Back in the 60s when he was a student at Lane College in Jackson, Tennessee, and dating a pretty young coed named Jessie, Melchie Koonce had an idea.
Every month the two students would get money from home.
“In those days, you could put a five-dollar bill in an envelope and mail it,” Jessie Koonce said. “Mel would tear the bill in half and give me half, and he would keep the other half.”
The ploy served two purposes: It provided a good meal at the end of the month and ensured another date for the couple.
That was Melchie, forever coming up with an unconventional means to a rather delightful end. The two married in 1970.
Melchie Koonce died Wednesday after a 10-year battle with cancer. He was 68. For eight of those years, the cancer was in remission. Two years ago, it reappeared. He had resumed chemo, but before Christmas, during a pause in his treatment, he told Jessie he had had enough; he wasn’t going back.
I’m not sure where I met Melchie, maybe at an opening at the Rosenzweig; it could have been any number of places — he and Jessie were often at openings, concerts, library events. His kind manner and gentle spirit were immediately obvious. We were both gardeners and hit it off right away.
Melchie was something of a celebrity in his community for his garden — he and Jessie lived in Memphis Town, near the old I.C. Cousin Center, in what was her father’s house. Melchie packed a lot in their compact and somewhat cluttered backyard — think Felder Rushing meets Rube Goldberg.
Melchie worked for the Mississippi Employment Service, then Mississippi Materials. He took up gardening in earnest after retiring for health reasons at 50. He supplied neighbors and friends with the bounty of his labor: bunches of collard greens in the winter, bags of vegetables in the summer.
“He could go outside at sunup, and at sundown, if it was warm, he could cut on a light and keep working,” Jessie said.
Mel always loved summer gardening along with fishing and coon hunting, Jessie said. “He came with that.”
Melchie Koonce understood the thing every gardener comes to realize: As the gardener nurtures the garden, so the garden nourishes the gardener, spiritually, as well as temporally.
It was the thing that sustained Melchie Koonce, along with his family — he and Jessie had two sons and a daughter.
Lorenia Smith was one beneficiary of Melchie’s homegrown largesse. Friday evening she mentioned his Cherokee purple tomatoes.
“I would be waiting every year,” she said.
Melchie grew up in Stuttgart, Arkansas, the son of a farmer. He told stories about working in rice patties as a boy. To enliven a monotonous job, he and his fellow workers would see who could first fill a croker sack with snakes.
One day Melchie came over to walk through my garden. As we stood by the street talking, I noticed a snake lounging in the middle of the street. When I expressed concern it might get run over, Melchie walked out and unceremoniously picked up the creature.
“Where do you want him?” he asked.
Never underestimate the influence of a man who handles snakes.
Some years ago Melchie found and killed a large snake in an overgrown vacant lot across the street from his house. His earlier pleas to the city to clean up the lot had gone ignored. He nailed the dead snake to a light pole near the unkempt lot and called city hall. The desired response came swiftly.
Melchie had a special relationship with his daughter, Omega, Jessie said. “He taught her everything, how to shoot a gun, how to change a flat, how to change the oil in her car.
“He told her, ‘You don’t know what kind of man your heart is going to fall in love with. I don’t want your head to be empty.'”
Her husband’s final prayers were answered, Jessie said. “The Lord did those things for him: He was swift, and he died in his own bed.”
Birney Imes is the publisher of The Dispatch. Email him at [email protected].
Birney Imes III is the immediate past publisher of The Dispatch.
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