Chapter Four

Davy Meets Stevie

January 3, 1960 — Labor Day, 1966

It is Sunday, January 3, 1960. The third day of the year. The world is not paying attention to Huntsville, Alabama today, but Huntsville is paying attention to itself.

The day before — Saturday, January 2 — a forty-two-year-old senator from Massachusetts named John Fitzgerald Kennedy had walked into the Senate Caucus Room in Washington, D.C., and told the world he was running for President of the United States. The papers carried it. The radio carried it. Whether anyone in Huntsville Park was listening that Saturday morning is not recorded.

What is recorded is that Huntsville, Alabama in 1960 was a city in the middle of becoming something it had never been before. The cotton mills that had defined the southwest side of town for sixty years were closing, one by one. The mill village streets — A, B, C, D, E, F, and G — had been given proper names back in 1946 when Lowenstein Fabrics bought the old Merrimack Manufacturing Company and renamed it the Huntsville Manufacturing Company. B Street became Bradley Street, named for Joseph “Big Joe” Bradley and his son Joe Bradley Jr., the most beloved mill agents the village had ever known. G Street was named for someone the village knew well too — the mill doctor, Dr. Carl A. Grote. The village became Huntsville Park. The names changed. The people stayed.

And the rockets started firing.

By the time January 3, 1960 arrived, Huntsville’s population had grown to 72,365 — a more than fourfold increase in a single decade. German-born rocket scientist Wernher von Braun and his team had been at Redstone Arsenal since 1950, first building ballistic missiles for the United States Army, then aiming higher. In six months — on July 1, 1960 — the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center would officially activate at Redstone Arsenal, and von Braun would become its first director. Huntsville, which had advertised itself in the 1950s as the Watercress Capital of the World, was about to be called something else entirely. The Rocket City.

None of this was on anyone’s mind at Huntsville Hospital that Sunday morning. There was other business to attend to.

Charles David Limbaugh arrived in this world on January 3, 1960. He was not consulted on the timing. He was approximately four minutes old before he had any opinions about anything, and even then the opinions were nonverbal.

His father, Marcus David Limbaugh, had driven down from Chase. His mother, Ann Oldfield Limbaugh, was a daughter of Huntsville Park — her people were mill district people, the kind who knew every family on every lettered street before the streets had real names. Dr. Carl Grote Sr. was there. He had built that hospital. He was still using it.

Charles David did not know any of this yet. He was four minutes old. He had already met Dr. Grote. He had already met Mom. Dad was next.

✦   ✦   ✦

The Limbaugh family lived at 3312 Bradley Street SW, in the heart of Huntsville Park — the community that had grown up around the old Merrimack Mill. They were Huntsville Parkers. Had been since the mill opened in 1900. These were not rocket scientists. These were the people who kept the city running with their hands, the families who had built something out of red Alabama dirt and never stopped working.

On Bradley Street, in the house across the yard, there was a World War II veteran named Leonard Burks.

Leonard Burks had come home from the war with an injured elbow. The details of his service — where he was, what unit, what theater, the exact circumstances of the wound — are not recorded here. That record belongs to Leonard, and to his family. What is known is that the elbow did not heal in a way that put him back to work, and so Leonard stayed home. He was there when the children came out to play. He was there when the screen door slapped shut in the afternoon. He was there.

His wife, Opal Burks, went to work. She worked on the Arsenal — Redstone Arsenal, the federal installation on the south side of Huntsville that was, in January 1960, home to more than twenty thousand civilian, military, and contractor workers. What exactly Opal did there, what building she reported to, what her days looked like — that record also belongs to the family. What is known is that she went. Every day, Opal Burks went to work on the Arsenal while Leonard kept the house and watched the yard.

There was already one child in the house. George Burks — born August 13, 1949 — was ten years old in January 1960. He was the oldest. Betty was the second oldest. The full shape of the Burks family — the complete birth order, the ages, the names between — belongs to Stevie to tell. That record is his.

What is known is this: somewhere in that family, a sister named Jeanette was expecting a child. And on May 28, 1960, Jeanette’s son — Vic Carter — was born.

