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Texas | Columns | Bill Cherry's Galveston Memories

Daddy and His Buckeye

Sister Veressa.
The Voodoo Priestess
with the ‘Extree’ Power

by Bill Cherry

God and the IRS knew my daddy as William Wallace Cherry. To the rest of the world his formal name was W.W. Cherry, written in his very elaborate and fancy cursive hand.

He began his career with American National Insurance Co. as a part-time agent selling and collecting weekly premium life insurance policies. His clients were primarily poor black families in Monroe, Louisiana. In insurance-speak it was his debit.

Daddy was working his way through the University of the South – an Episcopal school in Sewanee, Tennessee.

William W. Cherry
William W. Cherry
Photo Courtesy Charles Robinson
And he ended his ANICO career forty years later as an executive vice president and director of the company, not as the physician he had studied to be.

At ANICO’s Galveston home office, it had been his job to make sure that some 5,000 ANICO agents brought in the bacon that kept the company on its financial roll.

Daddy always made it clear that he thought black men and women had a special wisdom that he felt certain God had not shared with anyone else. They shared it with Daddy.

“Do you realize that all during the Great Depression, the black men made sure that they kept their life insurance premiums paid? All the while, white men were letting their coverage lapse so they could use the premium money for other less important things,” Daddy would tell anyone who would listen. “And without my loyal black clients, I wouldn’t have had the money for my college tuition and books.”

Perhaps it’s just in the south, maybe elsewhere, too, but everyone seems to make a big deal out of eating a helping or so of black-eyed pea on New Year’s Day. It’s supposed to bring good luck, they think.

Daddy said that other than nutritional, that the black-eyed pea had any other positive thing going for it was untrue. “People pushing those things are false prophets,” he would say. “And you know what God thinks about false prophets.”

There’s only one thing that brings good luck. It’s the buckeye, and you have to carry it in your left pocket, and rub it when you’re scared,” he’d say.

I know he had picked up that wisdom years before when he was collecting insurance premiums on his debit each week in Monroe.

“And it’s even better if your buckeye was blessed by a voodoo priestess. Sister Veressa in the Des Ourses swamp of Louisiana has ‘extree’ power,” Daddy claimed. He’d get a big brown paper sack full of them when he was over that way.

As the years passed, Daddy came across untold thousands of men and women ANICO agents who were scared they wouldn’t sell enough life insurance to adequately feed their families. He’d give them one of the buckeyes blessed by Sister Veressa, the voodoo priestess with the “extree” power, and instruct them about how to use it.

“Put this buckeye in your left pocket, not the right, you understand, but the left pocket. When you get ready to try to close your sale, look your prospect in the eye, and with your thumb rub the buckeye that you’ve got hidden in your left pocket. If you’re really believing and looking him squarely in the eye, there’s a pretty good chance he’ll sign on the dotted line.”

He had several three-ring notebooks of letters from agents telling him how the buckeye blessed by the voodoo priestess with the “extree” power had miraculously worked. Daddy showed no surprise.

Daddy died thirty-years ago this past December 17th. He hadn’t been ill, and we had no warning. One moment he was fine, the next he was dead in a bed at Galveston’s St. Mary’s Infirmary.

Many of his agents and business associates came to his funeral at Trinity Episcopal Church. All had their buckeyes in their left pocket, and told us so.

And our family made certain that Daddy had his buckeye in his left pants pocket as the casket cover was closed. Trips to heaven can be pretty scary.


Bill Cherry's Galveston Memories Febuary 2, 2011column
Copyright William S. Cherry. All rights reserved
Related Topics: Galveston, Texas
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Bill Cherry, a Dallas Realtor and free lance writer was a longtime columnist for "The Galveston County Daily News." His book, Bill Cherry's Galveston Memories, has sold thousands, and is still available at Barnes and Noble and Amazon.com and other bookstores.
Bill Cherry's Galveston Memories
 
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