Almost certainly you didn't know my older brother, Campbell Probert Canup. If you had, you probably wouldn't have liked him - most people didn't. You probably would have seen him as 'trailer trash' or perhaps if you had seen him on the street you would have viewed him as a pan-handler, a disheveled man to avoid before he asked for a handout. But I did know him, I understood him, and I liked him very much. I thought I would try to tell the rest of you about him so that you would be able to see what I saw in him.
Cam had appeared very suddenly in my life in the summer of 1958 when I was 10 years old. I did not know that my father had been married once before, and that I had a half-brother who was 5 years older than I was, until we were about to leave on a trip to Youngstown Ohio to pick him up at my Grandmother's house. This was quite a shock to me - I had suddenly gone from being the oldest of three brothers to being second in line. There is, of course a huge difference between a 10 year old and a 15 year old.
My first sight of him was a revelation: this was a young man, and I was only a boy. His hair was blond and he wore it in a flat-top, while I and my younger brothers, had black hair cut in a simple burr. The three of us were pudgy while Cam was lean and muscular; you could see his abdominal muscles. He was the only person I ever saw who had arms like Pop-eye the sailor; his forearms were bigger than his biceps. It was not that his upper arms were small, they weren't, his forearms were just spectacular. Due to some birth defect one of his arms was bowed somewhat. When I got near him I detected a very slight odor; it was a very clean smell - the smell of a young man in superb athletic condition.
Cam knew all sorts of things that I didn't even dream existed: one of these was how to shred caps to get the powder out of them. On the trip back to Houston he spent considerable time shredding hundreds of them and had built up a pile of powder on a piece of cardboard in his lap. He started to shred another one when it went off - sending a spark in to the pile of powder. The whole pile went up in a poof; filling the station wagon with the smell of 1950's caps. My father - as was his nature - bellowed at Cam. Of course it didn't mean anything; my father just thought that children were someone that grown men were supposed to yell at. Cam just looked at me, gave me a half smile, and started shredding more caps.
On the trip down I noticed that Cam was constantly thirsty; we had to stop every hour so that he could relieve himself as a result of all that water intake. Cam became increasingly listless as the trip went on. By the time that we reached Houston he had almost nothing to say; his bright eyes looked dull and glazed. Shortly after we got back home Cam went into a coma. The hospital's diagnosis: juvenile diabetes.
After he got out of the hospital I found out why he had been shredding all of those caps: he had a blow gun he had made out of an aluminum tube. He had flared the mouthpiece end of the tube and had made a wooden piece that fit up against the flared mouthpiece. He had made a hand grip out of wood that was custom fitted to his hand. The darts he made out of bicycle spokes he cut and sharpened. The air seal on the rear end of the darts he made by grinding toothpaste caps to fit on the rear of the darts. When he shot the darts into pieces of wood in the garage - I couldn't see them in flight; they suddenly appeared quivering deeply embedded in the target wood.
His pride and joy was a dart with a war head; he had silver soldered a two piece section he had machined onto the end of one of his darts. The two part section had a small barrel with a bore size slightly larger than a house hold pin. He filled the section with shredded cap powder, put a pin down the bore like a ram rod, loaded the dart into his blow gun and shot it at a piece of plywood. When the dart hit, the pin was driven into the cap powder igniting it. The subsequent explosion produced a nice bang, and drove the pin completely through the plywood. It was a silly weapon of course, but to my ten year old eyes, it was the coolest thing I had ever seen in my life.
Cam had boomerangs also, not bought out of a magazine like most were, but made by hand, and of his own design. He even had a four bladed one which looked a bit like the prop off of a World War II fighter. I'll never forget how that boomerang looked slicing through the air after he threw it, circling around and landing softly back near us like a helicopter. There was never a day in my life when I could have thrown anything the way that 15 year old man-child did that heavy boomerang.
One of the first things that Cam did that summer was complete the Red Cross life guard course that he had started in Ohio. Cam was really in his element in the water; his best swimming stroke was the butterfly. When he swam under water he did the dolphin stroke part of the butterfly while streamlining his arms by his side. The joy that flowed from him when he did this was contagious - this was someone alive in every sense of the word; you could see it in his face even under water. Cam was very serious about water safety; he eventually went on to obtain water safety instructor status - the highest rank available to a life guard.
Despite Bay Watch - there is nothing guaranteed when attempting to save someone's life - a life guard puts themselves at risk every time they attempt to save some one. Cam understood this - but it caused him not a moment's hesitation; placing himself in harm's way came naturally to him. Cam's illness then dealt him the first of its many cruelties: because of his disease no one would hire him as a life guard.
One day Cam was washing the station wagon when he passed out into another diabetic coma. He had not been wearing a shirt and his light skin was burned horribly by the summer Texas sun before he was discovered. I remember my father being furious at him after he got out of the hospital, and I remember thinking "Geez dad, it wasn't like he was trying to get sick".
Despite his illness Cam went out for the football team at Bellaire H.S. he not only made it, he wound up lettering: a 165 lb. guard and linebacker who made it through sheer intensity and courage. He went out for the track team also, even though he was really too heavy to be a distance runner he managed to run a 5:00 flat mile - good enough again to letter.
I remember riding with him after he got his drivers license: it was a lot more fun than riding with dad. Cam showed me how to double clutch a 1955 Ford station wagon. I still remember the feeling and sound of that 272 Ford V-8 when Cam was driving it.
