Uncle Cabel DeHart

About the author...Michael Martin (pictured front row, far right in the 1981 photo) is a retired veteran of 25 years on the Eden City Police Department, and has penned a number of anecdotal writings recalling his experiences.

My Grandmother was Rosa Dehart from Patrick County, Virginia. Her brother Cabel was my dad's favorite uncle. Cabel left Patrick County Virginia with a kinsman to work in the West Virginia Coal mines about the turn of the century.

There was a terrible cave in and the kinsman was killed in the mine. Uncle Cabel's leg was pinned between a timber and a huge rock in the mine and an old civil war surgeon was called in to save him. He cut off Uncle Cabel's leg and they brought the rest of him out of the mine. No one thought Cabel would live..but My great Grandfather John Wesley Dehart and Great Grandmother, America Anne Brammer Dehart loaded a wagon with hay and went to fetch their son, loaded him into the hay and brought him back to Patrick County, Virginia and Uncle Cabel lived because America nursed her son every mile home....fast foward sixty years....

My daddy was back from the wars and Cabel was his favorite uncle..daddy took his five year old son to visit Uncle Cabel, who now ran a store on Washburn Avenue....I had no idea that Uncle Cabel had a cork leg..He did have a red Coca-Cola cooler with ice in it to keep the drinks cold....dad visited with Cabel and I found his ice pick and was picking at his ice block. Uncle Cabel knew that if i chunked his ice, it would not last...Cabel said "Mikey" come bring me the ice puck...and I did....Cabel stabbed the ice pick into his cork leg...and said "See, I am tough, it don't even hurt."...my little butt went ballistic and I went to daddy's A model and crawled into the back seat...I was ready to go home to my mother who had good sense....I could hear Uncle Cabel and Daddy roaring with laughter...but I would not go back to that man's store anymore, I was scared of him.....

But Uncle Cabel was Billy Greene Dehart's daddy..and Billy Greene Dehart was a hero by any man's measure. He lived on Clarkway drive in Eden and fought for 82 straight days to capture the island of Okinawa. Billy Greene Dehart is gone now, but he was one of my heros