Brandon, Charles Winston

Mr. Charles Winston Brandon, ninety, was born on January 17, 1926, to Charles Winston and Helen Lavender Brandon in Tulsa, Oklahoma, who preceded him in death. He is survived by his loving wife Martha Dillon Brandon; two daughters, Martha Lynn Brandon and Julie Ann (Johnny) Barnes and one son, Charles Winston (Wendy) Brandon, III; seven grandchildren, Jonas (Beth) Denny and Seth Denny, Ann Denny (Ed) Karl, Brandon Wood and Bennett (Julie) Wood, Winston Taylor Brandon and Annabelle Brandon; six great- grandchildren, John Luke Denny and Amanda Denny, Steven Ligon, Grace Denny, Caleb Denny, and Waylon Wood.

Charlie graduated from Central High School in Jackson, MS. He joined the Air Force during World War II and returned to finish his education at Millsap’s College in Jackson and the University of Alabama, receiving the Master’s Degree in 1952. He entered the life insurance business with Connecticut Mutual/Mass Mutual where he stayed until his retirement in 2008. He received his Chartered Life Underwriter Degree in 1959 and later the Chartered Financial Consultant Degree. He was a member of the Million Dollar Round Table, the Estate Planning Council, National Association of Life Underwriters, Chartered Life Underwriters, serving as President of both, the National ELIF Award (Exceptional Level of Insurance in Force) with Connecticut Mutual.

Charlie was a long-time member of Otter Creek Church of Christ, serving as a deacon, elder, adult Sunday school teacher. He was part of the small group which created AGAPE (Advancement, Guidance, Aid, Placement, Empathy) in 1967, and he served as Agape’s first chairman of the board. He was a member of Richland Country Club where he played golf and tennis. He also enjoyed playing chess and bridge. A celebration of his life will be held at the Otter Creek Church, 409 Franklin Road, Nashville, TN, on Monday, August 29, 2016, with visitation from 4-6 p.m. Private burial will be at Riverside Cemetery in Woodbury, TN. In lieu of flowers memorials may be made to AGAPE, 455 Trousdale, Nashville, TN 37204, or Alive Hospice. Contact Smith Funeral Home for details.

Former Executive Director of Agape Howard Justiss and social worker Myrtle Qualls welcome Charles Brandon as the first president of the Agape board of directors.

Comments by Chuck Brandon

On behalf of my mother, sisters, and other family members, I would like to welcome you to the celebration of the life of Charlie Brandon. He was a loving husband and father. To his children, a hard worker, lecturer, teacher, and servant, many times within the same day.

He was a self-taught Bible scholar who strove to follow Christ:

Although he grew up going to church, he became agnostic later. He said it scared him to think of what would happen if he died agnostic, and he began to explore different religions. He agreed to attend church with my mother and was baptized in 1954. Even after he became an elder at Otter Creek, he still enjoyed learning about other religions. I can recall him talking to Hare Krishna’s at the Nashville airport and asking about their beliefs.

This did not always turn out well: Once, after a preacher in Florida said that anyone who offered feedback “would be his best friend,” Dad decided to be a friend. As I heard my father say the word “misguided,” I felt Mom grab my elbow and say, “head to the car.” We never went back to see Dad’s friend again.

He was a true gentleman:

My father used to deliver Meals on Wheels for the church, and sometimes I would go along. In the late 1970’s, I recall that one of the ladies we served had parents who had been enslaved in Nashville. She was almost 100 years old. Watching Dad hold her hands and pray with her gave me a glimpse of the changes she had seen in her lifetime. Only now I can look back and see how important it was for Dad that he honor her as a child of God, a sister in Christ.

I never saw him give any indication of prejudice. People were people to him, and all were made in God’s image.

He was always kind and thoughtful:

When a business associate invited Mom and Dad to his home to eat 1955, his wife served squash, which Dad did not care for. When she asked what he thought about it, he said it was “as good as any he had ever eaten.” Each year, they were invited again and she would always make her special squash casserole for him. Finally, after several years, she asked him if he really liked her squash casserole that much. He said “Sally, I wish you hadn’t asked me that. I don’t like squash at all.” He would never want to hurt anyone’s feelings. To this day, if anyone in our family said that something is “as good as any we have ever eaten,” there is no doubt about whether we like it – we don’t.

He was a thinker and a planner:

Dad carefully tracked and analyzed his sales each year. He would carefully consider important decisions, and prayerfully examined himself before accepting the position as elder here. While we urged him to just say yes, he always wanted to give his best to God and took his time to make sure he was serving best by accepting.

He planned carefully for retirement and for his eventual death. Although he never expected to live past 85, Mom was having no part of that. We celebrated each birthday with travel and a big dinner to mark another great achievement.

Today, our family can be at peace and celebrate because he planned for his death and he planned for eternity. Dad was always very thoughtful and a careful planner.

Winston Churchill once observed that a colleague was “a humble man with much to be humble about.” I believe my father was a humble man with much to be proud of.

HANDWRITTEN COMMENTS BELOW BY GRANDSON WINN BRANDON, read at the service.

From Josh Graves…As you know, our own beloved Charlie Brandon passed away recently. Charlie was a force in the OC community for decades.

He was part of the birth and early years of Korea Christian University and AGAPE. His funeral was moving and inspiring. His son-in-law, Johnny Barnes, found a letter Charlie wrote to Strom Thurmond regarding race in America . . . in 1948.

The original typed letter was written when Charlie was 22. It was put into a PDF file for preservation/clarity. It is an absolutely moving letter and I can't stop reading it. Charlie was 22. The year was 1948. What a man.

See attached letter. Tears well up when I remember the goodness and kindness Charlie showed to me my very first time meeting him all the way up until his final weeks. We've lost some giants of the faith these last several years. I'm going to read this letter tonight to my two oldest sons. May we have the courage in our day to do what Charlie did in his.

