Rachel Inez Platt

Late in her 92-year life, Rachel Inez Hughes Platt threw down with the kids and grandkids one New Year’s Eve and showed them how to move to “Travelin’ Shoes.” Somewhere a video exists. But that image, and the spirit it captures of moving to buoyant tempo, will never fade from family legend or the hearts and minds of the witnesses who will cherish that memory forever.

There simply was no one else like Nezzie, as the grands called her. And never will be again. Though she grazed – maybe – the 5-foot-tall mark, she was and is a giant.

Her own travelin’ shoes took her beyond this realm when she died on Feb. 19. Her absence from daily life will never be rectified, but the joy of her exuberant existence and the enduring example of her own pilgrim soul will be a profound presence, lighting and informing the rest of our days; yours, too, we hope. How lucky were those who traveled with her a little or a lot, while, when and as they could. Join the journey!

Born in Mullens, W.Va., the Depression-baby third of four daughters of parents who raised chickens and vegetables in their back yard AND prized education, carried the lessons of this upbringing into the aisles of produce departments and farmers markets, where her hands read peppers and peaches as if they were books. And they took her into classrooms where she challenged, nurtured, inspired and wrangled untold numbers of elementary school students in her 26 years as a public school teacher. And by her own modeling at home, she taught her own children the values and lessons of reading books, being kind and doing unto others. They weren’t perfect, far from it, but that wasn’t for her lack of trying.

She married her high school sweetheart, a jock to her cheerleader, and the Air Force provided them their travelin’ shoes throughout the country, moving from base to base, assignment to assignment, adding children along the way. And lessons if they paid mind: Big country, lots of different people, sharing it. Pretty simple if you have someone pinching you to pay attention. We will feel those pinches of conscience for the rest of our lives. Thank God.

Often she had to stay put with the kids as he flew planes on missions both dangerous and dull, herding their brood alone without breaking an apparent sweat. A master magician, she even made an adventure out of fried bologna, a misdirection that hid the fact that the family was scraping the penny jar when that showed up for dinner; none of the brood knew the truth until she put together a family cookbook and shared that pretty awesome tidbit in 2007.

Importantly, she was rarely without a book, provider of the best travelin’ shoes of all: You could go anywhere, anytime, if you had a library card or a parent who encouraged books for you and was as excited as you were with your new edition of Weekly Reader. She did, and she was. For the curious, the home in Mullens offered up vintage copies of Nancy Drew mysteries from her childhood, read since by generations of family and friends. Another lesson in those books: Sisters have been doing it for themselves for a long time. As did the Nez.

One of the cruel ironies of her older age was a condition that impaired her eyesight but never her real vision: She went from spectacles to magnifying glasses, to lamps with big lenses to talking books, to one of the great, unpracticed treats of life: having someone read to you, the delight of the written word being released, liberated, like a soul coming up for shared oxygen. This we did for her. Please do it for your Nezzie, too.

Even when physical limitations kept her in a lovely room in a daughter’s house, she wore those travelin’ shoes. Through books listened to and read to her, yes, but also with her curiosity and the help of a laptop computer and a human operator who brought the world to her. Tell me about … she would say. The news was muted in that haven, but she welcomed the truth with a mind that stayed inquisitive, undaunted by current tides of intolerance. Because she asked, she heard this timeless verse by Langston Hughes:

"Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—

Let it be that great strong land of love

Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme

That any man be crushed by one above."

Nez was one of the dreamers. And the doers. By the time her ostensible world had become one room, it and she were larger than life and she told every person who came to see her that she loved them. Seasoned professionals wept. So did seasoned Nezzie watchers. Only not around her. (Pinch)

Back to our beginning.

Life is a buoyant tempo, no matter how long it lasts, and Nez taught that it doesn’t end when you age. You move with it, and her travelin’ shoes, and her honed sense of fairness and right and wrong, took her to the current expressions of Langston Hughes’ American cry of the heart. Bones may grow brittle but spirits don’t have to.

Her voice joined that cry in every way that counted. And never missed a vote. Even when she despaired for the present, even when she couldn’t see the future. She still showed up, in every way that mattered.

And still will.

Life, and its buoyant tempo, don’t end even when you die.

So the Nez is still wearing her travelin’ shoes and we ask that you lace in, too. Several options:

She was able to stay at home in her last weeks and months because of Hosparus. (Sisters are doing it for themselves, and so are brothers, and mothers and fathers. And Jimmy Carter!) Please donate to this home health care movement, that showed up for Nez and will for you and your family, too, Tax-deductible donations in memory of Rachel Inez Platt may be made to Hosparus Health at 6200 Dutchman’s Lane, Attn. Development, Louisville, Ky. 40205. Or click here www.hosparushealth.org, and then click on the Donate tab.

Nez, the book lover and teacher, would ask you to join her support of freedom of thought, public education and teachers by donating to the Jefferson County Public Education Foundation and earmarking your tribute to the Rachel Inez Platt Book Fund, which will support reading resources for public schools that need them. Tax-deductible donations can be made to JCPEF, 3332 Newburg Road, Superintendent’s Office, Attn: Cherri Beckhart, Louisville, Ky. 40218 Please note the Rachel Inez Platt Book Fund in the memo field of your check.

And we ask that you buy or check out a book and read it out loud to someone who cannot do that for themselves. Rediscover this glorious continent of human interaction, please.

For the linear record, this beloved human being, Rachel Inez Hughes Platt, was preceded in death by husband Harry, parents Eddie and Myrtle Hughes, aunts Fannie and Maggie Hughes, and sisters Frances Dillon and Catherine Abernathy.

She is survived by children Pam (ex-son-in-law Billy), Roy (Chris), Rachel (Gary) Fogle, Patty (Tom) Greenwood; grandchildren Savannah; Jessica, Nyal, Autumn and Hope; and Cooper and Logan; and cherished sister Nancy Clayborne.

Later in the year, when spring will bring the confetti, the family will hold a graveside service at Cave Hill Cemetery.

In the meantime, she loved Old-Fashioneds, and we ask that you raise a glass in her considerable honor.