On the same day, a few hours apart, in the same Huntsville Hospital, so was his uncle.

Stephen Burks entered the world on May 28, 1960, five months and twenty-five days after Charles David Limbaugh arrived at Huntsville Hospital — already an uncle to Vic Carter before he had drawn his second breath. The history books do not record this. They should.

Stevie.

✦   ✦   ✦

There is no recorded first moment. No photograph of two small boys standing in a yard squinting at each other across the grass. No letter, no diary entry, no newspaper notice. The historical record is silent on exactly when Davy and Stevie first occupied the same patch of Huntsville Park earth and decided, in the wordless way that very small children decide such things, that the other one was all right.

What is known is the geography. Two families. One yard between them. A World War II veteran sitting on one side of it. A mill district woman going to work on the Arsenal every morning. A ten-year-old big brother named George who already owned the street. And two babies — five months apart — who had not yet learned that the yard had an edge.

The details of that first meeting belong to Stevie. He was there. He will know.

What history can say is this: by the time either of them was old enough to remember anything at all, the other one was already there. Already across the yard. Already part of the furniture of childhood. Already Stevie. Already Davy.

Some friendships have a beginning you can point to. Some friendships simply are — like the yard, like the street, like the name on the mailbox. You do not remember starting them because you cannot remember a time before them.

✦   ✦   ✦

— Dad —

Marcus David Limbaugh worked the grounds at Chase Nursery, one of the most storied horticultural operations in the South. Henry B. Chase had built something remarkable — acres of ornamental trees, flowering shrubs, and carefully cultivated beauty stretching across the Tennessee Valley. And every day, David’s dad showed up and helped tend it.

He was not a complicated man. He was a good one. The kind of man who, when a neighbor’s fence blew down in a thunderstorm, showed up the next morning with tools and didn’t wait to be asked. He weeded the older lady’s garden. He painted. He poured concrete. He trimmed branches. He crawled under porches in the cold to wrap water pipes before winter. He never expected payment. He never kept score. He did it for the simple reason of wanting to do it. Do your job. That was the whole lesson. It took David the rest of his life to fully understand just how much was inside those three words.

He coached baseball for any kid in the neighborhood who wanted to play. And when game day came, there was no carpool, no pickup truck parade. He walked them. The whole crew — David, Stevie, Stevie’s nephew Vic, whoever else was in the yard that morning — he loaded them up and they walked. Milton Frank Stadium was less than half a mile down the road. Brahan Spring Park was barely more than a mile. You could get anywhere in Huntsville Park on foot if you were willing, and David’s dad was always willing.

He taught them how to hold a bat, how to run the bases, how to play the game right. Not because it was his job. Because it was who he was.

His favorite tree was the dogwood. Every spring in Huntsville Park, the dogwoods bloomed white and pink against the Alabama sky, and he would stop whatever he was doing just to look at them. Years later, when David bought his first house, his dear friend Brent Whitlock — assistant coach at Riverdale High School and one of the finest people David has ever known — bought a dogwood tree and planted it in the front yard. It wasn’t a random gift. Brent knew the story. He knew what the tree meant. Some friendships carry memory like that.

Dad played independent baseball. He and his two brothers were good enough to play in the NBC World Series in Wichita. He was the kind of ballplayer who made his son believe that anything was possible, not by saying so, but by living it every day in plain sight.

He died of lung cancer when David was twelve years old. David never smoked a cigarette in his life. He never needed a reason beyond that.

✦   ✦   ✦

— The Stadium —

At the corner of Ivy Avenue and Triana Boulevard, in the heart of Huntsville Park, there was a baseball stadium. It was where the neighborhood played, where fathers watched sons and sons watched fathers, where summer evenings were measured in innings.

Out front, there were plaques. Four of them — Civil War, World War I, World War II, Korea — listing the names of Huntsville Park men who had served. Men from these streets. Men from these houses.

Papa’s name was on the World War I plaque.

David’s father’s name was on the Korea plaque.

The stadium is gone now. Demolished. Replaced by apartments. The plaques are gone with it. The names are gone with it.