The Letter Charles W. Brandon General Delivery University, Alabama

August 16, 1948

Dear Mr. Thurmond,

Your appeals to the Southern White people, of which I am one, have been most touching and most characteristic. You claim that the Northerners, Westerners, Easterners, and everyone else outside of those for States’ Rights are stirring up the Negro situation needlessly. Then why are you appealing to emotions rather than reason? Is it because you can offer no constructive reasoning?

You, dear sir, and every man and woman like you are to blame for the despicable situation in the South and no one else. There are only three types of people against Civil Rights (Yes, you are fighting against Civil Rights and not for States’ Rights): those who are just ignorant and really suppose that the white man is superior in intellect; those in the same economic class who are afraid; and those who know they are doing injustice but they wish to grant nothing because they are in power.

You stated you are fighting for States’ Rights and that so are the people behind you. If you think you are fighting for the Federal Constitution, you are mistaken. Certainly the Constitution provides for states’ rights, but primarily and above all it grants equal rights to the individual. You claim the Federal Government has no right to interfere with the conditions in the South. My fellow Southerner, the whole purpose of the Federal Government is to see that the rights of the individual, before anything else, are upheld.

As for states’ rights, if that is what the Southerners wanted to oppose, they could have chosen any number of times in prior years to do so. They could have opposed federal housing, federal aid to farmers, Tennessee Valley Authority, social security, the old age pension plan, etc., ad infinitum. Where have you been until now? Yes, you have opposed nothing the Federal Government has done for you until now. But when the Federal Government tries to do what is undeniably its right, it is then interfering with the rights of the state.

It is a sad day indeed for our United States when the government needs to step in and save the individual from the state. But it is a much sadder day when it cannot.

The remarkable thing is [that] you, Mr. Thurmond, are the man who is standing up for the totalitarian state in which the individual would be subservient. You have obviously never read ‘On Liberty’ by John Stuart Mill, for do not have the first conception of the meaning of liberty. Is it not evident that if one class is able to discriminate against another, it does not matter what the discrimination is, it is making every citizen liable to discriminate in the future? It is not a matter of whether you want to stand beside a man with black skin, atheistic beliefs, the Mohammedan religion, a mustache, or red hair (and any of these is as valid as the next); it is a matter of whether or not that man has a ‘right’ before God and state to stand there, too. You will, no doubt, go out and say again, “Nobody understands the South’s problem but the South.” Yet, I have never heard a valid problem stated —do you know of one?

Oh, there will be hard feelings and bloodshed in the South if the Civil Rights program is put into effect—that is the problem. And who is going to spill the blood and do the hating? Why, you and your followers, of course.

I’ll come with you. It is in vogue for Southerners to be asinine. Let us Southerners stick together. Let us divorce reason completely and marry forever our prejudices, conceits, our blind pride, and our superior souls and breed that ugly Siamese twin, Poverty and Ignorance.

We can do that Mr. Thurmond and sit smugly where we have been for nearly a hundred years. The South has progressed, yes, not because of our policies, but in spite of them. Even if you want a selfish motive, you can have that, too, for a reason to promote equality. How can you possibly believe that our standard of living and per capita income in the South can be anything but a national disgrace when one half of the population is kept poverty-stricken? Even the most cursory examination will show that if you pay the Negro a decent wage, he will come right back and spend it with you. Is it so hard to see that if you pay the Negroes twice as much they will buy twice as much and have a standard of living twice as high. Consequently, the standard of living of the South and the income will increase enormously.

But let us stop being selfish for a while, let the South, instead of dragging its feet from the wagon of progress, carry the banner of “America for every American.” Let the South breathe the life back into that discarded “American Way.”

So what if the North does step on the Negroes, Jews, and other minorities; the Middle West does step on the Indians; and the west coast does step on the Chinese and Japanese. Let us be the ones to show that tradition in the South does not stand for “man’s inhumanity to man,” but that the South is bigger than prejudice and conceit.

You know, Mr. Thurmond, people keep talking about the deplorable conditions these United States are in. That is because the meaning of “United” has been forgotten and instead we are not only ‘Ununited,’ we are opposed. If the United States is to regain its meaning of old, then some state or some section must stand up and put aside its petty differences and instead speak for the common cause of freedom.

Comments by Sandra Collins

What son Chuck said was echoed by others who had spoken about Charlie to the family: he was a gentle man. While yet a child, going to serve Meals on Wheels with Charlie, Chuck saw his father pray with and for a 100-year-old woman whose parents had surely been enslaved or born to slaves in Nashville. He realized at his young age that his father saw everyone through the same non-judgmental eyes. He also realized after getting married that marriage was not as easy as his parents had made it look. He and his wife of now twenty- four years decided to adopt his parents’ deliberate choice to make their time together fun. Julie said that Charles had had a Jewish friend write in calligraphy his favorite prayer (Paul’s prayer from Colossians 1) and his favorite hymn (“Be Still My Soul”). Charlie was a serious Bible student. He had been converted to Christianity as an adult but not until after he studied many religions and pored through the Bible. Once converted, he was firm in his faith, studious, and deeply prayerful.

A favorite memory for all who knew him was his answer when people said, “Charlie, you’re looking good.” “That has never been a problem,” he’d say with a smile. Often the crowds are small for people who die in their nineties. For Charlie, the line was long and the crowd large--filled with people who had been touched in one way or another by his godly life in his work, in his service as an elder, and in his significant role in creating AGAPE, a social services organization which has touched thousands in its decades of work with unwed mothers, adoptive children, foster care, and counseling. As his son said, Charlie was a humble man who had done a lot to be proud of.