A DAUGHTER REMEMBERS

(July 19, 1997) Susan: Sherril’s read by Suzette

My dad, Richard Valentine Naug, was the fifth child of seven born to Rabindra Kumar Naug and Dora Cancellor Naug. He was born on January 19, 1909. His father had left India to get a law degree at Oxford University in England, where he met his wife, Dora, in the little village of lslip, which adjoined the university. When they got married, she was disowned by her parents for marrying a brown-skinned Hindu, and he was disowned by his parents for marrying a white-skinned Christian. He tock her back to India after he got his degree and opened up a law practice in Midnapore, West Bengal, India, where he eventually became a district judge. Although my dad was named Richard by his father, his mother preferred the name Robert, so she just called him Bobby - as did his three brothers and three sisters and everyone else who knew him in India. He never used the name Richard until he came to the United States at 51 years of age.

My dad, who was 37 years old when I was born, was a bulky, muscular man - 5' 11and 112", as he liked to say, and weighing around 200 pounds. He had been a competitive boxer in his late teens and twenties, earning the title of Amateur Middle-Weight Champion of India in 1936; and, when his boxing days were over, he continued to train the amateur boxers who lived in our home town of Khargpur.

I remember swinging on the black, metal gates that stood at the end of our compound, listening for the noon whistle to blow at the railway yard. My dad would come around the corner on his bike, because he had an hour for lunch, and I would swing the gates wide open for him. We would sneak into the back pantry and he would get out a big, red barley sugar candy ball for me - a piece of hard candy the size of a jawbreaker in a big, glass jar - which had been placed under lock and key by my mother. I found it next to impossible to hide the great egg-shaped bulge inside my cheek, and so my dad would invariably get into trouble for spoiling my lunch!

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I remember the many times that people pounded on our door at night, because there was a poisonous snake in the vicinity. My dad would grab his shotgun, or cane, or hockey stick - whatever was handy - and sally forth on his snake hunting crusade. On one particular warm, summer night, I remember riding on the top of his shoulders, with my arms around his neck, as he followed a nervous Indian man in a whit e dhoti to the railroad tracks, where the man had barely escaped being struck by a cobra. My dad carried his gun, and the servant walking along side him carried his flashlight. When we got to the spot, dad handed me down to the servant, and, while all of those tagging along hung back, he searched along the track, in the dark, all alone. I remember being scared, but I knew that my dad was fearless. He shot the cobra that night, and the legend of Bob Naug, the cobra killer, continued to grow.

I remember the night that a rabid dog, who was foaming at the mouth, sneaked into our house, and my dad told us kids to wait in the car, as he went searching through the house with a two-by-four in his hand. Ironically, the dog ran outside and then into the carport, and started toclimb into the car, because we had left the back passenger side door open. We trapped his head, shoulders and forepaws inside the car by slamming the door shut, and it was my dad who heard us screaming and came running to the rescue and smashed that dog with the two-by-four. I remember the night that we heard one of our dogs yelping desperately outside, and my dad rushed out to scare off what he thought was another stray dog; only to be faced down by a large hyena. My dad charged the hyena and chased it away until it jumped the fence at the edge of the yard.

I remember when my dad was in Peoria, many, many years later, and was opening up my brother’s gas station for him at 6:00 in the morning. A deranged drug-addict in his twenties burst into the building, pointed a hand-gun at him, and demanded the money. My dad was 70

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years old at the time. In disbelief, my dad shouted out "What?" and the man pulled the trigger. The gun didn't go off, and my dad grabbed for it, trying to wrestle it out of the strange/s hands, but he got free and ran out. My dad chased him down the street until he disappeared. Then he called the police!

Just about two weeks ago, as his health took a quick turn for theworse and he was bed-fast at my house, I remember my dad saying to me, "I'm going home." "Do you mean to Gainesville, Dad?' I responded, "or to heaven?" 'To heaven," he replied, in a calm, quiet voice. And I remember just about three days before he died, when his eyesight had failed and I came into the room and stroked his arm, that he asked in his polite and gentle way, "May I ask your name?" "It's Sherrill, Dad" answered, and he said, "My daughter." And I cried, but he didn't know it, because I didn't let the tear drops splash onto his arm. And I remember just 15 hours before he died that he wanted to get out of bed, and so the nurse and I pulled him up and he sat on the edge of the hospital bed with me for about an hour. His body was so weak that his head hung down against my shoulder and I had to prop his back up with my arm; and I thought to myself,

"This is my dad - a man with a heart as fearless as a lion and a spirit as gentle as a lamb." My dad died at 6:00 a.m. on Saturday, July 19, 1997.

And so I commit this prince of a man, one who has run a most glorious race, to the Heavenly Father whom he so dearly loved - the one who is the author and finisher of his faith.

Susan’s hand: Stephen had some wonderful words too, but they were not recorded.