.