David is still angry about this. He wants you to sit with that for a moment — the names of men who served their country, men from a specific neighborhood who built a specific community, on a wall that got torn down so somebody could build apartments. Their names. Gone. As if they were never there.

He hasn’t stopped being angry about it. He probably never will. He is right to be angry. Some things should not be forgotten, and some things should not be forgiven.

✦   ✦   ✦

— Papa —

Papa lived in the same house — Charles Newton Oldfield, born 1895, a veteran of the First World War. He was the man who taught David history. Not from books, though books were part of it. From memory. From stories. From the particular gravity that old men carry when they have actually lived through the things the rest of us only read about.

Papa had served when the world was still learning what modern warfare meant — when horses still pulled artillery and mustard gas drifted across French fields. He came home to Huntsville, to Huntsville Park, to the life that working men built with their hands in the years between the wars. He married, raised children, and grew old watching the world change around him in ways he had never imagined and did not always understand.

He was not a simple man to understand, and this book will not pretend otherwise. His full story will emerge in time. For now, it is enough to know that when his legs finally gave out and he could no longer get around on his own, it was his daughter Ann — David’s mother — who took care of him. She washed his clothes, cooked his meals, and sat with him in that Huntsville Park house on Bradley Street without complaint, even while working three jobs and raising three children.

When Papa’s legs still worked, he used to take David, his two little sisters, and Stevie Burks from across the yard downtown on the city bus to the old W.T. Grant store on Washington Street — the same store where, on January 3, 1962 — exactly two years after David was born — Black students had staged Huntsville’s first sit-in at the whites-only lunch counter. Papa didn’t know that history, or if he did, he never mentioned it. He just knew Grant’s had a basement with toys and a candy and nut counter, and the kids loved it.

The nice Black lady at the nut counter would see Papa coming and smile. Papa would step up and order — and the word he used for the Brazil nuts was the word that white men of his generation used without thinking, the word that made six-year-old David’s stomach turn over even before he had language for why. He would cringe and look away. Papa didn’t notice. Or if he did, he didn’t say.

David never forgot that cringe. It would come back to him in different forms, in different places, for years. It was teaching him something, even then, about the distance between the people we love and the people we wish they were.

✦   ✦   ✦

— The Huntsville Parkers —

Stevie Burks was born on May 28, 1960 — five months after David, and right across the yard. From the time they were old enough to walk out the door, they were inseparable. Stevie’s mother worked at Redstone Arsenal, a federal government job, good and steady. David’s mother was home, caring for Papa and the household, washing and ironing neighbors’ clothes on the clothesline out back to bring in a little extra money.

The two boys who would talk virtually every single day for the rest of their lives started talking before either of them could properly form sentences. They had the bond that only forms when you grow up together from the very beginning — the kind where you don’t remember a time before the other person existed.

The Bradley Street crew was bigger than just the two of them. There was Vic Carter — Stevie’s nephew, born on the very same day as Stevie in the same hospital, which is the kind of coincidence that becomes a running joke for life. Vic lived in a different part of town, but he came to visit, and when he did he was one of them. There was Johnny, who is gone now. There was Butch, who is gone too. All of them Huntsville Parkers, all shaped by the same streets, the same games, and the same man with the dogwood in his heart who loaded them all up and walked them to the ballpark.

They were all white. In 1960s Huntsville, Alabama, that was not a choice any of them made. It was simply the world as it had been arranged before they arrived in it. The Black kids in the neighborhood could not be at the same park. Little David noticed. He kept noticing.

He was blessed with an awesome childhood. Aunts and uncles in the neighborhood. Great people like Mr. Holmes and others. Mom went to Joe Bradley School — the mill school, the school that was built for the Huntsville Parkers, named for Joseph J. Bradley Sr., managing agent of the mill. She grew up on these same streets, knew these same houses. She was one of us. She still is.

✦   ✦   ✦

— History Outside the Window —

The world beyond Bradley Street was loud with history during the years David Limbaugh was learning to walk and talk and throw a baseball. He was not old enough to watch it happen — not yet. But he was inside it. Present at the edges of it. A child at 3312 Bradley Street SW while the nation argued, marched, bled, and slowly, painfully changed.

