My Uncle Walter was known for his love of road trips. His family says he always enjoyed the journey more than the destination.

I was a passenger on one of those legendary road trips when he drove me to the University of Georgia to begin my freshman year in 1967. My mother, Walter's sister, came along, probably wishing in the end that she had stayed home. But she never would have done that. She was going to see her daughter safely deposited in her dorm room at UGA in Athens.

Walter must have had a very large bladder. He stopped only once for a pit stop between my home in Franklin, Va. and my dorm in Athens. Mama and I both nearly broke our necks scrambling out of the car in search of a rest-room once we arrived.

As soon as we'd moved all my stuff into the dorm, Walter was ready to head back to Virginia. Mama wanted to stay and help me get settled in, but Walter was chomping at the bit to hit the road again. Mama was boo-hooing and so was I.

Walter told Mama later that if he hadn't gotten her back in the car when he did, they'd most assuredly have been hauling me back home to Virginia with them.

I was so homesick that I cried myself to sleep the first two weeks I was at Georgia. But I eventually fell into the groove of college life and loved it.

I'm sharing this story with you because Walter took his final road trip on Nov. 9, going home to be with his maker. He was 77 and had spent the last several years in an Alzheimer's care facility, his wife of 56 years, Jean, by his side almost constantly.

I drove to Virginia Beach for his funeral, thinking a lot about Walter on the trip up. When he was a little boy, he couldn't pronounce his "R's". So instead of calling my mother "Ruby," Walter started calling her "Booba" and continued to do so throughout his life. In fact, Jean said he called for Booba several days before he passed away.

At the funeral service, Walter's daughter talked with humor and love about his infamous road trips. She recalled that as administrator of the City of Virginia Beach's Highway Division in charge of streets, roads and bridges and their construction and maintenance, her dad while driving would become so focused on examining curbs and gutters and culverts, he'd nearly mow down pedestrians along the way.

Walter probably got his love of jumping in the car and "going" from his father. My Ga-Ga loved to take us on Sunday afternoon drives when I was a kid. On one of those drives, he topped a hill on a farm-to-market road and drove straight down into water that came up to the car door handles. The Nottoway River had flooded its banks and covered the road. I can still hear my grandmother praying for mercy.

On another Sunday afternoon drive, Ga-Ga decided he could make the little ferry that had just left the river bank without us. He stepped on the gas and headed for the ferry's departure point. The car came to stop with both front tires in the water, and we didn't make the ferry. My grandmother vowed she'd never get in the car with Ga-Ga again.

Like father, like son.

It was very fitting that Walter's family chose this traditional Irish blessing for the back of his funeral program:

"May the road rise up to meet you.

May the wind be always at your back.

May the sun shine warm upon your face

And the rain fall softly upon your fields.

And until we meet again,

May God hold you in the palm of His hand."

Godspeed, Walter.

T&D Region Editor Carol Barker can be reached by e-mail at cbarker@timesanddemocrat.com or by phone at 803-533-5525. Discuss this and other stories online at TheTandD.com.

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