Slowed by an accident, Elliott turns to his love for poetry

By Editor | March 30, 2010 |

A framed photograph in Roy Elliott’s room shows his shirt tail being cut off, a traditional ritual when someone becomes a licensed airplane pilot.

A member of Fayette County Civil Defense (now Emergency Management Agency) for years, he was a jack-of-all-trades with many skills, until a fateful day three years ago when a tree he was trimming fell on him, fracturing his back in two places. Parkinson’s disease entered the picture, rendering him unable to perform routine daily activities.

The accident curtailed his physical activities, but not his creative mind. Although the door was closed on his active lifestyle, a window was opened to allow his creativity to emerge in beautiful words of poetry – some spiritual and some unique and humorous – and short stories…a silver lining he has brought forth from a cloud.

Meet Roy Elliott as we visit in his room at Vandalia Rehabilitation and Health Care Center.

A Dark Cloud Cover

“I’ve always been in exceptionally good health, until that tree fell on me three years ago and broke my back in two places,” he said. “And I have Parkinson’s disease.

“So, I’m pretty well confined,” he said. He gives Vandalia Rehab credit for taking good care of him, “even though it isn’t home,” he said, wistfully.

Roy had led an active life and has a lot of stories to tell, including ones from his two years in the Army in the 1950s.

“When I came back from the Army, I kicked around in the county, doing odd jobs. Jobs weren’t very plentiful,” he said. “Construction work, bridges and highways, was going pretty good then.

“I got into the Teamsters’ Union and stayed in it for 37 years. It was seasonal work. I drove a gravel truck for Hunt Brothers out of Ramsey for a lot of those years,” he said.

“I was too young for the Korean War and too old for Vietnam,” Elliott said, talking about his time in the service.

“I learned to fly a plane in 1970-71,” he said. “I just took it up as a sideline or recreation. It’s a tradition that when a pilot gets his license, his instructor cuts his shirt-tails off.” He pointed to the framed photo of his instructor, Norman Lankow, cutting off hisshirttails.

Elliott also served the community in Civil Defense, as a chief field officer, for 12 years. He shared some sad memories incurred during his years doing rescue work with Civil Defense.

“If the tree hadn’t fallen on me and broke my back, I’d still be leading an active, busy life,” Elliott said.

Clouds Do Have Silver Linings

Elliott believes in miracles.

“When our youngest child, Janet, was 10 years old, we discovered she had a condition that was slowly killing her. An artery to her heart wasn’t growing fast enough to carry the blood supply.

“They told us that, at the very most, she had three years to live,” he said. Elliott said they were warned that the surgery to correct the problem had a very low rate of survival all over the world.

The surgery was performed and … “She is our miracle child. She attended and finished school in Vandalia, enrolled in a Christian college in Delaware, and graduated in 1978 with a bachelor’s degree in Christian education and an associate of arts degree in theology,” Elliott said. “She moved to Montana, opened up a new church and is an assistant pastor there,” he said.

He has always attended the United Pentecostal Church. I was fortunate there, I was born into it. My dad was never ordained that I know of, but for 40 years, he taught and preached in nursing homes, including Sunnydale Acres.”

Roy Elliott’s Silver Lining

Roy said he became interested in poetry when in elementary school. He “scribbled some” then and also when he was a teenager, but the real interest came along “later in life,” he said.

“It kind of came naturally,” he said. “Floyd Hawthorne was a school teacher, but not my teacher. But he was the most-dedicated and most-wonderful guy anybody could know, and he encouraged me.

“He said I had a God-given talent for poetry and to keep it going. He played a great role in my life. It is amazing what a teacher can do in someone’s life,” Elliott said.

But Roy had been too busy to sit down and write his poetry.

Elliott is unable to use his hands to write anymore, so he and Vandalia Rehab’s activity director, Eleanora McNutt, have one-on-one sessions to put his words on paper.

“The way I look at it,” Elliott said, “The words were always there – all I do is re-arrange them. I love to write.”

One of his poems, “Questions,” was published in a magazine, “Creative Publishing.” It is a special one he wrote in memory of his mother, the late Alma Zoe.

“Many years ago, she passed on to be with God. Although she is gone from this life, the love, the prayers and the teaching she implanted in our lives, her children, is forever in our hearts and minds. These few simple words I do, in honor of my mother, and to her memory, I dedicate them.”

“Questions”

By Roy Elliott

When the shades of night have fallen,

And the sub sets in the west,

I must ask myself this question,

Have I given my best?

Did I stop to help the blind man, as he crossed the busy street?

Was it just some homeless begger,,

With no shoes upon his feet?

Perhaps it was a lame man,

Who at the temple lay,

Or just some lonely traveler,