In April 1961, Freedom Riders testing compliance with federal desegregation orders were attacked by white mobs in Anniston and Montgomery. The images of a burning bus made national news. David was one year old.

On January 3, 1962 — David’s second birthday — the first sit-ins in Huntsville’s history began at that very W.T. Grant store on Washington Street, the same one Papa took the kids to for Brazil nuts and toys. Seventy-five Black students over three days, sitting quietly at the whites-only counters, being refused service, and leaving with dignity. By July of that year, Huntsville became the first city in Alabama to begin desegregation of its public accommodations.

In the spring of 1963, Bull Connor turned fire hoses on children in Birmingham, sixty miles to the south. David was three. In August, a quarter of a million people marched on Washington and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. told the nation about his dream. On September 9, a six-year-old boy named Sonnie Hereford IV walked into Fifth Avenue Elementary School in Huntsville and became the first Black child to integrate a public school in the state of Alabama. Six days later, a bomb planted by Ku Klux Klan members killed four little girls at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. Addie Mae Collins. Cynthia Wesley. Carole Robertson. Carol Denise McNair. Their names deserve to be written down every time the story is told.

On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. David was three years old. He was sitting in Huntsville Park. The story of that day — and what came after — would weave itself through his life in ways he could not yet imagine. That is a story for another chapter.

Lyndon Baines Johnson became President and declared a War on Poverty. In July 1964 he signed the Civil Rights Act into law. In March 1965, state troopers beat peaceful marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. In August 1965, the Voting Rights Act was signed. One by one, the legal architecture of Jim Crow was being dismantled. In Huntsville Park, the dogwoods bloomed every spring regardless.

✦   ✦   ✦

— A Dark Lesson —

Not everything that happened on Bradley Street in those years was good. This book is the truth. The whole truth.

David was five years old in 1965. He was learning to read. He was absorbing everything the world placed in front of him before he had any way to sort it. And something happened to him that he did not have language for until much later. A neighbor named Billy Edwards molested him. He was five years old. It happened. He carried it the way children carry things they have no framework for — silently, deeply, alone.

He was not the only one. He would not know that for years.

Stevie knew. David had told him — told him the way you tell the person you trust most with the thing you have never said out loud. Stevie carried it with him too, the way a real friend does.

In 2018, the phone rang. It was Stevie.

“They finally got him.”

Billy R. Edwards — by then sixty-four years old — had been convicted in federal court in the Northern District of Alabama on charges of commercial sex trafficking, coercion and enticement of a minor to engage in prostitution, and being a convicted felon in possession of firearms. On September 12, 2018, U.S. District Judge R. David Proctor sentenced him to fifteen years in federal prison. U.S. Attorney Jay E. Town announced the sentence. The United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Alabama had gotten him, decades after he started.

Justice, when it arrives that late, arrives differently than you imagined it would. It is not relief, exactly. It is something more complicated than relief.

David tells you this now because this book is the truth. And the truth includes this.

✦   ✦   ✦

— Labor Day, 1966 —

For six years, from January 3, 1960 through the last days of summer 1966, Charles David Limbaugh grew up in Huntsville Park — shaped by his father’s quiet goodness, his mother’s fierce endurance, his Papa’s complicated history, his best friend Stevie’s daily company, and the roar of a nation trying to figure out what it actually believed about itself.

Eisenhower had given way to Kennedy. Kennedy had given way to Johnson. The rockets kept going up at Redstone Arsenal. The dogwoods kept blooming on Bradley Street. The names of Huntsville Park’s veterans stayed on the plaques out front of the stadium at Ivy and Triana, where David’s dad had walked them all to play ball.

The summer of 1966 meant one thing clearly: the fall of 1966 was coming. And with it, Alabama football. And first grade. Ridgecrest Elementary School.

He was six years old. He was ready for what came next.

He just didn’t know it yet.

Davy and Stevie had learned something, though. They had learned to hate hate. And they had made a vow to each other — the kind that six-year-olds make without ceremony, without witnesses, without any idea how long they will be asked to keep it — to always do that.

---

A Note on Sources