It was through Cam that I saw my first Mad magazine and first comic books. Here was a whole world I never even dreamed existed.
What impressed me the most about what he did was the beautiful wood work that he brought home from shop class.
When we were children Cam always treated me as a friend: he never bullied me, and frankly I don't remember even having a fight with him.
When we moved to Richmond Va. in 1961 Cam joined with some other guys at his new school to form a weight lifting club. The club was called "The Punys" and Cam designed the logo for their jackets.
At the time he weighed about 180 lbs. but he managed get his bench press over 300 lbs. Remember that this was before steroids - his lift was about as good as anyone his size could do back then. One day someone came into the gym while Cam was benching 300, saw his bowed arm and yelled out "My God, your arm is bending". Cam started laughing and dropped the bar on his chest. Fortunately he wasn't badly injured.
At Dad's insistence Cam went to Texas A&M for a couple of years after he got out of high school. His grades weren't very good, and I think he was pretty unhappy trying to major in physics like Dad did. Around this time Cam discovered Gymnastics. Despite being too large for the sport he managed to take a silver medal in the AAU national novice division on the high bar. Even after his disease had ruined his body at age 42 he could still put his palms flat on the floor from a standing position, go into a headstand, and do handstand push ups.
After he left A&M Cam moved back to Houston and got married. I didn't see him for the next few years. In late 1969 I was stationed at Ft. Eustis Va. taking Advanced Individual Training in the army. Cam drove up with his family to visit me. At that time he gave me my most prized possession: a one inch square of thin mylar plastic film - gold plated on one side - silver on the other. Cam was working as a model maker at NASA, and he had made the canister in which the Apollo 11 crew had carried the flag to the moon. The piece of mylar was some of the material from which he had made that canister. It is a bit like having a piece of the material from Columbus' sail. When I see the moon I am proud to remember that there is something there which my brother made.
Shortly after the visit to Ft. Eustis Cam's wife suddenly died from an embolism.
Things went down hill for Cam after that; his disease grew worse. He remarried - but things went badly. Another marriage followed with similar results. Cam's anger mounted. He lost his kidneys, he went almost completely blind, he lost several fingers to gangrene, He had to have one of his legs amputated below the calf. Last year he had enough. The Doctors told him he would have to lose another finger. Cam refused to let them amputate. The doctors told him that he would lose his hand to gangrene if they didn't operate immediately. Cam said "No, it will be all right".
The Doctors were beside themselves; gangrene doesn't heal, particularly on an over 50 diabetic. Much to everyone but Cam's amazement the finger healed. New skin grew in to replace the dead tissue. The Doctors couldn't believe it - they had never seen anything like that before. I wasn't surprised when Cam showed it to me: I knew what a great fighter my brother was.
Cam was someone who, had he possessed a sound body, would have been a green beret or an elite ranger. He was the kind of man who would have won a Silver Star in combat: someone extraordinary - a bull rather than a steer. Despite the fact that Cam was only 5 years older than me; he was from a very different generation. I am a member of what is probably the most useless generation ever to walk the face of the earth: the 'Baby Boomers'. Cam was a throwback to an earlier time: when men really were men instead whimpering simps.
Cam prided himself in the beauty and precision of his work. When his hands could no longer do delicate work and his eyes were failing him he turned to bigger objects. One of his last jobs was building full scale replicas of civil war cannons from the original 1860's plans. Typical of Cam they were beautiful weapons made from the finest materials. They are used in several places during Civil war battle recreations.
The last time that I saw Cam we sat on my bed and watched video-taped episodes of 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer'; it wasn't on where he lived, and I figured that he would really enjoy them. I wasn't wrong: he turned to me and said "I hope these people don't sprain their wrists patting themselves on the back; this is a terrific show". I taped all of the episodes since to show to him the next time that I saw him.
Despite the fact that he could barely see, Cam spent the last few years of his life working with computers and surfing the Internet. He learned enough to volunteer to help teach novices how to use their machines. I planned to upgrade one of his computers to something more powerful this Christmas, but I never got the chance.
I think I understand the anger that consumed him in his later years: if you were given the soul of a hero and the heart of a champion you would be angry as you felt everything being taken away from you - literally a piece at a time. There is such a thing as a contented cow; no one has ever heard of a contented bull - particularly one under attack - whose body is broken and deformed.
Sometime during the night of December 12, 1998 my brother lost his forty year battle with diabetes. Like most of the great battles in mankind's history his was waged with no fanfare, no medals for the heros, no war crimes trials for evil, no parades for the veterans; nothing but day after weary day of combat with no hope of victory - nor even a single day's truce - possible.
Almost certainly you didn't know my older brother, Campbell Probert Canup. You probably wouldn't have liked him if you had met him. He wasn't much to look at: his flat-top had collapsed with age and infirmity. His blond hair had turned a dirty brown. His once bright eyes were lost and blurred behind coke bottle thick glasses. His strong hands - which I had once seen smash a cinder block to shards by themselves - were weak, crippled, and missing fingers. He had a limp from the artificial foot he made for himself, and his body was bloated and deformed by the anti-rejection drugs from his kidney transplant. He was somebody most people would avoid as a pan-handler if they saw him on the street; an obvious example of trailer trash to ignore. But he was my big brother, and I knew what he was like inside. I loved him very much. I think we are all the poorer for his passing.