This is a guest opinion column

My Uncle Clay was the oldest of four brothers, including my dad who was second oldest. Born in 1917 in Talladega, he was just short of 98 when he passed, now 10 years ago.

Uncle Clay was a good man, and he instilled his values of honesty, humility, and charity in his three children, my first cousins.

Like so many in his time, his boyhood was cut short by the Great Depression. Falling cotton prices put his father – my grandfather – out of a job at the cotton mill in Talladega. Clay and his brothers, the youngest of whom would have been 9, walked the roadsides to collect odd pieces of metal, cut and hauled trees with a mule, and scampered down open wells to dig out accumulated sediment — anything to help keep a pot of beans and cornbread on the stove. Whatever they had, Clay made sure to share with the elderly African American couple living on their farm – Jap and Mattie, children of enslaved people.

Volunteering to enlist in the army in World War II, Uncle Clay found himself in a mechanics unit, having learned on his own how to fix everything from a 1915 steam-powered tractor, to a 1925 Model-T Ford. When his unit was transferred to England in 1944, Uncle Clay was assigned to work on a problem with the Higgins Boats – the landing craft subsequently used on D-Day. The engines flooded with both gas and water because of the design of the diesel fuel injection system. He figured out a fix using the metal top of a sardine can, and the rest, they say, is history. To his death he remained conflicted about that – yes, his fix made it possible for the boat engines to run, but the landings resulted in so many deaths, including two close friends from Talladega.

After the war, Uncle Clay returned to Talladega, where he married “Punky” Martin, and thus the source of my favorite story about Uncle Clay and their honeymoon at Mt. Cheaha.

The Civilian Conservation Corps cabins were relatively new and could be rented for $5 a week, which was about all Uncle Buck and Aunt Punky had saved from their meager beginnings. Toward the end of the week, when they knew they would have to return to Talladega, Uncle Clay happened to talk to the park director, who was worried about having to climb the new tall radio tower and replace the red light on top.

“I’m just scared to death of heights – I’d pay a feller $5 to climb that tower and put in a new light.”

Uncle Clay looked at Aunt Punky and an hour later they had another week of cabin rent. “The best week of our lives,” they always said. I always think of them when I visit Cheaha, where the old tower still stands next to a taller, newer one.

His work as a mechanic eventually led Uncle Clay to open his own repair shop. He was never a wealthy man, as measured in dollars earned and saved, but the stories of his generosity always seemed to swell around me whenever I visited family back in Talladega.

“If it wasn’t for your Uncle Clay’s work on our car, which we could not pay for, my wife would’ve had her baby at our house, with me playing doctor, rather than at the hospital where everything turned out fine.” One among many stories.

Uncle Clay. A good man indeed, only none of this story about him is true.

Well almost none of it. He was my father’s oldest brother. The Higgins Boat – complete fabrication, but who could have made such a fix, if needed? The Cheaha story could have been about Uncle Clay but it was actually a true story about my father and mother.

You see, Uncle Clay died of diphtheria when he was four years old. The first vaccine for diphtheria was developed in 1923, but it wasn’t widely available until the 1940’s.

In the U.S., 13,000-15,000 children died annually prior to the vaccine being used. After the vaccine was in widespread use, deaths dropped dramatically, and between 1996 and 2018, 14 cases (not deaths) of diphtheria were reported in the United States.

The point of this story is this: vaccines cause adults, not autism.

Parents, please get your children their vaccines and cause an Uncle Clay or Aunt Punky. We need them and the honesty, humility, and charity they would have brought to the world.

Dr. Paul C. Erwin is a public health professional in Birmingham. Email him at [email protected].