Marlin Jay Eccleston
Marlin was born in
Dodge City, Kansas on June 22, 1947 to Joseph Edwin and Alma Louisa Watt
Eccleston. He died on October 28, 2024 in Baytown, Texas. At an early age, his family moved to the rural Genoa, Colorado area where
he grew up on a family farm.
Marlin went all
twelve years to Genoa Schools. A
farming accident when Marlin was eleven nearly caused him to lose his life in a battle with gangrene. Recovering from that, he went on to
participate in football, basketball and baseball. He graduated with the class of 1965.
Marlin had a
“heavy foot.” He loved driving his
parents’ ‘59 Chevy over the hills on country roads. With his dog Skeeter, sitting on the seat
beside him, Marlin proved that he could defy gravity when he crested a hill at
80 miles per hour and Skeeter lifted off the seat.
Marlin idolized
his older brother Rod, who was ten years older.
Rod was a Navy veteran. Following
in Rod’s footsteps, Marlin joined the Navy in 1966. After his four-year stint, Marlin signed on
with phone companies who were putting phone lines underground. His farm background naturally led him into
the field of heavy equipment operator.
Marlin spent most
of his career working for phone
companies. He retired after a
heart attack in 2023.
Jake was my first
friend. We celebrated our 5th
birthdays together. Somewhere I have a
picture, that I can’t find, of us on
that occasion riding double on their old mare, Pet.
We didn’t have kindergarten
in those olden days, but Jake and I attended Mrs. Boils’ first and second grade
class one day in the Spring of 1953. It
was the school’s version of first grade orientation. We were the only two to attend. Jake always remembered that when Mrs. Boils
saw us entering her classroom, she said, “Oh, new students!” Someone forgot to inform her that she would
have guests on that day. Or Superintendent
Bostrom told her but she forgot. Jake
always laughed when he told that story.
Perhaps the most vivid memory of our grade
school years was the farm accident that nearly cost him his life. I’m not sure, but I think we were in the
fifth grade.
Jake was helping his dad Ed feed
cattle. They stacked hay bales on a sled
with a wooden floor. One of the floor
boards was missing and Jake accidently stepped into the gap while the tractor
was pulling the sled. Ed was driving the
tractor and didn’t get stopped before Jake’s foot and ankle got drug beneath
the sled. It raked a big gash on his
ankle above and below the ankle bone.
Ed took him to Limon to Doctor Irish who
cleaned and dressed the wound. It got
infected and Ed took Marlin back to Doctor Irish. Doctor Irish took one look and told Ed to get
Marlin into their car and follow him.
They followed Dr. Irish’s car all the way to Denver, probably to
Colorado General Hospital. There they
began treating him for gangrene.
The story was
that the doctors wanted to amputate the leg below the knee, but Ed refused,
saying he would rather see him dead than going through life with only one
leg. The
hospital flew in a specialist from somewhere in South America, I
believe, who was familiar with treating gangrene. They used massive doses of penicillin I
think, because whenever the subject of penicillin came up, Marlin would always
say it was the drug that saved his life.
They also slashed big gashes from below the
knee to the ankle bone to let the wound drain freely. He bore the scars of that operation the rest
of his life.
In those days of no cell phones, we relied on
news from school to follow his progress, which was pretty bleak. His Mom Alma
was teaching first and second grade then, so the reports to school were
probably pretty accurate. It must have
been a Friday when the news came that Marlin was “no longer responding to
treatment”. That usually meant lights
out sooner rather than later.
I remember going to a dance with my older
brothers at Walks Camp Park, a grandstand and a meeting hall in the middle of
nowhere just a few miles north of where we lived. My oldest brother insisted on having fun,
saying there was nothing we could do for Marlin, now. We needed to move on as best we could. I tried, but I remember it wasn’t much
fun. The next morning, a Sunday morning,
we got a phone call and I dreaded to hear the news, but it was good news. Marlin had turned the corner, was awake and
the wound was healing. I’m thinking
that must have been in March.
Marlin still had
a long convalescence and an extended stay in the hospital. I would not see him again until July. Colleen and her girls brought him to our
house for a visit. He had a pretty
sizable bandage on his ankle and leg and limped, but he was up and mobile. When school started that Fall, he was
back. His limp gradually disappeared and
he was a normal active kid. Whenever we
played basketball or wore shorts, the scars on his leg
were a very visible reminder of his youthful ordeal.
Perhaps the most
memorable event of our high school years was our senior year when we managed to
defeat Limon in the league basketball tournament. Everything Jake threw at the basket went in,
starting very early in the game. When
Limon put a man out of their zone defense to cover Jake, it freed the other
four of us up to get a lot of cheap layup shots. Somehow, we managed to eke out an overtime
win, even though our tallest guy was Jake at six feet, against Limon’s two 6’4”
towers.
Our glory was
short-lived, as we lost to Flagler in the tournament championship game the next
night. That weekend was the apex of our
athletic careers. We graduated in May of
1965.
We spent a
normal summer with both of us working for neighbor Glenn Garten. We separated for the first time when I headed
off to college in September of 1965. We helped his parents move from the farm
to Genoa in late 1965.
Jake would join
the Navy with another classmate, Dick Andersen, in 1966. We got
together from then on when he was home on leave. One such leave was the death of his father in
June of 1967.
He was out of
the Navy when he served as a groomsman at our wedding in March of 1970. We would get together again when he returned
home for his mother’s funeral in 1981.
We were never entirely out of touch, but we didn’t see much of each
other after that.
Jake returned for
our class’s 50th year celebration of our graduation in 2016. I would never see him again.
We stayed in
touch via phone calls and texts. He
would call me on my birthday and remind me that I was an old man, four days
older than him. It was retribution for
our 18th birthday, when I took him to the pool hall on my birthday
and had a beer, while he had to settle for a coke, because he wasn’t 18 yet.
I could tell
many, many more stories, like the night we were riding down Lincoln County 109,
the only paved road in our vicinity.
Jake decided he didn’t need headlights.
After a mile or so, for some reason, he decided to turn on the
headlights. A large black Angus cow
stood in the exact middle of the road within the reach of the headlights. He left rubber on the pavement, but he
managed to avoid hitting the cow.
He confided in me
that his dad Ed told him he didn’t care what Jake did as long as he didn’t hurt
somebody else. Jake said he considered
me as a good buddy who wouldn’t mind sharing his fate. So he didn’t mind taking me along in the ’59 Chevy
with the 348 engine on some wild rides.
In later years, we
both wondered how we managed to survive our teen years.
That was my pal
Jake.
